The old method of promoting honesty is “swear”: explicit order to be honest. People swore since ancient times, Janis Zickfeld, a social psychologist at the University of Denmark. “If you’re a witness in court,” he says, “he says,” or in the Netherlands, the Dutch banker sworn for people who work in the financial industry on moral practices. “
Researchers believe that the behavior of an honest behavior of the law is, but they often come with sanctions, so the strength of the promise itself is not clear. To be honest to be honest to be honest, people honestly play, lie?
It was a study addressed by Zickfeld Published last month Nature human behavior It suggests that, but the words of the oath. The way of doing the oath, and his time also makes the difference. The findings suggest that there may be low-cost tools to stop the dishonesty, but to confirm this assumption, these results must be repeated in real-world settings.
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In their study, Zickfeld and his colleagues hired 21,506 people in the United Kingdom on an online platform, playing the game to pay for taxes. Participants made the sorting task they got money. Then they reported how much they did, taxed in 35 percent. Participants could lie without the result, but they told him that he would go to the cross of British or American british tax collected.
Researchers created 21 “honest cinema”, including an oath of “base”: “I declare that I will give honest information in this study.“The two oaths were serious,” I swear to my honor … “- Or more precise:” … I will give honest information From the sorting task when I report my latest income. “Another 18 occupied strategies (” winning the trust of the citizens) (“I understand that it is honestly”) or character (“I’m honest people”), “I understand that most people agree that it is honestly” agrees. 953 A participant control team did without the task.
The quarter of the participants was dishonestly dishonest; 7 percent reported zero income from the task. “75% of people are completely honest, it’s nice,” says Zickfeld. “If you have a conclusion, people prefer to be honest.” This was about 14% of tax revenue, about $ 930. Researchers also calculated the “tax compliance” score, the percentage of income is honestly declared. A fully honest participant reached 100 percent, they did not get 0 percent of the income, and all others fell somewhere. This tax filling figure accounted for 82.3 percent for the participants in the control group compared to all groups of 86.2 percent. Generally, including a jurament, filling 3.9 percent. This may not seem very much, but consider that most people in the study were completely honest, so it was guided by changing the behavior of a minority of participants.
The oaths were the same to preserve honest behavior. Only 10 were effective, and some were much more effective than others. “They were ten statistically significant and tax complying between 4.5% and 8.5 points,” Zickfeld says.
In the control group, 31.3 percent of people was dishonored, and as a result 22% of tax revenue lost. He took the most effective oath in the group, 18.5% of people were dishonored, tax losses fell to 11.6 percent. “The most effective commitment without red is cheating in the middle,” says Zickfeld.
This approach involves becoming a more detailed basis. The next most effective bent the meaning of dishonesty or the rules to follow (“I understand that it is prohibited in this study”). All honesty or non-nothing (“report is honest or not”) and it was also effective in social norms. The social bonds or self-image were noted that the oath had not had an impact.
Almost everyone thinks they are honest, and we play in ways that allow us to keep this positive self-image, so it is surprising that self-image is not effective. But they write the rules of action explicitly referenced by the directed behavior, which can be more difficult without being honest without damaging one’s image. “It’s a ripping subtle hints that are not enough,” Shaul Shalvi, the economist behavior of the University of Amsterdam, was not involved in research, but he wrote Accompanied by comments about work. “It seems that when people want to follow their promises, it’s okay to be clear.”
The team also swore when the oaths were cared for. At the beginning of the experiment, directly placed, before the task of sorting participants, was more effective than placing the task before it has been reported.
Researchers also tried to withdraw if the rights of the law has achieved a better result than marking the checkbox. “The writing has been more efficient (for formulations), especially more efficient, but not on average,” Zickfeld says. Touching a jurentus forces people to think more, so he can swear. “That’s what I think you’re watching there,” he noted.
In the study, men were average women who were average, especially younger, especially the lowest identity dimension called honesty humility. “Average, men have a greater scam (in these types of studies),” Zickfeld says. “Some say that some are greater when it comes to risking risk.” The US participants were more unbalanced than the United Kingdom, which expressed cultural differences, but the study used British pounds, so some foreign currencies seemed more abstract, or less, for American participants.
Previous Research Honesty were returned in the efficiency of mixed discoveries, so new research provides the necessary data for what works and what does not. Researchers must repeat these results for effective swearing “and evaluate how strong each culture, implementation, and field,” said Shalvik.
Zickfeld and his colleagues are talking to the local hospital to evaluate whether the oath can improve the rates that return mysterious medical equipment. “That’s the current plan,” says Zickfeld.
Honesty cinema could be a useful tool for ultimately. “The beauty of these interventions is: they are very cheap,” Shalvik says. But this study is only the first step. “We know once what effects are, we can go to politicians and suggest directed control tests in target populations,” says Shalvik. “Then if it works, we can see the tax forms or whatever.”
