Signing at the beginning versus at the end does not decrease dishonesty

Ariella S Kristal; Ashley V Whillans; Max H Bazerman; Francesca Gino; Lisa L Shu; Nina Mazar; Dan Ariely

doi:10.1073/pnas.1911695117

Signing at the beginning versus at the end does not decrease dishonesty

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Mar 31;117(13):7103-7107. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1911695117. Epub 2020 Mar 16.

Authors

Ariella S Kristal¹, Ashley V Whillans¹, Max H Bazerman¹, Francesca Gino², Lisa L Shu³, Nina Mazar⁴, Dan Ariely⁵

Affiliations

¹ Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02163.
² Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02163; fgino@hbs.edu.
³ Organisational Behaviour, London Business School, London, United Kingdom NW1 4SA.
⁴ Questrom School of Business, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215.
⁵ Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708.

Abstract

Honest reporting is essential for society to function well. However, people frequently lie when asked to provide information, such as misrepresenting their income to save money on taxes. A landmark finding published in PNAS [L. L. Shu, N. Mazar, F. Gino, D. Ariely, M. H. Bazerman, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 109, 15197-15200 (2012)] provided evidence for a simple way of encouraging honest reporting: asking people to sign a veracity statement at the beginning instead of at the end of a self-report form. Since this finding was published, various government agencies have adopted this practice. However, in this project, we failed to replicate this result. Across five conceptual replications (n = 4,559) and one highly powered, preregistered, direct replication (n = 1,235) conducted with the authors of the original paper, we observed no effect of signing first on honest reporting. Given the policy applications of this result, it is important to update the scientific record regarding the veracity of these results.

Keywords: morality; nudge; policy-making; replication.

MeSH terms

Contracts*
Deception*
Humans