IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kud/kuiedp/0828.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Luck or Cheating? A Field Experiment on Honesty with Children

Author

Listed:
  • Alessandro Bucciol

    (University of Amsterdam)

  • Marco Piovesan

    (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen)

Abstract

We ran an experiment with children to study the development of honesty with age. We asked each child to toss a fair coin in private and to record the outcome (white or black) in a paper sheet. We rewarded only those who reported white. We found a fraction of reported whites signifi cantly larger than 50%, uniformly across age groups. This suggests that some children cheat when cheating is profi table and they are not observed. In a second treatment we told children not to cheat. This reminder reduced the probability of reporting white by 18% on average, and signifi cantly more in girls.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandro Bucciol & Marco Piovesan, 2008. "Luck or Cheating? A Field Experiment on Honesty with Children," Discussion Papers 08-28, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0828
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.ku.dk/english/research/publications/wp/2008/0828.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Uri Gneezy, 2005. "Deception: The Role of Consequences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 384-394, March.
    2. Gerald J. Pruckner & Rupert Sausgruber, 2008. "Honesty on the Streets - A Natural Field Experiment on Newspaper Purchasing," Working Papers 2009-24, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, University of Innsbruck.
    3. Steven D. Levitt, 2006. "White-Collar Crime Writ Small: A Case Study of Bagels, Donuts, and the Honor System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 290-294, May.
    4. William T. Harbaugh & Kate Krause & Timothy R. Berry, 2001. "GARP for Kids: On the Development of Rational Choice Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1539-1545, December.
    5. Wenzel, Michael, 2005. "Misperceptions of social norms about tax compliance: From theory to intervention," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 862-883, December.
    6. Frank, Robert H, 1987. "If Homo Economicus Could Choose His Own Utility Function, Would He Want One with a Conscience?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 593-604, September.
    7. Sutter, Matthias, 2007. "Outcomes versus intentions: On the nature of fair behavior and its development with age," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 69-78, January.
    8. Dan Ariely & Nina Mazar, 2006. "Dishonesty in everyday life and its policy implications," Working Papers 06-3, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    9. Harbaugh, William T. & Krause, Kate & Vesterlund, Lise, 2007. "Learning to bargain," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 127-142, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bradley J. Ruffle & Yossef Tobol, 2013. "Honest On Mondays: Honesty And The Temporal Distance Between Decisions And Payoffs," Working Papers 1301, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    2. Ruffle, Bradley J. & Tobol, Yossef, 2014. "Honest on Mondays: Honesty and the temporal separation between decisions and payoffs," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 126-135.
    3. Sutter, Matthias & Zoller, Claudia & Glätzle-Rützler, Daniela, 2019. "Economic behavior of children and adolescents – A first survey of experimental economics results," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 98-121.
    4. Fosgaard, Toke Reinholt & Hansen, Lars Gaarn & Piovesan, Marco, 2013. "Separating Will from Grace: An experiment on conformity and awareness in cheating," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 279-284.
    5. Schlüter, Achim & Vollan, Björn, 2015. "Flowers and an honour box: Evidence on framing effects," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 186-199.
    6. J Abeler & A Becker & A Falk, 2012. "Truth-telling - A Representative Assessment," Discussion Papers 2012-15, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    7. Gerald J. Pruckner & Rupert Sausgruber, 2008. "Honesty on the Streets - A Natural Field Experiment on Newspaper Purchasing," Working Papers 2009-24, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, University of Innsbruck.
    8. Jingnan (Cecilia) Chen & Daniel Houser, 2013. "Promises and Lies: An Experiment on Detecting Deception," Working Papers 1038, George Mason University, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, revised Feb 2013.
    9. Bucciol, Alessandro & Landini, Fabio & Piovesan, Marco, 2013. "Unethical behavior in the field: Demographic characteristics and beliefs of the cheater," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 248-257.
    10. Azar, Ofer H. & Applebaum, Mark, 2020. "Do children cheat to be honored? A natural experiment on dishonesty in a math competition," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 143-157.
    11. Florian Ederer & Ernst Fehr, 2007. "Deception and Incentives. How Dishonesty Undermines Effort Provision," IEW - Working Papers 341, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    12. Jacobsen, Catrine & Piovesan, Marco, 2016. "Tax me if you can: An artifactual field experiment on dishonesty," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 7-14.
    13. Azar, Ofer H. & Yosef, Shira & Bar-Eli, Michael, 2013. "Do customers return excessive change in a restaurant?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 219-226.
    14. Jingnan Chen & Daniel Houser, 2017. "Promises and lies: can observers detect deception in written messages," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(2), pages 396-419, June.
    15. Adriani, Fabrizio & Sonderegger, Silvia, 2015. "Trust, trustworthiness and the consensus effect: An evolutionary approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 102-116.
    16. Alm, James & Bruner, David M. & McKee, Michael, 2016. "Honesty or dishonesty of taxpayer communications in an enforcement regime," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 85-96.
    17. Mantilla, Cesar, 2014. "Congruent Behavior without Interpersonal Commitment: Evidence from a Common Pool Resource Game," IAST Working Papers 14-11, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    18. Galeotti, Fabio & Kline, Reuben & Orsini, Raimondello, 2017. "When foul play seems fair: Exploring the link between just deserts and honesty," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 451-467.
    19. Houser, Daniel & Vetter, Stefan & Winter, Joachim, 2012. "Fairness and cheating," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1645-1655.
    20. Chen, Daniel & Hopfensitz, Astrid & van Leeuwen, Boris & van de Ven, Jeroen, 2019. "The Strategic Display of Emotions," Discussion Paper 2019-014, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    honesty; children; fi eld experiment;

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:kud:kuiedp:0828. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Thomas Hoffmann). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/okokudk.html .

    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.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.