Fairness and Cheating

Houser, Daniel; Vetter, Stefan und Winter, Joachim (2010): Fairness and Cheating. Beiträge zur Jahrestagung des Vereins für Socialpolitik 2010: Ökonomie der Familie - Session: Social Preferences E13-V2

Abstract

We present evidence from a laboratory experiment that individuals who feel having been treated unfairly in the interaction with others are more likely to cheat in a subsequent, unrelated game. We interpret this result as showing that the violation of a social norm (fairness) by others can be sufficient to justify a norm violation at the expense of a third party. This result extends the growing literature on social norms. Furthermore, we also find tentative evidence that cheating is correlated with social preferences.

• Item Type: Paper
• Faculties: Economics; Economics > Chairs > Chair of Empirical Economics
• Subjects: 300 Social sciences > 330 Economics
• Language: English