Committed (dis)honesty: A systematic meta-analytic review of the divergent effects of social commitment to individuals or honesty oaths on dishonest behavior.

Abstract

People feel committed to other individuals, groups, organizations, or moral norms in many contexts of everyday life. Such social commitment can lead to positive outcomes, such as increased job satisfaction or relationship longevity; yet, there can also be detrimental effects to feeling committed. Recent high-profile cases of fraud or corruption in companies like Enron or Volkswagen are likely influenced by strong commitment to the organization or coworkers. Although social commitment might increase dishonest behavior, there is little systematic knowledge about when and how this may occur. In the present project, we reviewed 20,988 articles, focusing on studies that experimentally manipulated social commitment and measured dishonest behavior. We retained 445 effect sizes from 121 articles featuring a total of 91,683 participants across 33 countries. We found no evidence that social commitment increases or reduces dishonest behavior in general. Nonetheless, we did find evidence that the effect strongly depends on the target of the commitment. Feeling committed to other individuals or groups reduces honest behavior (g = −0.17 [−0.24, −0.11]), whereas feeling committed to honesty norms through honesty oaths or pledges increases honest behavior (g = 0.27 [0.19, 0.36]). The analysis identified several moderating variables and detected some degree of publication bias across effects. Our findings highlight the diverging effects of different forms of social commitment on dishonest behavior and suggest a combination of the different forms of commitment could be a possible means to combat corruption and dishonest behavior in the organizational context. Public Significance StatementThis meta-analysis reveals that social commitment can impact dishonest behavior in various ways. Feeling committed or interacting with other individuals showed an increase in dishonesty, whereas committing to an honesty norm (by signing an honesty oath, for example) showed an increase in honesty. These effects were small and subject to different situational moderations. We propose that a combination of both types of commitment, commitment to loyalty and commitment to honesty norms, might be important in achieving good teamwork while at the same time reducing dishonest behavior.