Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content.

Dishonest behaviours 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 behaviour, 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.

Corrigendum to "How pledges reduce dishonesty: The role of involvement and identification" [Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 113(2024) 104614].

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.

Nudging the nudger: Performance feedback and organ donor registrations.

In a randomized controlled trial conducted in three waves over 2.5 years and involving nearly 700 customer-service representatives (CSRs) from a Canadian government service agency, we studied how providing CSRs with repeated performance feedback, with or without peer comparison, affected their subsequent organ donor registration rates. The feedback resulted in a 25 % increase in daily signups compared to otherwise equivalent encouragements and reminders.

Experiment aversion does not appear to generalize.

Over the past decade, governments and organizations around the world have established behavioral insights teams advocating for randomized experiments. However, recent findings by M. N.

Toward a taxonomy and review of honesty interventions.

What types of honesty interventions have been tested and to what extent? We conducted a systematic literature review of single-element intervention studies designed to curtail individual-level dishonesty and classified the obtained interventions in a taxonomy that encompasses three frameworks: nudging, economic, and internal-reward. We find moral reminders that we classify as educative nudges as well as external commitments (pledges, oaths, honor codes) and priming that we classify under the internal-reward framework to be the most frequently studied interventions, whereas architectural nudges (defaults, sludge) have hardly been developed. Most importantly, we identify two areas for improvement essential for our collective ability to successfully translate and scale honesty interventions: a more thorough examination of the interventions' underlying psychological processes and precise description of the experimental designs.

A 680,000-person megastudy of nudges to encourage vaccination in pharmacies.

Encouraging vaccination is a pressing policy problem. To assess whether text-based reminders can encourage pharmacy vaccination and what kinds of messages work best, we conducted a megastudy. We randomly assigned 689,693 Walmart pharmacy patients to receive one of 22 different text reminders using a variety of different behavioral science principles to nudge flu vaccination or to a business-as-usual control condition that received no messages.

Signing at the beginning versus at the end does not decrease dishonesty.

Honest reporting is essential for society to function well. However, people frequently lie when asked to provide information, such as misrepresenting their income to save money on taxes. A landmark finding published in PNAS [L.

Dishonesty in scientific research.

Fraudulent business practices, such as those leading to the Enron scandal and the conviction of Bernard Madoff, evoke a strong sense of public outrage. But fraudulent or dishonest actions are not exclusive to the realm of big corporations or to evil individuals without consciences. Dishonest actions are all too prevalent in everyone's daily lives, because people are constantly encountering situations in which they can gain advantages by cutting corners.

Risk preferences and aging: the "certainty effect" in older adults' decision making.

A prevalent stereotype is that people become less risk taking and more cautious as they get older. However, in laboratory studies, findings are mixed and often reveal no age differences. In the current series of experiments, we examined whether age differences in risk seeking are more likely to emerge when choices include a certain option (a sure gain or a sure loss).

Signing at the beginning makes ethics salient and decreases dishonest self-reports in comparison to signing at the end.

Many written forms required by businesses and governments rely on honest reporting. Proof of honest intent is typically provided through signature at the end of, e.g.

Greasing the palm: can collectivism promote bribery?

Why are there national differences in the propensity to bribe? To investigate this question, we conducted a correlational study with cross-national data and a laboratory experiment. We found a significant effect of the degree of collectivism versus individualism present in a national culture on the propensity to offer bribes to international business partners. Furthermore, the effect was mediated by individuals' sense of responsibility for their actions.

Do green products make us better people?

Consumer choices reflect not only price and quality preferences but also social and moral values, as witnessed in the remarkable growth of the global market for organic and environmentally friendly products. Building on recent research on behavioral priming and moral regulation, we found that mere exposure to green products and the purchase of such products lead to markedly different behavioral consequences. In line with the halo associated with green consumerism, results showed that people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green products than after mere exposure to conventional products.

Gender differences in the motivational processing of facial beauty.

Gender may be involved in the motivational processing of facial beauty. This study applied a behavioral probe, known to activate brain motivational regions, to healthy heterosexual subjects. Matched samples of men and women were administered two tasks: (a) key pressing to change the viewing time of average or beautiful female or male facial images, and (b) rating the attractiveness of these images.

Probing reward function in post-traumatic stress disorder with beautiful facial images.

Reward dysfunction may be implicated in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This study applied a behavioral probe, known to activate brain reward regions, to subjects with PTSD. Male heterosexual Vietnam veterans with (n = 12) or without (n = 11) current PTSD were administered two tasks: (a) key pressing to change the viewing time of average or beautiful female or male facial images, and (b) rating the attractiveness of these images.