Honest on Mondays: Honesty and the Temporal Distance between Decisions and Payoffs

Bradley Ruffle and Yossef (Yossi) Tobol ()

No 7312, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We show that temporally distancing the decision task from the payment of the reward increases honest behavior. Each of 427 Israeli soldiers fulfilling their mandatory military service rolled a six-sided die in private and reported the outcome to the unit's cadet coordinator. For every point reported, the soldier received an additional half-hour early release from the army base on Thursday afternoon. Soldiers who participated on Sunday (the first work day of the week) are significantly more honest than those who participated later in the week. We derive practical implications for eliciting honesty.

Keywords: experimental economics; honesty; temporal distance; soldiers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2013-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published - published in: European Economic Review, 2014, 65, 126-135

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7312.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: HONEST ON MONDAYS: HONESTY AND THE TEMPORAL DISTANCE BETWEEN DECISIONS AND PAYOFFS (2013)
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:iza:izadps:dp7312

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().