Making a promise increases the moral cost of lying: Evidence from Norway and the United States

Mathias Ekström, Kjetil Bjorvatn, Pablo Soto Mota and Hallgeir Sjåstad

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, vol. 233, issue C

Abstract: It is commonly observed that people make promises to commit future behavior to their moral ideals. But do promises work? In particular, can making a promise effectively promote honesty by increasing the moral cost of lying? We explored this research question in three high-powered experiments using representative samples from Norway and the United States (N=7,200). Based on a one-shot “mind game”, in which dishonesty is economically incentivized but impossible to detect at the individual level, we find that about 1/4 of participants are willing to lie for the chance of winning a bonus reward of $100. Crucially, dishonesty was significantly reduced, on average by 7 percentage points (25 percent), when participants were asked to make an inconsequential promise to report accurate information. This promise effect was equally strong in both Norway and the United States, and in different participant subgroups. However, promises reduced dishonesty only when the promise required active choice, suggesting that personal engagement increases the internal inconsistency that would arise from a subsequent lie. In contrast with predictions, an experimentally manipulated expression of trust did not impact honesty by itself or boost the effect of making a promise. Given recent debates about the replicability of dishonesty research in social science, the current work provides high-quality evidence of broad relevance, documenting a moderate but robust effect of promises on subsequent dishonesty. The promise effect is formalized in a simple model integrating cognitive dissonance theory from psychology with perspectives on moral decision-making from behavioral economics.

Keywords: Dishonesty; promise; mind game; moral decision-making; unethical behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D63 D82 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268125001155
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:233:y:2025:i:c:s0167268125001155

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2025.106995

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().