Intrinsic honesty and the prevalence of rule violations across societies

Abstract

Deception is common in nature and humans are no exception 1 . Modern societies have created institutions to control cheating, but many situations remain where only intrinsic honesty keeps people from cheating and violating rules. Psychological 2 , sociological 3 and economic theories 4 suggest causal pathways about how the prevalence of rule violations in people's social environment such as corruption, tax evasion, or political fraud can compromise individual intrinsic honesty. Here, we present cross-societal experiments from 23 countries around the world, which demonstrate a robust link between the prevalence of rule violations and intrinsic honesty. We developed an index of the Prevalence of Rule Violations (PRV) based on country-level data of corruption, tax evasion, and fraudulent politics. We measured intrinsic honesty in an anonymous die-rolling experiment. 5 We conducted the experiments at least eight years after the measurement of PRV with 2568 young participants (students) who could not influence PRV. We find individual intrinsic honesty is stronger in the subject pools of low PRV countries than those of high PRV countries. The details of lying patterns support psychological theories of honesty. 6,7 The results are consistent with theories of the cultural co-evolution of institutions and values 8 and show that weak institutions and cultural legacies 9-11 that generate rule violations not only have direct adverse economic consequences but might also impair individual intrinsic honesty that is crucial for the smooth functioning of society.

Free will beliefs predict attitudes toward unethical behavior and criminal punishment

“…20, 21). For example, Gächter and Schulz (22) showed that residents of countries beset with fraud and corruption were more likely than others to cheat in a laboratory task. Moreover, people often project their own history of unethical behavior onto how acceptable they find those acts (23).…”

Increasing honesty in humans with noninvasive brain stimulation

“…Despite substantial interest in the origins and determinants of honest behavior in biology (9), behavioral sciences (2, 10), and economics (4,11), little is known about the neural processes that enable humans to resolve conflicts between honesty and personal financial gain. Understanding the neural processes involved in these "costly" displays of honesty could offer important new perspectives on the evolutionary origins and development of honest behavior (9,12) and may also aid in designing interventions for enhancing lie detection (13) and the treatment of pathological cheating (14).…”

“…honesty | cheating | social decision making | brain stimulation | dorsolateral prefrontal cortex D ishonest behavior is pervasive and carries important economic and societal consequences (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6). For example, illegal tax evasion is thought to account for over 5% of the world's gross domestic product (7), and total bribes to public officials are estimated at over US $1 trillion annually (8).…”

Complicity without connection or communication

“…For example, rendering (6, 6) too attractive might reduce the likelihood of observing any cross-treatment difference in behavior. Or, recalling that Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi (2013), and Gächter and Schulz (2016) found that many people tend to lie but not maximally, rendering a report of 6 too attractive could also render it so suspicious that it would rarely be chosen and coordination would become harder to achieve.…”