English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

Effectiveness of ex-ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons269024

Thielmann,  Isabel
Independent Research Group: Personality, Identity, and Crime, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons297502

Seidl,  Alicia
Independent Research Group: Personality, Identity, and Crime, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)
There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe
Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Zickfeld, J. H., Ścigała, K. A., Elbæk, C. T., Michael, J., Tønnesen, M. H., Levy, G., et al. (2025). Effectiveness of ex-ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content. Nature Human Behaviour, (9), 169-187. doi:10.1038/s41562-024-02009-0.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000F-CD3A-A
Abstract
Dishonest behaviours such as tax evasion impose significant societal costs. Ex ante honesty oaths—commitments to honesty before action—have been proposed as interventions to counteract dishonest behaviour, but the heterogeneity in findings across operationalizations calls their effectiveness into question. We tested 21 honesty oaths (including a baseline oath)—proposed, evaluated and selected by 44 expert researchers—and a no-oath condition in a megastudy involving 21,506 UK and US participants from Prolific.com who played an incentivized tax evasion game online. Of the 21 interventions, 10 significantly improved tax compliance by 4.5 to 8.5 percentage points, with the most successful nearly halving tax evasion. Limited evidence for moderators was found. Experts and laypeople failed to predict the most effective interventions, though experts’ predictions were more accurate. In conclusion, honesty oaths were effective in curbing dishonesty, but their effectiveness varied depending on content. These findings can help design impactful interventions to curb dishonesty.