On social norms and observability in (dis)honest behavior

Christoph Huber; Christos Litsios; Annika Nieper; Timo Promann

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2023.06.019

On social norms and observability in (dis)honest behavior

Christoph Huber^*, Christos Litsios, Annika Nieper, Timo Promann

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Transparency and observability have been shown to foster ethical decision-making as people tend to comply with an underlying norm for honesty. However, in situations implying a social norm for dishonesty, this might be different. In a die-rolling experiment, we investigate whether observability can also have detrimental effects. We thus introduce a norm nudge toward honesty or dishonesty and make participants’ decisions observable and open to the judgement of other participants in order to manipulate the observability of people's decisions as well as the underlying social norm. We find that a nudge toward honesty indeed increases the level of honesty, suggesting that such a norm nudge can successfully induce behavioral change. Our introduction of social image concerns via observability, however, does not affect honesty and does not interact with our norm nudge.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1086-1099
Number of pages	14
Journal	Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Volume	212
Early online date	6 Jul 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.06.019
Publication status	Published - Aug 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Daniela Puzzello (the editor), an anonymous reviewer, Eugen Dimant, Susanna Grundmann, Kim Peters, Julia Rose, as well as conference participants at the ESA 2021 Online Meeting, GfeW Annual Meeting 2021 in Magdeburg, Young Economists’ Meeting 2022 in Brno, seminar participants at WU Vienna, and participants at the UEA Summer School in Behavioral Game Theory 2020 by David J. Cooper, for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Simeon Schudy for providing the video recordings of the die rolls used in Kocher, Schudy, & Spantig (2018). Financial support from the German Research Association (DFG, GRK 2503), the German Association for Experimental Economic Research (GfeW), the University of Innsbruck (BAFIT Netzwerk Banking, Accounting, Auditing, Finance & IT), and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ERC grant number 771391 awarded to B. Beersma) is gratefully acknowledged. The main study was pre-registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF): DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/U9HRQ.

Funding Information:
We thank Daniela Puzzello (the editor), an anonymous reviewer, Eugen Dimant, Susanna Grundmann, Kim Peters, Julia Rose, as well as conference participants at the ESA 2021 Online Meeting, GfeW Annual Meeting 2021 in Magdeburg, Young Economists’ Meeting 2022 in Brno, seminar participants at WU Vienna, and participants at the UEA Summer School in Behavioral Game Theory 2020 by David J. Cooper, for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Simeon Schudy for providing the video recordings of the die rolls used in Kocher, Schudy, & Spantig (2018). Financial support from the German Research Association (DFG, GRK 2503 ), the German Association for Experimental Economic Research (GfeW), the University of Innsbruck (BAFIT Netzwerk Banking, Accounting, Auditing, Finance & IT), and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ERC grant number 771391 awarded to B. Beersma) is gratefully acknowledged. The main study was pre-registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF): DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/U9HRQ .

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s)

Keywords

Behavioral change
Cheating
Image concerns
Lying
Nudging
Social norms

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10.1016/j.jebo.2023.06.019

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Cite this

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title = "On social norms and observability in (dis)honest behavior",

abstract = "Transparency and observability have been shown to foster ethical decision-making as people tend to comply with an underlying norm for honesty. However, in situations implying a social norm for dishonesty, this might be different. In a die-rolling experiment, we investigate whether observability can also have detrimental effects. We thus introduce a norm nudge toward honesty or dishonesty and make participants{\textquoteright} decisions observable and open to the judgement of other participants in order to manipulate the observability of people's decisions as well as the underlying social norm. We find that a nudge toward honesty indeed increases the level of honesty, suggesting that such a norm nudge can successfully induce behavioral change. Our introduction of social image concerns via observability, however, does not affect honesty and does not interact with our norm nudge.",

keywords = "Behavioral change, Cheating, Image concerns, Lying, Nudging, Social norms",

author = "Christoph Huber and Christos Litsios and Annika Nieper and Timo Promann",

note = "Funding Information: We thank Daniela Puzzello (the editor), an anonymous reviewer, Eugen Dimant, Susanna Grundmann, Kim Peters, Julia Rose, as well as conference participants at the ESA 2021 Online Meeting, GfeW Annual Meeting 2021 in Magdeburg, Young Economists{\textquoteright} Meeting 2022 in Brno, seminar participants at WU Vienna, and participants at the UEA Summer School in Behavioral Game Theory 2020 by David J. Cooper, for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Simeon Schudy for providing the video recordings of the die rolls used in Kocher, Schudy, & Spantig (2018). Financial support from the German Research Association (DFG, GRK 2503), the German Association for Experimental Economic Research (GfeW), the University of Innsbruck (BAFIT Netzwerk Banking, Accounting, Auditing, Finance & IT), and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ERC grant number 771391 awarded to B. Beersma) is gratefully acknowledged. The main study was pre-registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF): DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/U9HRQ. Funding Information: We thank Daniela Puzzello (the editor), an anonymous reviewer, Eugen Dimant, Susanna Grundmann, Kim Peters, Julia Rose, as well as conference participants at the ESA 2021 Online Meeting, GfeW Annual Meeting 2021 in Magdeburg, Young Economists{\textquoteright} Meeting 2022 in Brno, seminar participants at WU Vienna, and participants at the UEA Summer School in Behavioral Game Theory 2020 by David J. Cooper, for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Simeon Schudy for providing the video recordings of the die rolls used in Kocher, Schudy, & Spantig (2018). Financial support from the German Research Association (DFG, GRK 2503 ), the German Association for Experimental Economic Research (GfeW), the University of Innsbruck (BAFIT Netzwerk Banking, Accounting, Auditing, Finance & IT), and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ERC grant number 771391 awarded to B. Beersma) is gratefully acknowledged. The main study was pre-registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF): DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/U9HRQ . Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 The Author(s)",

year = "2023",

month = aug,

doi = "10.1016/j.jebo.2023.06.019",

language = "English",

volume = "212",

pages = "1086--1099",

journal = "Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization",

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AU - Huber, Christoph

AU - Litsios, Christos

AU - Nieper, Annika

AU - Promann, Timo

N1 - Funding Information: We thank Daniela Puzzello (the editor), an anonymous reviewer, Eugen Dimant, Susanna Grundmann, Kim Peters, Julia Rose, as well as conference participants at the ESA 2021 Online Meeting, GfeW Annual Meeting 2021 in Magdeburg, Young Economists’ Meeting 2022 in Brno, seminar participants at WU Vienna, and participants at the UEA Summer School in Behavioral Game Theory 2020 by David J. Cooper, for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Simeon Schudy for providing the video recordings of the die rolls used in Kocher, Schudy, & Spantig (2018). Financial support from the German Research Association (DFG, GRK 2503), the German Association for Experimental Economic Research (GfeW), the University of Innsbruck (BAFIT Netzwerk Banking, Accounting, Auditing, Finance & IT), and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ERC grant number 771391 awarded to B. Beersma) is gratefully acknowledged. The main study was pre-registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF): DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/U9HRQ. Funding Information: We thank Daniela Puzzello (the editor), an anonymous reviewer, Eugen Dimant, Susanna Grundmann, Kim Peters, Julia Rose, as well as conference participants at the ESA 2021 Online Meeting, GfeW Annual Meeting 2021 in Magdeburg, Young Economists’ Meeting 2022 in Brno, seminar participants at WU Vienna, and participants at the UEA Summer School in Behavioral Game Theory 2020 by David J. Cooper, for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Simeon Schudy for providing the video recordings of the die rolls used in Kocher, Schudy, & Spantig (2018). Financial support from the German Research Association (DFG, GRK 2503 ), the German Association for Experimental Economic Research (GfeW), the University of Innsbruck (BAFIT Netzwerk Banking, Accounting, Auditing, Finance & IT), and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (ERC grant number 771391 awarded to B. Beersma) is gratefully acknowledged. The main study was pre-registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF): DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/U9HRQ . Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s)

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N2 - Transparency and observability have been shown to foster ethical decision-making as people tend to comply with an underlying norm for honesty. However, in situations implying a social norm for dishonesty, this might be different. In a die-rolling experiment, we investigate whether observability can also have detrimental effects. We thus introduce a norm nudge toward honesty or dishonesty and make participants’ decisions observable and open to the judgement of other participants in order to manipulate the observability of people's decisions as well as the underlying social norm. We find that a nudge toward honesty indeed increases the level of honesty, suggesting that such a norm nudge can successfully induce behavioral change. Our introduction of social image concerns via observability, however, does not affect honesty and does not interact with our norm nudge.

AB - Transparency and observability have been shown to foster ethical decision-making as people tend to comply with an underlying norm for honesty. However, in situations implying a social norm for dishonesty, this might be different. In a die-rolling experiment, we investigate whether observability can also have detrimental effects. We thus introduce a norm nudge toward honesty or dishonesty and make participants’ decisions observable and open to the judgement of other participants in order to manipulate the observability of people's decisions as well as the underlying social norm. We find that a nudge toward honesty indeed increases the level of honesty, suggesting that such a norm nudge can successfully induce behavioral change. Our introduction of social image concerns via observability, however, does not affect honesty and does not interact with our norm nudge.

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KW - Image concerns

KW - Lying

KW - Nudging

KW - Social norms

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ER -

On social norms and observability in (dis)honest behavior

Abstract

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Keywords

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