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Contribution Details

Type Working Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Bad boys: how criminal identity salience affects rule violation
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Alain Cohn
  • Michel Maréchal
  • Thomas Noll
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Series Name Working paper series / Department of Economics
Number 132
ISSN 1664-7041
Number of Pages 29
Date 2015
Abstract Text We conducted an experiment with 182 inmates from a maximum security prison to analyze the impact of criminal identity salience on cheating. The results show that inmates cheat more when we exogenously render their criminal identity more salient. This effect is specific to individuals who have a criminal identity, because an additional placebo experiment shows that regular citizens do not become more dishonest in response to crime-related reminders. Moreover, our experimental measure of cheating correlates with inmates' offenses against in-prison regulation. Together, these findings suggest that criminal identity salience plays a crucial role in rule violating behavior.
Official URL http://www.econ.uzh.ch/static/wp/econwp132.pdf
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Keywords Dishonesty, identity, crime, prison, experiment, Identität, Verhalten, Verhaltensökonomie, Kriminalität, Prägung, Priming
Additional Information Revised version