IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/now/jnlrbe/105.00000172.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Celebrity Commercial Boosts Viewers’ Dishonesty: An Experimental Study

Author

Listed:
  • Yossef Tobol
  • Erez Siniver
  • Gideon Yaniv

Abstract

The present paper reports the results of an experiment designed to examine the effect of a celebrity commercial on viewers’ subsequent dishonest behavior, hypothesizing that viewing a celebrity seemingly lying for money stimulates viewers to also lie for money if the opportunity arises. A group of students watched a short commercial endorsed by a popular Israeli actress (experimental treatment) whereas two groups of students watched either an extract of the same length from a dramatic film starring this actress or a commercial of the same length endorsed by an anonymous actress (control treatments). Subjects who watched a commercial were also asked if, in their best impression, the actress was also willing to endorse any product for a suitable amount of money. All subjects were than offered to perform a money-rewarding simple task which involved an opportunity to increase their payoff by cheating with no possible detection. The results reveal that subjects who watched the popular actress' commercial cheated significantly more than subjects who watched either her dramatic film extract or the anonymous actress’ commercial and that cheating increased with viewers’ impression that the popular actress was also willing to endorse any other product for money. A modified version of the self-concept maintenance theory, supported by a formal model of rational-choice cheating, explains our results.

Suggested Citation

  • Yossef Tobol & Erez Siniver & Gideon Yaniv, 2023. "Celebrity Commercial Boosts Viewers’ Dishonesty: An Experimental Study," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 10(3), pages 189-202, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:now:jnlrbe:105.00000172
    DOI: 10.1561/105.00000172
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/105.00000172
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1561/105.00000172?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:now:jnlrbe:105.00000172. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lucy Wiseman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nowpublishers.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.