Peer effects in unethical behavior: standing or reputation?
Entity
UAM. Departamento de Psicología Social y MetodologíaPublisher
Public Library of ScienceDate
2015-04-08Citation
10.1371/journal.pone.0122305
PLoS ONE 10.4 (2015): e0122305
ISSN
1932-6203 (online)DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0122305Editor's Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0122305Subjects
Work environment; Ethics; PsicologíaRights
© 2015 Pascual-Ezama et alAbstract
Recent empirical evidence shows that working in an unsupervised, isolated situation under
competition, can increase dishonest behavior to achieve prestige. However, could working
in a common space, in the presence of colleagues affect cheating? Here, we examine how
familiar-peer influence, supervision and social incentives affect worker performance and
dishonest behavior. First, we show that working in the presence of peers is an effective
mechanism to constrain honest/dishonest behavior compared to an isolated work situation
(experiment 1). Second, we demonstrate that the mere suspicion of dishonesty from another peer is not enough to affect individual cheating behavior (experiment 2), suggesting that reputation holds great importance in a worker’s self-image acting as a strong social incentives. Third, we show that when the suspicion of dishonesty increases with multiple peers behaving dishonestly, the desire to increase standing is sufficient to nudge individuals’ behavior back to cheating at the same levels as isolated situations (experiment 3)
Files in this item
Google Scholar:Pascual-Ezama, David
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Dunfield, Derek
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Gil Gómez de Liaño, Beatriz
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Prelec, Drazen
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