Beliefs versus Reality: People Overestimate the Actual Dishonesty of Others

Beliefs about the dishonesty of other people can shape our collective behavior. How accurate are these beliefs? And do we believe that other people are similarly, more, or less dishonest than they truly are? In a research program on moral decision-making consisting of 31 different effects from 11 experiments (N = 8,127), initially designed to test a broad collection of different hypotheses, participants were placed in various situations where they could lie for personal gain, without repercussions or detection risk. Crucially, we also asked all participants to estimate what percentage of other people would lie in a similar situation. Conducting an internal meta-analysis across all experiments, including both incentivized choice experiments and hypothetical marketplace scenarios, the results reveal a substantial overestimation of others' dishonesty by an average of 14 percentage points (meta-analytic effect: Hedge’s g = 0.58). That is, people are less dishonest than we tend to think, in which about 70% of our participants told the truth despite having a financial incentive to lie. These findings illustrate a pervasive tendency to overestimate the actual dishonesty of other people, suggesting a biased belief that the world is less moral than it truly is. Does belief accuracy matter? In a new experiment using an information treatment based on our meta-analytic results (N = 981), providing correct information about actual honesty levels did not only lead to more positive honesty beliefs, but also to a broader enhancement of pro-social expectations – including higher interpersonal trust, higher fairness and helpfulness beliefs, and reduced cynicism.