Dishonesty: From Parents to Children

TY - JOUR

T1 - Dishonesty

T2 - From Parents to Children

AU - Houser, Daniel

AU - List, John

AU - Piovesan, Marco

AU - Samek, Anya

AU - Winter, Joachim

N1 - JEL Classifications: C91; D63

PY - 2016/2/1

Y1 - 2016/2/1

N2 - Acts of dishonesty permeate life. Understanding their origins, and what mechanisms help to attenuate such acts is an underexplored area of research. This study takes an economic approach to explore the propensity of individuals to act dishonestly across different contexts. We conduct an experiment that includes both parents and their young children as subjects, exploring the roles of moral cost and scrutiny on dishonest behavior. We find that the highest level of dishonesty occurs in settings where the parent acts alone and the dishonest act benefits the child. In this spirit, there is also an interesting, quite different, effect of children on parents' behavior: parents act more honestly under the scrutiny of daughters than under the scrutiny of sons. This finding sheds new light on the origins of the widely documented gender differences in cheating behavior observed among adults, where a typical result is that females are more honest than males.

AB - Acts of dishonesty permeate life. Understanding their origins, and what mechanisms help to attenuate such acts is an underexplored area of research. This study takes an economic approach to explore the propensity of individuals to act dishonestly across different contexts. We conduct an experiment that includes both parents and their young children as subjects, exploring the roles of moral cost and scrutiny on dishonest behavior. We find that the highest level of dishonesty occurs in settings where the parent acts alone and the dishonest act benefits the child. In this spirit, there is also an interesting, quite different, effect of children on parents' behavior: parents act more honestly under the scrutiny of daughters than under the scrutiny of sons. This finding sheds new light on the origins of the widely documented gender differences in cheating behavior observed among adults, where a typical result is that females are more honest than males.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - C91

KW - D63

U2 - 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2015.11.003

DO - 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2015.11.003

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0014-2921

VL - 82

SP - 242

EP - 254

JO - European Economic Review

JF - European Economic Review

ER -