When and why does observability increase honesty? The role of gossip and reputational concern
Annika S. Nieper et al.
Abstract
People frequently engage in dishonest behavior, which entails costs to society. A common advice to increase honesty is to enhance observability. However, previous research produced conflicting findings, making it unclear when and why observability increases honesty. Here we show that observability enhances honesty when observers can gossip to relevant others (i.e., to future interaction partners who can influence the gossip target’s outcome), because it increases reputational concern. In 2 incentivized and pre-registered studies, participants privately rolled a die 30 times and were informed that reporting higher numbers would lead to higher outcomes (total N = 1608; 28650 observations). We manipulated observability and gossip. Both studies revealed that gossip to relevant others decreased dishonest reporting, whereas mere observation did not. Importantly, reputational concern partly mediated the impact of gossip on dishonesty. Moreover, gossip influenced recipients’ trust in gossip targets, with messages denoting dishonesty swaying trust more than messages denoting honesty. Our findings demonstrate when and why observability promotes honesty.
2 citations
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.25 × 0.4 = 0.10 |
| M · momentum | 0.55 × 0.15 = 0.08 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.