The article Intrinsic Honesty and the Prevalence of Rule Violations Across Societies written by Simon Gächter and Jonathan F. Schulz is about research on the human intrinsic honesty and if it is more prevalent or not where there are more or less rule violations. Their main goal was to be able to explain how the prevalence of rule violations in people’s societal environment, such as corruption, tax evasion, or political fraud, could compromise and individual’s intrinsic honesty. To do this, researchers conducted experiments across twenty-three countries. They created a “Prevalence of Rule Violations” index from corruption from 2003 and completed this on more than 2,000 people. They made sure to only conduct the experiment on younger people who had no ability to affect the PRV during their time. To measure intrinsic honesty, researchers conducted an anonymous “die-in-a-cup” experiment where participants sat in a cubicle and were asked to roll a six-sided die twice, but were told to only report the first roll. After the data was analyzed, results showed that institutions and cultural values influence the prevalence of rule violations, which impacts people’s intrinsic honesty and whether or not they follow the rules. Results also showed that many people are try and be honest/only become rule benders so as to maintain an “honest self image.” Overall, they found that lower prevalence of rule violations, and higher intrinsic honesty was more profound in western societies.

For this research, the topic was intrinsic honesty, and the research question was to ask if the prevalence of rule violations in people’s societal environment, such as corruption, tax evasion, or political fraud, could compromise and individual’s intrinsic honesty, and how. To answer this question, researchers needed reports of acts, behaviors, or events (die-in-a-cup) and ordinal data (to rank the different country levels of prevalence of rule violations). To collect this data, they completed tests/experiments, and public records. To analyze this data, they complete four different scatter plots to find any correlation between the two variables.

I though this research was well conducted, and an interesting one to learn about, although I think it would also be beneficial to learn if societal/household upbringings had any effect on their intrinsic honesty.

Gächter, Simon, and Jonathan F. Schulz. “Intrinsic honesty and the prevalence of rule violations across societies.” Nature 531.7595 (2016): 496-99. Web. 17 Mar. 2017.