Bad boys: how criminal identity salience affects rule violation

Alain Cohn, Michel Maréchal and Thomas Noll

No 132, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: We conducted an experiment with 182 inmates from a maximum security prison to analyze the impact of criminal identity salience on cheating. The results show that inmates cheat more when we exogenously render their criminal identity more salient. This effect is specific to individuals who have a criminal identity, because an additional placebo experiment shows that regular citizens do not become more dishonest in response to crime-related reminders. Moreover, our experimental measure of cheating correlates with inmates' offenses against in-prison regulation. Together, these findings suggest that criminal identity salience plays a crucial role in rule violating behavior.

Keywords: Dishonesty; identity; crime; prison; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 K00 K14 K42 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-10, Revised 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cwa, nep-exp, nep-law and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (118)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Bad Boys: How Criminal Identity Salience Affects Rule Violation (2015)
Working Paper: Bad Boys: How Criminal Identity Salience Affects Rule Violation (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:econwp:132

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