Abstract
Does resource scarcity increase people's inclination to engage in self-serving dishonesty? Whereas some theories suggest so, we found no evidence for this across four studies, but a fifth study revealed that most people (wrongly) believe that it does. More precisely, based on three well-powered preregistered online experiments (overall N = 4,193), complemented by two pilot studies ( N = 51 and N = 49, respectively) and one manipulation check study ( N = 424), we provide evidence that neither exogenously induced resource scarcity nor priming people into a scarcity mindset influences people's inclination to engage in self-serving dishonesty. Furthermore, by linking country-level poverty data to a country-level indicator of self-serving dishonesty based on a recent meta-analysis comprising 47 countries and more than 44,000 participants, we found that people living in poorer countries are no more inclined to engage in self-serving dishonesty than people living in richer countries. Finally, we found that most people-and especially men and people low in Agreeableness versus Anger-wrongly believe that people living in poorer countries are more willing to engage in self-serving dishonesty ( N = 658). Overall, our investigation adds new evidence to the burgeoning literature on the link between resource scarcity (in the form of poverty) and unethical behavior (in the form of self-serving dishonesty). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
Original language | English |
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Journal | Journal of Experimental Psychology: General |
Volume | 152 |
Issue | 7 |
Pages (from-to) | 1887-1906 |
Number of pages | 20 |
ISSN | 0096-3445 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jul 2023 |
Keywords
- dishonesty
- poverty
- resource scarcity
- scarcity
- self-serving dishonesty
- Anger
- Humans
- Deception
- Male