Signing at the Beginning vs at the End Does Not Decrease Dishonesty

Ariella  Kristal; A.V.  Whillans; Max   Bazerman; Francesca  Gino; Lisa  Shu; Nina  Mazar; Dan  Ariely

Article | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Signing at the Beginning vs at the End Does Not Decrease Dishonesty

by Ariella Kristal, A.V. Whillans, Max Bazerman, Francesca Gino, Lisa Shu, Nina Mazar and Dan Ariely

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 (Shu, Mazar, Gino, Ariely, and Bazerman, 2012, “Signing at the Beginning Makes Ethics Salient and Decreases Dishonest Self-reports in Comparison to Signing at the End”) 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, pre-registered, 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; honesty; Moral Sensibility; Behavior; Policy;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Kristal, Ariella, A.V. Whillans, Max Bazerman, Francesca Gino, Lisa Shu, Nina Mazar, and Dan Ariely. "Signing at the Beginning vs at the End Does Not Decrease Dishonesty." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 13 (March 31, 2020).

By 2013, the U.S. wireless industry was in the midst of a costly transition. As consumers began to embrace more sophisticated mobile devices, the industry's four main players spent heavily to improve their infrastructures for providing reliable high-speed data services. T-Mobile, the smallest of the four major carriers, lacked the scale of its competitors and risked falling further behind in the contest for market share. Faced with this daunting business environment, T-Mobile's new CEO declared war on the rest of the industry, decrying competitor pricing practices and upending the traditional contract-based business model. This case provides background information on the state of the wireless industry in 2013 and follows T-Mobile's early steps to transform its market position.

While global wealth has risen over the past few decades, this has not translated into a less stressful life for most people. In fact, stress has risen for people worldwide. Across six studies— including large-scale survey data from over 150 countries—we show that the typically observed negative association between stress and unhappiness depends critically on the value that people place on work. Using various measures of work values—including individual and area-level historical Protestantism, peer-group working hours, and self-reported measures—we show that the strength of the negative impact of stress on subjective well-being depends upon the extent to which individuals, societies, and cultures more broadly value productive work as a good in itself. These findings emphasize the importance of the “psychological fit” between actions and values in shaping subjective well-being. Using large-scale time-use data, we show that the moderating role of work values can be largely explained by the extent to which these values shape how enjoyable leisure activities are, rather than how they affect people’s experience of work-related activities themselves.

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

Uncovering Inequalities in Time-Use and Well-Being during COVID-19: A Multi-Country Investigation

Laura M. Giurge, Ayse Yemiscigil, Joseph Sherlock and Ashley V. Whillans

The COVID-19 global pandemic continues to alter how people spend their time, with possible downstream consequences for subjective well-being. Using diverse samples from the United States, Canada, Denmark, Brazil, and Spain (n = 30,018) and following a preregistered analytic plan, we find notable gender differences in time-use, with women and especially mothers spending more time on necessities such as childcare and household chores than fathers during the pandemic. We also provide longitudinal evidence that young women engaged in less active leisure in the initial weeks of COVID-19 compared to young men, and that these differences in active leisure predicted lower subjective well-being one month later (n = 924). Together, these data represent one of the most rigorous empirical investigations examining how time-use relates to well-being during the forced lockdowns created by the COVID-19 pandemic. By focusing on time—a critical but largely overlooked resource—these results point toward underexamined inequalities that policymakers and organizational leaders should carefully consider when designing policies now and post-COVID-19.

Keywords: time-use; subjective well-being; COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Work-Life Balance; Gender; Equality and Inequality;

Citation:

Giurge, Laura M., Ayse Yemiscigil, Joseph Sherlock, and Ashley V. Whillans. "Uncovering Inequalities in Time-Use and Well-Being during COVID-19: A Multi-Country Investigation." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-037, September 2020. View Details

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Signing at the Beginning vs at the End Does Not Decrease Dishonesty

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