Štěpán Bahník, Petr Houdek, Marek Hudík, Nicolas Say
{"title":"亲社会行为在防止他人不诚实中的有限作用","authors":"Štěpán Bahník, Petr Houdek, Marek Hudík, Nicolas Say","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2025.102407","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Honest individuals can strategically assume positions of power to prevent dishonest individuals from taking these positions. We conducted a laboratory experiment where participants were given two versions of an incentivized prediction task, one of which allowed cheating. Cheating on the task led a charity to lose endowed money. By introducing an auction for a limited spot in the cheating-enabling version, we examined whether honest participants bid in the auction to prevent dishonest participants from cheating and thereby harming the charity. We found that such behavior was rare, with at most 2.2 % of participants engaging in it. Furthermore, the size of the charity loss and the presence of information about cheating of others did not affect bidding in the auction and cheating in the task. The participants willing to pay for the cheating-enabling version of the task did so primarily for their own gain. The prosocial preferences of honest individuals are not strong enough to prevent dishonest individuals from seizing positions of power, and only a few honest individuals are prepared to combat dishonesty actively.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":"117 ","pages":"Article 102407"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"The limited role of prosocial behavior in preventing others from being dishonest\",\"authors\":\"Štěpán Bahník, Petr Houdek, Marek Hudík, Nicolas Say\",\"doi\":\"10.1016/j.socec.2025.102407\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"<div><div>Honest individuals can strategically assume positions of power to prevent dishonest individuals from taking these positions. We conducted a laboratory experiment where participants were given two versions of an incentivized prediction task, one of which allowed cheating. Cheating on the task led a charity to lose endowed money. By introducing an auction for a limited spot in the cheating-enabling version, we examined whether honest participants bid in the auction to prevent dishonest participants from cheating and thereby harming the charity. We found that such behavior was rare, with at most 2.2 % of participants engaging in it. Furthermore, the size of the charity loss and the presence of information about cheating of others did not affect bidding in the auction and cheating in the task. The participants willing to pay for the cheating-enabling version of the task did so primarily for their own gain. The prosocial preferences of honest individuals are not strong enough to prevent dishonest individuals from seizing positions of power, and only a few honest individuals are prepared to combat dishonesty actively.</div></div>\",\"PeriodicalId\":51637,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics\",\"volume\":\"117 \",\"pages\":\"Article 102407\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":1.6000,\"publicationDate\":\"2025-06-26\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"96\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804325000734\",\"RegionNum\":3,\"RegionCategory\":\"经济学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q2\",\"JCRName\":\"ECONOMICS\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804325000734","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
The limited role of prosocial behavior in preventing others from being dishonest
Honest individuals can strategically assume positions of power to prevent dishonest individuals from taking these positions. We conducted a laboratory experiment where participants were given two versions of an incentivized prediction task, one of which allowed cheating. Cheating on the task led a charity to lose endowed money. By introducing an auction for a limited spot in the cheating-enabling version, we examined whether honest participants bid in the auction to prevent dishonest participants from cheating and thereby harming the charity. We found that such behavior was rare, with at most 2.2 % of participants engaging in it. Furthermore, the size of the charity loss and the presence of information about cheating of others did not affect bidding in the auction and cheating in the task. The participants willing to pay for the cheating-enabling version of the task did so primarily for their own gain. The prosocial preferences of honest individuals are not strong enough to prevent dishonest individuals from seizing positions of power, and only a few honest individuals are prepared to combat dishonesty actively.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly the Journal of Socio-Economics) welcomes submissions that deal with various economic topics but also involve issues that are related to other social sciences, especially psychology, or use experimental methods of inquiry. Thus, contributions in behavioral economics, experimental economics, economic psychology, and judgment and decision making are especially welcome. The journal is open to different research methodologies, as long as they are relevant to the topic and employed rigorously. Possible methodologies include, for example, experiments, surveys, empirical work, theoretical models, meta-analyses, case studies, and simulation-based analyses. Literature reviews that integrate findings from many studies are also welcome, but they should synthesize the literature in a useful manner and provide substantial contribution beyond what the reader could get by simply reading the abstracts of the cited papers. In empirical work, it is important that the results are not only statistically significant but also economically significant. A high contribution-to-length ratio is expected from published articles and therefore papers should not be unnecessarily long, and short articles are welcome. Articles should be written in a manner that is intelligible to our generalist readership. Book reviews are generally solicited but occasionally unsolicited reviews will also be published. Contact the Book Review Editor for related inquiries.