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People imitate others' dishonesty but do not intentionally search information about it
Leib,Margarita
Leib,Margarita
Abstract
When people see that others lie for financial profit, they are more likely to lie themselves. But do people search for information about others' behavior in ethically tempting situations? And among those who search, what type of information do they search for? Specifically, do people search for information about others' dishonesty in particular, to justify their future transgressions, or do they search for information about others' behavior in general to learn about the descriptive social norm? Across four financially incentivized experiments (N-total = 2642), participants engaged in a task in which they could lie for profit. Before starting their task, participants could search for information about others' behavior in the same task. Results reveal that when people search for information, they do so in order to learn about the descriptive norm, not to intentionally learn about others' dishonesty. When the decision to search for information results in observing more dishonest others, participants become more dishonest themselves. Testing a boundary condition revealed that when information search is costly (vs. free), people search for less information, observe less dishonest others, and subsequently are less dishonest themselves. Findings suggest that in settings where people may act dishonestly, information about others behavior should be costly to obtain.
Description
The research was funded by the European Research Council (ERC-StG-637915 and ERCCoG-865931), and the Wharton Behavioral Lab
Date
2023
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research Projects
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Journal Issue
Keywords
behavioral ethics, descriptive norms, dishonesty, information search, UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR, DECISION, DECEPTION, IGNORANCE, CONTAGION, PRIMACY, SAMPLES, IMPACT, TRUTH
Citation
Leib, M 2023, 'People imitate others' dishonesty but do not intentionally search information about it', Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, vol. 36, no. 2, e2296. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2296
License
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess