A culture of cheating: The role of worldviews in preferences for honesty

Abstract

We explore the role of cultural worldviews in preferences for honesty using a coin-flipping task in an online experiment. Two treatments are conducted, one in which cheating has only private benefits and one in which cheating benefits the public. While we find no differences in behavior by worldviews across treatments, we find that observed differences in dishonesty between genders is significantly explained by cultural worldviews.