Do Happy People Cheat Less? A Field Experiment on Dishonesty

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2020.101658Get rights and content

HIGHLIGHTS

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    An experiment is designed to examine the effect of happiness on dishonest behavior.

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    Dishonest behavior is found to be positively correlated with happiness.

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    The positive relationship between dishonesty and happiness is not gender driven.

ABSTRACT

Results of an experimental study designed to examine the effect of happiness on dishonest behavior are reported and analyzed. Passersby on the streets of Tel Aviv were asked to answer the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ), which contains 29 multiple-choice questions for measuring Subjective Well-Being (SWB). Each question is answered according to a uniform six-point Likert scale. After filling out the questionnaire, they were invited to perform the Fischbacher and Follmi-Heusi (2013)’s die-under-the-cup (DUTC) task, which incentivizes dishonest behavior. Past research has found a positive relationship between a person's level of honesty and their reported SWB. However, that result is based entirely on a subject's responses to a direct-question survey that simply asks whether he behaves ethically. The present study examines the relationship between dishonest behavior and SWB based on experimental data. Happiness was found to be positively correlated with dishonest behavior, implying that happy people cheat more than unhappy people. A possible explanation for this unexpected result is that happiness may provide the cognitive flexibility necessary to reframe and rationalize dishonest acts. This may pave the way for the commission of dishonest acts by altering how people evaluate the moral implications of their behavior.

Section snippets

Introduction and literature review

Economists’ interest in dishonesty began with the publication of Becker's (1968) classic paper on rational crime. During the past three decades, behavioral economists have carried out numerous experiments both in the lab and in the field in order to understand dishonest behavior. The most prominent type of experiment involves a simple task that is performed by participants in privacy. This has been done with the roll of a die (e.g., Fischerbacher and Foellmi-Heusi, 2013; Arbel et al., 2014;

The experiment

Passersby on the streets of Tel Aviv were asked to answer an OHQ consisting of 29 multiple-choice questions. Respondents answered using a six-point Likert scale. The instructions given to each respondent were as follows: “Below are a number of statements about happiness. Please indicate to what extent you agree or disagree with each statement by entering a number alongside it according to the following scale: 1=strongly disagree, 2=moderately disagree, 3=slightly disagree, 4=slightly agree,

Summary and conclusion

Many philosophers have argued that an individual's happiness is increased when he/she behaves ethically. Harvey (2011) provides empirical evidence that ethical behavior is correlated with happiness. His findings are entirely based on the subject's responses to a direct-question survey that simply asks whether the subject behaves ethically. In contrast, in the present study the relationship between SWB and dishonest behavior is based on the subject's behavior. Although conventional wisdom

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