Planning to cheat: Temptation and self-control

Daniele Caliari and Ivan Soraperra

Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior from WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Abstract: Are opportunities making thieves? Accumulated experimental evidence shows that, when people have the opportunity to cheat, often they take it. Most of the literature on cheating opportunities forces people into a tempting situation where they face a trade-off between money and morality. In our paper, we ask whether people are sophisticated in their cheating behavior and whether they search for or avoid these trade-offs. Overall, participants in the experiment exhibit very little temptation, i.e., virtually no one is willing to pay a cost to avoid the possibility of misreporting in a coin-flip-like task, and they are able to consistently stick to their plan. Participants with a strict preference for the tempting situation, i.e., who are planning to cheat, show a winning rate of about 95% and those that are indifferent between having and not having the opportunity, i.e., who are planning to be honest, show a winning rate that is close to 50%.

Keywords: temptation and self-control; cheating; unethical behavior; lab experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B41 C91 C93 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2023205

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