Description: Dishonest behaviors such as tax evasion impose significant societal costs. Ex-ante honesty oaths—commitments to honesty before action—have been proposed as interventions to counteract dishonest behavior, but the heterogeneity in findings across operationalizations calls their effectiveness into question. We tested 21 honesty oaths (including a baseline oath)—proposed, evaluated, and selected by 44 expert researchers—and a no-oath condition in a megastudy involving 21,506 UK and US participants from Prolific.com who played an incentivized tax evasion game online.

Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/hctxe

Year of publication: 2024

Authors: Zickfeld, J., Scigala, K., Elbaek, C., Michael, J., Tønnesen, M. T., Levy, G., Köbis, N.C. & Mitkidis, P. – GOT