Dishonesty and Future Public Servant's Identity

Takeshi Ojima, Manami Tsuruta, Reona Hayashi and So Morikawa

No 4, TUPD Discussion Papers from Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tohoku University

Abstract: The injustice caused by public-sector workers can cause great harm to society. In this study, we conducted an experiment to investigate the misconduct of public-sector workers. We divided prospective public servants into two groups: treatment and control groups. To measure their cheating behaviors in the treatment group, participants were required to carry out a priming task to strengthen their awareness as future public servants, before conducting a cheating task (20 rounds). In the control group, participants conducted a cheating task after carrying out a task unrelated to public service. We found a non-monotonic effect of the treatment on misbehavior. We believe that our treatment had an effect on mitigating dishonest behaviors as well as promoting loss-averse behaviors. We infer that the priming effect promoted the dishonest behavior in future public servants in the loss domain.

Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2021-05
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:toh:tupdaa:4

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