{"paper_id":"0937ef92-c14d-4760-8542-e8fe28b48fff","body_text":"I did it for their sake! - Social benefit drives corruption in a dice rolling experiment | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article I did it for their sake! - Social benefit drives corruption in a dice rolling experiment Judit Mokos, Anna Fedor, Dorottya Deli, Borbála Kívés, Zsóka Vásárhelyi, and 2 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7393702/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted 11 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Exploring the motivations behind fraudulent behaviours, such as corruption, are often done using dice-rolling experiments. In the present experiment, we investigated how the willingness for cheating is influenced by (i) the cheating behaviour of a partner and (ii) by-product altruism (cost-free charity). We studied four settings of the dice-rolling game, with and without a cheating partner and with and without by-product altruism. Following the game phase, subjects filled out the Moral Foundations Questionnaire and the Social Dominance Orientation questionnaires. We found that while in the non-charity settings the cheating is not experienced independently of the chatting behaviour of the partner, but it is significantly increased by the possibility of donating to charitable foundations. Subjects with a stronger moral integrity were less likely to cheat in the cheating partner and charity option settings. No clear associations were found between cheating and Social Dominance Orientation. Our results showed that the chance of engaging in corrupt behaviour is significantly increased if the subjects perceive that they are doing a socially beneficial act as a by-product of their unethical behaviour. Physical sciences/Mathematics and computing Biological sciences/Psychology Social science/Psychology Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Introduction Background The functioning of human societies depends on pro-social behaviours of their members [ 1 ]. These include various forms of cooperation and collective actions [ 2 ], for example, by developing social norms and institutions, and by sanctioning or punishing individuals violating these. Unethical or corrupt behaviour deeply undermines trust in institutions, negatively affects interpersonal interactions [ 3 , 4 ] and directly increases norm violations by reducing intrinsic levels of honesty [ 5 ]. Dishonesty undermines self-reporting regimes, such as tax reporting or insurance claims [ 6 , 7 ]. Unethical behaviours that violate moral norms, such as lying, usually bear psychological or cognitive costs [ 8 , 9 ], even in cases where direct harm to others is negligible. In some cases, however, subjects are willing to take such costs or view dishonesty as morally acceptable [ 10 ], especially if they prefer the outcome obtained by lying [ 14 ]. Studies have found that altruistic goals can modify the decision-making process and, in some cases, alleviate the guilt or the burden of crossing ethical or moral boundaries in order to reach the desired goal of helping others [ 9 , 10 ]. Lying or deceiving in such situations is valued differently from selfish lies. Such other-serving dishonesty is often called pro-social, or white and grey lies, compared to self-serving, anti-social, or black lies [ 11 , 12 ]. White lies are always justifiable, while grey lies are lies that are justifiable under certain circumstances. In fact, there is evidence that different neural activation patterns emerge in the human brain during self-serving and other-serving lying decisions [ 9 ], in particular at the anterior insula region of the brain. Personal attributes also influence the probability of dishonesty and lie aversion, and the propensity to cheat is on a continuous scale [ 13 , 14 ]. Thoughtfully designed experiments can uncover the mechanisms behind unethical, dishonest, fraudulent and corrupt behaviour in humans [ 5 , 10 , 15 – 18 ]. Dice rolling experiments have been developed to study different aspects of honesty and cheating. In a pioneering study by Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heus [ 19 ], participants rolled a dice in private and then reported the results. They won units of money equal to the reported number, except when it was six, in which case they got nothing. The reported values differed significantly from the uniform distribution: numbers six and one were significantly underrepresented, while numbers four and five were overrepresented, indicating participants were willing to lie to get a higher reward. Based on a meta-analysis of such experiments, it can be said that the rate of cheating is typically not high, as the subjects of the experiment obtain roughly a quarter of the maximum income that can be achieved through cheating. Truthfulness is strongly preferred, even in these anonymous experiments [ 20 ]. Lewis et al. (2012) [ 21 ] modified Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi’s (2008) [ 19 ] experiment to include donations for charity. Although they did not have a control group, they argued that participants’ incentives for donation encouraged dishonesty more than in the case of personal gain. Similarly, Clot et al. (2013) [ 22 ] have found that participants who imagine helping altruistically before the experiment cheat more than control participants in a similar dice-rolling experiment. An opposite type of incentive for dishonesty was investigated by Jacobsen and Piovesan (2016) [ 7 ]. Dishonesty was higher in their experimental group where they introduced a tax on the earnings compared to the no-tax control [ 7 ]. In another variant of the original experiment by Kohler et al. (2017), it was examined how individuals' propensity for honesty changes communication between the group members is allowed before making decisions [ 23 ]. They showed that communication rapidly and strongly pushed individuals toward increased cheating. Interestingly, the level of honesty in a similar dice rolling experiments also depended on the temporal distance to the upcoming holy day for religious subjects [ 24 ], or the temporal distance between the decision and the time of receiving the reward [ 25 ]. Weisel and Shalvi (2015) [ 16 ] conducted a collaborative variant of the dice rolling experiment which revealed, as they phrase, “the dark side of cooperation: corrupt collaboration”. In their setup, players were paired up, rolled their dice, and reported the value sequentially, and won money only if they reported the same value. In this setup, the player who rolled second could decide about winning money for both of them by reporting the same number as the partner even if it was a lie. They found that the reported values deviated from a uniform distribution even more in the collaborative situation compared to playing alone. Wouda et al. (2017) [ 26 ] replicated the “aligned outcomes” condition from Weisel and Shalvi (2015)’s experiment. They received qualitatively similar results as Weisel and Shalvi, but the effect was smaller, which they attributed partly to differences between the participant pools: their participants had backgrounds in psychological studies, while Weisel and Shalvi’s participants had backgrounds in economic studies. In another study, where participants received payments depending on their self-reported performance on simple math tasks, the authors also concluded that when the outcome of an individual’s dishonesty could benefit others, the level of cheating increased [ 10 ]. Using the so-called flexible-dot-task method, Hochman et al. (2021) [ 17 ] showed that cheating is even more pronounced when it benefits a favoured charity, either wholly or in part, than when the unethical behaviour is purely self-centred. Altruistic motivation increases cheating, whether it is towards another person or towards an organisation preferred by the altruist. The picture of altruism and cheating is further coloured by an experiment by Rahwan et al. (2018) [ 27 ]. They found that participants who resisted cheating in one experiment donated less to charity in another experiment, suggesting that charitable donations may indeed serve the purpose of balancing one's moral behaviour. The overall motivation of the experiments above is to investigate what influences morally unacceptable actions that yield benefits for the parties involved under controlled conditions. The general question is what external social conditions and internal personality traits facilitate or hinder corruption. In line with this, we aimed to investigate the extent to which the subjects' cost-free support for community-accepted goals is responsible for unethical, corrupt behaviour (cheating). In addition, we sought to better understand what personal characteristics may be associated with the level of cheating. Hypotheses Moral erosion and by-product altruism In Weisel and Shalvi (2015)’s [ 16 ] experiment, participants playing with a partner lied more often than participants playing alone. We hypothesise that this effect is caused by two different mechanisms: moral erosion and by-product altruism. Moral erosion happens when the participants realise that their partners are immoral, i.e., probably cheat, and thus it seems to be more acceptable for them to cheat, too. By-product altruism means that by cheating, player B potentially increases the reward not only for himself but for player A too, thus in this case, corrupt behaviour has an additional purpose, which is helping others without a financial cost. Since altruistic behaviour has a positive effect on self-esteem [ 28 , 29 ] or adds an additional justification for the unethical act [ 17 ], this aspect of the experimental design is likely to increase the temptation to cheat further. To tease out these effects we planned a series of experiments with a two-by-two design. The game was similar to that of [ 16 ] where participants played in pairs and could win only if they reported rolling the same value. Our participants were always assigned the role of player B, who saw the value reported by player A before they reported theirs, thus they could intentionally influence whether to get a reward or not. Player A was simulated by the computer (although participants were told that they played with a real person remotely). Player A was either honest (its reported values were sampled from a uniform distribution) or dishonest (higher values were sampled with higher probability) to test the moral erosion hypothesis. To test the by-product altruism hypothesis, half of the participants played the Charity game, where they had to choose a charity foundation which received a small donation if they won. The other half of the participants played the Simple game, where there was no donation involved. These two factors produce four conditions in a two-by-two design: SH: Simple game with Honest partner SD: Simple game with Dishonest partner CH: Charity game with Honest partner CD: Charity game with Dishonest partner We statistically tested whether participants cheated, i.e., reported more doubles than expected by chance in each of the four conditions. We tested the moral erosion hypothesis by comparing the number of doubles in the conditions with the honest partner vs. the dishonest partner (SH-SD and CH-CD comparisons) and tested if there was an increasing trend of cheating in case of honest and dishonest partners. We tested the charity hypothesis by comparing the conditions with the charity game vs. the simple game (SH-CH and SD-CD comparisons). We predicted that both the presence of charity and a cheating partner would increase the propensity to cheat. We did not have any expectations as to which one of these effects would be stronger. Sample sizes and statistical tests regarding these hypotheses were pre-registered (see Disclosures). Personality and cheating Apart from the pre-registered analyses, we also did exploratory data analysis to see if there is an association between participant behaviour in the game and certain personality traits. Evidence suggests that certain moral domains influence performance and behaviour in economic exchange games [ 30 ], thus we wanted to see whether cheating in our experiment was also influenced by moral domains. The Moral Foundations questionnaire is a reliable tool to measure individual differences in five main moral domains: Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity [ 31 ]. We used the validated Hungarian version of this questionnaire [ 31 , 32 ] to explore our hypotheses: We did not expect the moral domain Harm/care to be associated with cheating per se . However, as the charity setting could evoke helping behaviour, we expected people with high scores along this domain to cheat more in the charity settings (CH, CD). We expected the moral domain Fairness/reciprocity to be associated with less cheating, as people high in fairness would be less likely to violate the rules. We expected the moral domain Ingroup/loyalty to be associated with a larger propensity for cheating, especially with a dishonest partner (conditions SD and CD). We expected the moral domain Authority/respect to be associated with less cheating, due to the respect for the rules of the game. We did not expect the moral domain Purity/sanctity to be associated with cheating. According to the Social Dominance Theory, most contemporary human societies are organized as group-based social hierarchies [ 33 ]. The Social Dominance Orientation Questionnaire is a tool to measure individual differences in how we think about social domination and power [ 34 ]. The questionnaire was originally designed to tackle one factor, but later it turned out that a bifactorial model describes social dominance orientation better [ 34 – 36 ]. One subfactor is the SDO-Dominance, which is associated with the support of group-based dominance, even if it takes oppressive or violent acts. The other is the SDO-Anti-egalitarianism, which is associated with a preference for inequality, and an aversion towards the egalitarian redistribution of resources [ 34 ]. For that reasons We hypothesised that social dominance orientation in general would be associated with a higher propensity for cheating. Furthermore, we predicted that people higher in each of the subfactors will not show a higher propensity for cheating in the charity condition. The reason for this is that these people tend to be less keen on helping those in need, therefore we expected that the charity opportunity would not affect their behaviour. The study was approved by the Hungarian United Psychological Research Ethics Committee (Egyesített Pszichológiai Kutatási Etikai Bizottság, Ref. No. 2019/07). Results The game The experiment was implemented in z-Tree. The corresponding files can be downloaded from the preregistration. In this we followed Weisel and Shalvi (2015) [ 16 ], and most of the screens are translations of their screens. Screenshots and the translation of the scripts are provided in Supporting information S5. The game starts by explaining that participants will get 200 HUF (about 0.5 EUR) just for appearing on time, but they will have the chance to win additional money through a game. The program asks for the participant’s age and gender, then assures them that the game is anonymous and that they will not be monitored during the game. Next, there are instructions on screen for practising rolling the dice with the cup and peeking through the hole in the lid to read the value. Then, the rules of the game are explained. Participants are told that there is another participant in another university with whom they would play several rounds of the game through the internet (in fact, there is no other participant: the actions of the “other participant” are preprogrammed in the game). They are also told that the number of rounds would be more than 10 but less than 30 (in fact, the number of rounds is always exactly 20). Participants either play the Charity Game or the Simple Game. For participants who play the Charity Game, it is explained that if they win some money at the end of the game, a charity foundation also receives a donation of 300 HUF. They are shown three options for local charities to choose from (Rex Dog Shelter Foundation, Together for the Children with Leukaemia and Pearl Foundation for the Abolishment of Child Poverty). Participants in both games are told that they are the second players in each round: their partner would roll the dice first, and enter the value in the game so they would see it before their turn to roll the dice and enter their value. Their reward depends on both of the rolled numbers. The next few screens explain the rule for calculating the reward: participants get a reward only if they report the same number as their partners did. In this case, they both get the score of 300 HUF times the value of the reported number; if they report different numbers, their score is 0. Participants are explained that at the end of the game, the computer will randomly select one round and both participants (and the charity) will be paid the score of this single round in HUF. Next, there are five practice screens, where participants can enter both numbers to see how the reward is calculated. Finally, participants play 20 rounds of the game. After each round the score appears on the screen, along with the possible donation sum and beneficiary, if applicable. After 20 rounds the computer randomly selects one round and its score stays on the screen for the experimenter to see. The distribution of reported numbers Rolling a fair die produces uniformly distributed numbers between one and six. Deviating from the uniform distribution when reporting the rolled values indicates cheating, however, uniform distribution of the reported numbers does not necessarily mean that participants do not cheat. If their “partner” reports uniformly distributed numbers, participants may cheat by matching these numbers to produce doubles, thus, reporting uniformly distributed numbers themselves. Reported values in conditions with a dishonest partner (SD and CD) are significantly different from the uniform distribution (SD: \\(\\:\\chi\\:\\) 2 =11.2, p = 0.050; CD: \\(\\:\\chi\\:\\) 2 =14.4, p = 0.012). Similarly, when playing with an honest partner but without the opportunity of donating to a charity (SH), the distribution of the reported numbers differ from uniform distribution ( \\(\\:\\chi\\:\\) 2 =14.7, p = 0.011), while distribution of reported numbers did not differ significantly from the uniform distributions at the CH condition ( \\(\\:\\chi\\:\\) 2 =3.3, p = 0.65) (Fig. 1 ) (for distributions see Supporting information Table S1 ). However, these results do not inform us reliably whether participants cheated or not (Fig. 1 ). The number of doubles The number of reported doubles was significantly higher than its expected value of 3.33 in conditions when there was an opportunity to donate to a charity (CH: W = 489, p = 0.007, mean = 5.278, median = 4; CD: W = 599, p < 0.001, mean = 5.750, median = 5), and the difference was not significant in conditions without the donation opportunity (SH: W = 400, p = 0.147, mean = 4.028, median = 4; SD: W = 407, p = 0.123, mean = 4.250, median = 3) (Fig. 2 ). In each three of the conditions (SD, CH, CD), there was one participant who reported the same number as the computer every time (see dots on the uppermost lines on the diagram). When comparing the two simple conditions to each other, there is no difference between the number of doubles (SH vs SD: W = 635.5, p = 0.445), and similarly, when comparing the two charity conditions to each other, there is no difference between the number of doubles (CH vs. CD: W = 551.5, p = 0.138), indicating that a dishonest partner does not increase cheating. Comparing conditions across the presence of charity, SH to CH shows no significant difference (W = 538, p = 0.107), but SD vs CD differ significantly (W = 434, p = 0.008, Fig. 2 ). These findings indicate that charity plays a more important role than the honesty of the partner when deciding about cheating. This result is supported by the linear model investigating the effect of by-product altruism (charity or simple game setting), the honesty of the partner (honest or dishonest) on the number of reported doubles: only the charitable opportunity showed a significant effect on corruption, the charity setting increasing the number of reported doubles (Table 1 ). Table 1 The effect of game (simple or charity), partner (honest or dishonest) on the number of reported doubles. Asterisk represents a significant difference (* = p < 0.05). Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|) (Intercept) 5.667 0.511 11.121 < 0.001 Game (simple) -1.375 0.591 -2.328 0.021* Partner (honest) -0.347 0.591 -0.588 0.557 F(2,149) = 2.88, p = < 0.001, Adj.R 2 = 0.026 To test for moral erosion, we examined whether subjects were more (or less) likely to report doubles at the end of the series of dice rolls than at the beginning. We found that the number of doubles reported for the first 10 dice rolls did not differ significantly from the number of doubles reported for the second 10 dice rolls in any of the settings (Fig. 3 a). Similarly, we found no significant trend between the number of dice rolls and the number of doubles (Table S3). We also looked at whether higher winnings, i.e., doubling larger numbers, were more tempting to cheat. Therefore, we compared the frequency of doubles when rolling 1, 2, or 3 with cases when rolling 4, 5, or 6. Although in the latter case doubles are reported at a higher rate in all settings, this was only significant in the SH setting (Fig. 3 b). Corruption and psychological traits To study the relationship between psychological traits and corruption, we used Spearman correlation between the number of reported doubles and the subscales of the Moral Foundation Questionary (MFQ) and the Social Dominance Questionary (SDO7) (See Methods and Supporting information S8.). In the CD condition the three subscales of MFQ, Harm, Ingroup and Purity showed a significant negative relationship with the number of reported doubles (Fig. 4 ), indicating that those people tend to be less corrupt in this experimental setup who value kindness, gentleness, and nurturance (had a high value on Harm), patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group (had a high value in Ingroup subscale) and self-discipline, self-improvement, naturalness, and spirituality (had a high value in Purity subscale). In the SH condition, one subscale of SDO7, Anti-egalitarian, showed a negative relationship with the number of reported doubles, indicating that when one values more nonegalitarian, hierarchical relationships between groups, (had a higher value in Anti-egalitarian) tend to be less corrupt. The other two settings (CH, SD) were not significantly correlated with any of the psychological indices, and interestingly, the SDO7 indices did not show a significant correlation with the number of reported doubles in the other settings. However, when we consider the effect of the psychological traits together, only the MFQ Harm subscale showed a negative relationship with the number of doubles and only in the CD condition, indicating that in case of a strong pressure to be corrupt, people who are more sensitive to the suffering of creatures are less likely to be corrupt (F(7,28) = 2.96, p = 0.02, R 2 = 0.28, t(28) = -2.50, p = 0.02; Fig. 5 , Supporting information S8.). Discussion Our first, and compared to similar previous experiments rather surprising, finding is that subjects do not cheat significantly in all four settings. In case of non-charity settings (i.e. Simple game: SH, SD), the extent of cheating was not significant, while a significant level of cheating was observed in the original experiment by Weisel and Shalvi (2015)[ 16 ]. This may be due to the difference in the educational and social background of the subjects in our experiment, as a similar effect was already shown in a previous paper [ 26 ]. In the original experiment, the subjects were economics students, whereas in ours they were mainly biology and psychology students. For the latter group, maintaining a positive self-image may be more important than maximising financial gain, which may be expected to motivate economics students more because of their training [ 26 ]. This pattern also reflects the understanding that people may fall into two main types, or more precisely somewhere on the continuum between two extremes, economic types and ethical types when facing a decision to lie or not [ 14 , 37 ]. Cultural differences may also be behind the lower levels of cheating in our study [ 38 ], although this is less likely, or it may be due to the small amount of money to be gained by lying [ 39 ]. The extent of cheating may also have been reduced by the fact that the test subjects played individually. Although they were alone in the test room and no-one else observed the rolled number, the moral pressure on them may still have been stronger comparing to the experiments where more subjects played simultaneously. Another surprising result in the SH (Simple-Honest) setting is that while the level of cheating is not significantly different from random, the distribution of reported die rolls is significantly different from the uniform distribution. On closer analysis of the data, it appears that players reported more sixes and fewer singles than would be expected from a uniform distribution (Supporting Information, Table S3). This could easily be the result of a sampling fluctuation, but it could also be the case that some players did not understand the game accurately and believed that if they reported a higher number they were more likely to win, regardless of the partner's roll. We have shown that the intensity of cheating, that is the level of corruption is increased by the possibility of donating to a charity, a form of by-product altruism that may compensate for the self-directed negative emotion, such as guilt, triggered by unethical, corrupt behaviour [ 40 ]. Our results show that the possibility of donating for charity increases cheating more than observing the actions of a dishonest partner. The results of our experiment suggest that moral distress caused by corrupt behaviour can be effectively mitigated if the corrupt actors convince themselves that they are actually doing something beneficial to others or for the society, too. In concordance with this conclusion a series of studies found that selfish and prosocial, reputation-risky, detectable and reputation-safe, non-detectable lies activate different brain regions [ 9 , 41 , 42 ]. This may be why corruption is followed at the highest rate in cases when social norms are deteriorated so that an act of corruption does not violate the norm extensively, the corrupt act is less likely to be found out, or there is a prosocial element masking the selfish motivation behind a corrupt behaviour [ 43 ]. It is interesting to note that, consistent with our findings, populist establishments typically present their corrupt activities as helping national capitalism and thus the development of the whole country [ 44 ] transforming an act of selfish corruption into a prosocially motivated act in the mindset of society and the corrupt regime itself. In fact, this argument follows the same logic with an opposite cause-effect relationship than the argument that prosocial behaviour is often motivated by selfish motives [ 45 ]. Here we say that selfish behaviour is justified by a by-product prosocial benefit. The observation that the dishonest partner has no significant effect on the level of cheating and that we found no evidence of moral erosion could be the consequence of the relatively small amount of money that subjects can win, or/and it could happen because the 20 round series was too short to realize that the partner is definitely a cheater (see the bottom row of Fig. 1 ) The latter possibility is supported by the fact that we found no increase in the number of doubles during sessions with a dishonest partner (Fig. 3 ). Since cheating is a highly moral issue in such an experimental situation, we expected that the moral attitudes of the subjects would be related to the expression of corrupt behaviour. Our analysis suggests that this relationship is only clearly evident in the most morally challenging DC (Dishonest-Charity) setting. As expected, subjects with higher MFQ scores, i.e. stronger moral integrity, were less likely to cheat in this setting. However, it is interesting to note that not always the expected MFQ domains show a significant relationship with the level of cheating. For example, we expected the Fairness/reciprocity domain to be associated with less cheating, as people high in fairness would have a more difficult time violating the rules. Similarly, we expected the moral domain Authority/respect to be associated with less cheating, due to the respect for the rules of the game. But no significant correlation was found in these two cases. We hypothesised that social dominance orientation (SDO) factors would be associated with a higher propensity for cheating. However, no such associations were found with the exception in the SH setting and even then the effect was measured in the opposite direction. Since in the SH setting only the distribution of rolls was significantly different from the uniform distribution, but the level of cheating was not significant, we believe that the relationships between SDO factors and cheating do not provide reliable information. This is probably due to high stochasticity of the sample under study. Consequently, the relationship between the SDO factors and the level of cheating is therefore cannot be interpreted reliably and further studies will be needed to explore this. As in all cases, there were limiting factors in this series of experiments. Perhaps, most importantly, the money to be won was probably too small to stimulate intensive cheating. Furthermore, because of the COVID pandemics and the consequent lock-downs, the experiment took so long that inflation further decreased the value of the target yield. Conclusion Our most important result is that by-product altruism had a larger effect on participants’ cheating behaviour than moral erosion caused by the dishonesty of the partner in our experimental setting. Examining a number of behavioural factors, we found a clear correlation between behavioural factors and the level of cheating only in the most morally challenging case (CD: Charity-Dishonest case), indicating that there are many factors that combine to influence the decision in this game. Putting our results in a broader context, there could be a strong excuse for unethical, corrupt, or immoral behaviour if the parties feel that their cheating act also provides some sort of benefits for others or for the society, in addition to the personal, selfish gains. Methods Participants Participants were recruited mainly from the Faculty of Science of Eötvös Loránd University, through flyers (see Supporting information S1) and calls for participation in Facebook groups. We expected most participants to be university students: mostly undergraduates of biology, chemistry, geography and psychology. Recruitment started on September 15, 2019, and ended on November 21, 2023. The average age of the participants was 22.6±6 years. Among the 144 participants there were 96 (67%) women and 47 (33%) men, 1 participant preferred not to give her/his gender. Participants who did not finish the experiment for any reason (either because they were unwilling or because of technical difficulties) were excluded from data analysis. We kept recruiting participants until we reached the sample size specified by the power analysis in all experimental conditions for our confirmatory data analysis: 36 participants per condition Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions. The only person who communicated with the participants, was unaware of which of the four treatments each participant had been assigned to, creating a double blind situation Experimental setting and procedures Our plan was to have the same researcher, conduct all experiments. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the consequent closing of the university building, the experiment took much longer than expectedDorottya Deli ran the experiments between 8th of October 2019 and 16th February 2021, Borbála Kívés ran the experiments between 4th of October 2021 and 20th of April 2023, Judit Mokos ran the experiments between 16th of May 2023 and 24th of November 2023. The effect of the experimenter on the game-behaviour were tested and no effect was found (see Supporting information S8). The experimenter made an appointment with participants in e-mail and met them one-by-one at the Faculty of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology, where our experimental room was situated. The experimenter followed a written protocol (see Supporting information S2) for conducting the experiments, including the scripts for what to say to the participants. The experimental room is about 3x4 m, with white walls without any objects and non-necessary furnitures, The experimental desk is to the right of the door with a chair and all other materials necessary for the experiment: a notebook, a mouse, a lidded cup with a hole on top and a dice in it and a sheet of paper with the informed consent. (For pictures of the experimental room and all the equipment used, see Supporting information S3) The experimenter asked the participant to sign the informed consent form (see Supporting information S4) and then to take a random four-digit number from an envelope of number cards that would be used to connect the results of the game with the questionnaires. The participants took their number with them after the experiment. The experimenter then told the participant that all instructions for the game would be on screen and that she would be in the opposite room should the participant have questions (see Supporting information S5). Then she asked them to come and get her when the game was over. After this, the experimenter left the room and the participant went through the steps of the game alone. When the game was over, the participant informed the experimenter. She went back to the experimental room, where the last screen on the computer showed the reward that the participant won during the game. The experimenter wrote down the reward on the number card. The experimenter then opened a Google Form in the browser, which contained the Moral Foundations Questionnaire [31,32]( see Supporting information S6) and the Social Dominance Questionnaire [34,36](see Supporting information S6). The experimenter left the room until the participant filled out the questionnaires. Finally, the experimenter paid the participant, they signed a receipt and then she concluded the experiment. Disclosures We preregistered a full Methods section and analysis scripts on the Open Science Framework, together with the materials (code for the game, questionnaires, etc.) or pictures of the materials we used. All materials can be downloaded from: https://osf.io/vsfnd. All experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. Informed consent was obtained from all the participants. Psychological traits The Moral Foundations Questionnaire [31,32] (MFQ) and the seven-item Social Dominance Questionnaire [34,36] (SDO7) was recorded. MFQ contains five subscales (Authority underlies virtues of leadership and followership, Fairness underlies the virtues of justice and rights, Harm underlies the virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance, Ingroup underlies the virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group, and Purity underlies the virtues of self-discipline, self-improvement, naturalness, and spirituality). SDO7 measures the participant’s support for social hierarchy and contains two subscales (The Dominance subscale indicating when participants value in-group dominance over out-group, and Anti-Egalitarianism subscale indicating when value nonegalitarian, hierarchical relationships between groups), and the average of the items represents overall social dominance. For more details see the Supporting information S6. Statistical methods Power analysis In designing the experiments, we used power analysis based on previous papers to estimate the sample size. A detailed description of the analysis can be found in Supporting information S7. Data analysis Our null hypothesis is that the reported values come from a uniform distribution, i.e. numbers from 1 to 6 are reported with the same probability, since we used a fair dice (previously tested, chi-square goodness-of-fit test, n=703, p=0.9198). Our alternative hypothesis is that participants cheat and report doubles in order to inflate their chance for a reward. This would lead to skewed distributions when the participant plays with a dishonest simulated partner who reports larger numbers with higher probability. In case of an honest simulated partner, whose dice throw values were sampled from a uniform distribution, we expect that the participants' reported values also come from a uniform distribution (although it is possible that participants try to signal to their supposed partners to cheat by occasionally reporting 6s, but we do not expect this to create a significant difference). We used chi-square goodness of fit tests to test whether the reported values come from a uniform distribution, separately for each condition. We have specified simulate.p.value = TRUE , so the chisq.test R function uses a test statistic and P-value based on a Monte Carlo approach. In this case, there is no assumed chi-square distribution for the test statistic, so there is also no df parameter involved. We decided not to use Kolmogorov-Smirnov, because the large number of ties in our sample makes this test unreliable. Ultimately, participants must report doubles, i.e. match their reported values to that of Player A, in order to increase the probability of their payoff. The chi-square test cannot detect cheating in those groups where player A is honest, even if player B cheats on each and every round, because the distribution of reported values would still come from a uniform distribution. Testing the mean of the reported numbers against an expected value of 3.5 does not make sense for the same reasons. Therefore, we tested whether the number of doubles is higher than its expected value with one-sided one-sample Wilcoxon signed-rank U tests (one-sided one sample Mann-Whitney test) in each condition (the probability of throwing a double is 1/6; the expected number of doubles in 20 rounds is 20*1/6 = 3.33 in case of a fair dice and honest player). We compared the number of doubles in pairs of conditions with one-sided two-sample Mann-Whitney U tests: the effect of dishonest partners vs honest partners in the simple game and in the charity game and the effect of charity vs no charity with honest partner and with dishonest partner. We note that if there is a ceiling effect in both of the compared conditions, the effect cannot be detected. We tested the effect of predictors with linear regression. The dependent variable was the number of reported doubles (interval) and the predictors were game (binary) and partner (binary). Exploratory data analysis We did not preregister data analysis regarding the questionnaire data. To study the relationship between corruption psychological traits, a series linear model was fitted for the four conditions separately, where the dependent variable was the number of doubles reported by the participants, and the explanatory variables were the MFQ Authority, MFQ Fairness, MFQ Harm, MFQ Ingroup, MFQ Purity, SDO7 Dominance and SDO7 Egalitarian subscales. To fit the linear model the lm function from the stats R package, to obtain p values the summ function from the jtools R package was used. Declarations Acknowledgements We are grateful to the Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology at Eötvös University for providing the experimental room. Author contributions BG, AF, JM, IS and ZV planned the research. JM wrote the code for the experiment. DD, BK and JM performed the experiments. AF and JM analysed the data. BG, AF, JM, IS and ZV wrote the paper. IS supervised the research project. Data availability statement All our data can be downloaded from here: https://repo.researchdata.hu/privateurl.xhtml?token=53a8049d-4578-4ee5-9eb0-b4e28539c042 Funding Declaration section of the manuscript This work is supported by Hungarian Scientific Research Fund , Grant ID K128289. References Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. Culture and the evolution of human cooperation. Philos. Trans. R Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 364 (1533), 3281–3288. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0134 (2009). Rand, D. G. & Nowak, M. A. Human cooperation. Trends Cogn. Sci. 17 (8), 413–425. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.06.003 (2013). Banerjee, R. Corruption, norm violation and decay in social capital. J. Publ Econ. 137 , 14–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2016.03.007 (2016). Muthukrishna, M. et al. Corrupting cooperation and how anti-corruption strategies may backfire. Nat. Hum. Behav. 1 , 0138. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0138 (2017). Gächter, S. & Schulz, J. F. 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18:03:03\",\"extension\":\"png\",\"order_by\":13,\"title\":\"\",\"display\":\"\",\"copyAsset\":false,\"role\":\"acdc-reference\",\"size\":60574,\"visible\":true,\"origin\":\"\",\"legend\":\"\",\"description\":\"\",\"filename\":\"Onlinefloatimage5.png\",\"url\":\"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7393702/v1/e7a0f537567c54594a3881cf.png\"},{\"id\":92437581,\"identity\":\"2be99828-e4e1-4733-b6a0-379f82753602\",\"added_by\":\"auto\",\"created_at\":\"2025-09-29 17:31:04\",\"extension\":\"xml\",\"order_by\":14,\"title\":\"\",\"display\":\"\",\"copyAsset\":false,\"role\":\"acdc-reference\",\"size\":121335,\"visible\":true,\"origin\":\"\",\"legend\":\"\",\"description\":\"\",\"filename\":\"73f281aa244d43b2a185971a60ca0cae1structuring.xml\",\"url\":\"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7393702/v1/4ff08fcf8216b82699dd0986.xml\"},{\"id\":92438189,\"identity\":\"ec4ecd00-e123-4682-bef9-420113fc5cf2\",\"added_by\":\"auto\",\"created_at\":\"2025-09-29 17:39:04\",\"extension\":\"html\",\"order_by\":15,\"title\":\"\",\"display\":\"\",\"copyAsset\":false,\"role\":\"acdc-reference\",\"size\":139144,\"visible\":true,\"origin\":\"\",\"legend\":\"\",\"description\":\"\",\"filename\":\"earlyproof.html\",\"url\":\"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7393702/v1/849541c779ab8a329eb00989.html\"},{\"id\":92437561,\"identity\":\"2152b6b6-845b-4d69-adc3-8b6623222ff9\",\"added_by\":\"auto\",\"created_at\":\"2025-09-29 17:31:03\",\"extension\":\"png\",\"order_by\":1,\"title\":\"Figure 1\",\"display\":\"\",\"copyAsset\":false,\"role\":\"figure\",\"size\":410118,\"visible\":true,\"origin\":\"\",\"legend\":\"\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eThe reported value pairs in the four conditions.\\u003c/strong\\u003e The doubles that might win money are located on the main diagonal. Each dot represents one round of the game. Dots are transparent and jittered to decrease overlapping. At the top and right of the graphs, you can see the distribution of reported and computer-generated rolls. The two figures in the bottom row each show an example of a series of computer-generated numbers for the honest (left) and dishonest (right) settings.\\u003c/p\\u003e\",\"description\":\"\",\"filename\":\"Picture1.png\",\"url\":\"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7393702/v1/d7be06e2f41db27f65a2f37c.png\"},{\"id\":92438176,\"identity\":\"64fb77ea-c9c8-4369-b41c-f6ac79bf5960\",\"added_by\":\"auto\",\"created_at\":\"2025-09-29 17:39:03\",\"extension\":\"png\",\"order_by\":2,\"title\":\"Figure 2\",\"display\":\"\",\"copyAsset\":false,\"role\":\"figure\",\"size\":112054,\"visible\":true,\"origin\":\"\",\"legend\":\"\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eThe number of doubles in the four conditions.\\u003c/strong\\u003e Data points are transparent and horizontally jittered to see overlapping data points. The orange line indicates the expected number of doubles in the case of a fair die (3 ⅓ from 20 pairs of rolls). Orange triangles indicate the mean of the doubles in each setting. Asterisks represent significant differences.\\u003c/p\\u003e\",\"description\":\"\",\"filename\":\"Picture2.png\",\"url\":\"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7393702/v1/0dc10b67659209f0b22d0b1a.png\"},{\"id\":92438520,\"identity\":\"6a1c6ce8-3e94-4de6-b0d6-ba0665d549fd\",\"added_by\":\"auto\",\"created_at\":\"2025-09-29 17:47:03\",\"extension\":\"png\",\"order_by\":3,\"title\":\"Figure 3\",\"display\":\"\",\"copyAsset\":false,\"role\":\"figure\",\"size\":67918,\"visible\":true,\"origin\":\"\",\"legend\":\"\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eChanges in the propensity to cheat during the experiment and as a function of the number rolled.\\u003c/strong\\u003e a) The number of doubles announced in the first and second 10 rounds in the four conditions. b) The ratio of doubles announced for throws 1, 2, 3 and throws 4, 5, 6 in the different conditions (CD: \\u003cimg width=\\\"8\\\" height=\\\"18\\\" src=\\\"data:image/png;base64,R0lGODlhCAASAHcAMSH+GlNvZnR3YXJlOiBNaWNyb3NvZnQgT2ZmaWNlACH5BAEAAAAALAAABwAIAAkAhAAAAAA6kABmtjoAADoAOjoAZjpmtjqQ22YAAGYAOmY6AGY6kGZmZma2/5A6AJA6ZpDb/7ZmALZmOra2Zrbbtrb//9uQOtuQkNv/29v////bkP//tv//2wECAwECAwECAwUsILApAqAREHBRC+Y0QMw9kxHfUZDdYpLyEsYvZjlYYDFNoVK8VAAImGaADAEAOw==\\\"/\\u003e\\u003csup\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;2\\u003c/sup\\u003e=0.420, p=0.517; CH: \\u003cimg width=\\\"8\\\" height=\\\"18\\\" src=\\\"data:image/png;base64,R0lGODlhCAASAHcAMSH+GlNvZnR3YXJlOiBNaWNyb3NvZnQgT2ZmaWNlACH5BAEAAAAALAAABwAIAAkAhAAAAAA6kABmtjoAADoAOjoAZjpmtjqQ22YAAGYAOmY6AGY6kGZmZma2/5A6AJA6ZpDb/7ZmALZmOra2Zrbbtrb//9uQOtuQkNv/29v////bkP//tv//2wECAwECAwECAwUsILApAqAREHBRC+Y0QMw9kxHfUZDdYpLyEsYvZjlYYDFNoVK8VAAImGaADAEAOw==\\\"/\\u003e\\u003csup\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;2\\u003c/sup\\u003e=0.477, p=0.490; SD: \\u003cimg width=\\\"8\\\" height=\\\"18\\\" src=\\\"data:image/png;base64,R0lGODlhCAASAHcAMSH+GlNvZnR3YXJlOiBNaWNyb3NvZnQgT2ZmaWNlACH5BAEAAAAALAAABwAIAAkAhAAAAAA6kABmtjoAADoAOjoAZjpmtjqQ22YAAGYAOmY6AGY6kGZmZma2/5A6AJA6ZpDb/7ZmALZmOra2Zrbbtrb//9uQOtuQkNv/29v////bkP//tv//2wECAwECAwECAwUsILApAqAREHBRC+Y0QMw9kxHfUZDdYpLyEsYvZjlYYDFNoVK8VAAImGaADAEAOw==\\\"/\\u003e\\u003csup\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;2\\u003c/sup\\u003e=2.388, p=0.122; SH: \\u003cimg width=\\\"8\\\" height=\\\"18\\\" src=\\\"data:image/png;base64,R0lGODlhCAASAHcAMSH+GlNvZnR3YXJlOiBNaWNyb3NvZnQgT2ZmaWNlACH5BAEAAAAALAAABwAIAAkAhAAAAAA6kABmtjoAADoAOjoAZjpmtjqQ22YAAGYAOmY6AGY6kGZmZma2/5A6AJA6ZpDb/7ZmALZmOra2Zrbbtrb//9uQOtuQkNv/29v////bkP//tv//2wECAwECAwECAwUsILApAqAREHBRC+Y0QMw9kxHfUZDdYpLyEsYvZjlYYDFNoVK8VAAImGaADAEAOw==\\\"/\\u003e\\u003csup\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;2\\u003c/sup\\u003e=6.967, p=0.008).\\u003c/p\\u003e\",\"description\":\"\",\"filename\":\"Picture3.png\",\"url\":\"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7393702/v1/a6516f5e83ed625f00f6a506.png\"},{\"id\":92438182,\"identity\":\"9a34c1bf-aec8-4469-ad4d-95b1f096bb52\",\"added_by\":\"auto\",\"created_at\":\"2025-09-29 17:39:03\",\"extension\":\"png\",\"order_by\":4,\"title\":\"Figure 4\",\"display\":\"\",\"copyAsset\":false,\"role\":\"figure\",\"size\":51835,\"visible\":true,\"origin\":\"\",\"legend\":\"\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eThe correlation between the number of reported doubles and the psychological traits in the four conditions.\\u003c/strong\\u003e Red shading indicates positive and blue shading indicates negative correlations as indicated by the colour code next to the figure. Black borders and stars (* = p \\u0026lt;0.05) indicate significant correlations.\\u003c/p\\u003e\",\"description\":\"\",\"filename\":\"Picture4.png\",\"url\":\"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7393702/v1/296d356c65d1c631180a0608.png\"},{\"id\":92437570,\"identity\":\"522da45c-129e-4cdf-a292-a100b23d42c8\",\"added_by\":\"auto\",\"created_at\":\"2025-09-29 17:31:03\",\"extension\":\"png\",\"order_by\":5,\"title\":\"Figure 5\",\"display\":\"\",\"copyAsset\":false,\"role\":\"figure\",\"size\":200766,\"visible\":true,\"origin\":\"\",\"legend\":\"\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eForest plot of the linear models on the relationship between number of reported doubles and psychological traits.\\u003c/strong\\u003e Dots represent the standardised beta values and bars denote the confidence intervals. Separate models for the four conditions were carried out, which are indicated with colours. Significant (p\\u0026lt;0.05) correlations are indicated by full dots.\\u003c/p\\u003e\",\"description\":\"\",\"filename\":\"Picture5.png\",\"url\":\"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7393702/v1/d6e8f9578c0fc0e3ab8ff483.png\"},{\"id\":92600287,\"identity\":\"d4e8c875-8c7a-483f-9877-19b593f33160\",\"added_by\":\"auto\",\"created_at\":\"2025-10-01 14:16:01\",\"extension\":\"pdf\",\"order_by\":0,\"title\":\"\",\"display\":\"\",\"copyAsset\":false,\"role\":\"manuscript-pdf\",\"size\":1852002,\"visible\":true,\"origin\":\"\",\"legend\":\"\",\"description\":\"\",\"filename\":\"manuscript.pdf\",\"url\":\"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7393702/v1/493d6493-d37b-4b0a-846d-0302dc63f4c9.pdf\"},{\"id\":92437573,\"identity\":\"a496c69f-50e2-478b-a581-f6b5ac177ad7\",\"added_by\":\"auto\",\"created_at\":\"2025-09-29 17:31:03\",\"extension\":\"pdf\",\"order_by\":0,\"title\":\"\",\"display\":\"\",\"copyAsset\":false,\"role\":\"supplement\",\"size\":1040307,\"visible\":true,\"origin\":\"\",\"legend\":\"\",\"description\":\"\",\"filename\":\"corruptionmanuscript1210supplement.pdf\",\"url\":\"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7393702/v1/dcd348819a96eedeb5d7052e.pdf\"}],\"financialInterests\":\"No competing interests reported.\",\"formattedTitle\":\"I did it for their sake! - Social benefit drives corruption in a dice rolling experiment\",\"fulltext\":[{\"header\":\"Introduction\",\"content\":\"\\n\\u003ch3\\u003eBackground\\u003c/h3\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe functioning of human societies depends on pro-social behaviours of their members [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR1\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e1\\u003c/span\\u003e]. These include various forms of cooperation and collective actions [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR2\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e2\\u003c/span\\u003e], for example, by developing social norms and institutions, and by sanctioning or punishing individuals violating these. Unethical or corrupt behaviour deeply undermines trust in institutions, negatively affects interpersonal interactions [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR3\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e3\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR4\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e4\\u003c/span\\u003e] and directly increases norm violations by reducing intrinsic levels of honesty [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR5\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e5\\u003c/span\\u003e]. Dishonesty undermines self-reporting regimes, such as tax reporting or insurance claims [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR6\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e6\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR7\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e7\\u003c/span\\u003e].\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eUnethical behaviours that violate moral norms, such as lying, usually bear psychological or cognitive costs [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR8\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e8\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR9\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e9\\u003c/span\\u003e], even in cases where direct harm to others is negligible. In some cases, however, subjects are willing to take such costs or view dishonesty as morally acceptable [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR10\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e10\\u003c/span\\u003e], especially if they prefer the outcome obtained by lying [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR14\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e14\\u003c/span\\u003e]. Studies have found that altruistic goals can modify the decision-making process and, in some cases, alleviate the guilt or the burden of crossing ethical or moral boundaries in order to reach the desired goal of helping others [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR9\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e9\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR10\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e10\\u003c/span\\u003e]. Lying or deceiving in such situations is valued differently from selfish lies. Such other-serving dishonesty is often called pro-social, or white and grey lies, compared to self-serving, anti-social, or black lies [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR11\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e11\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR12\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e12\\u003c/span\\u003e]. White lies are always justifiable, while grey lies are lies that are justifiable under certain circumstances. In fact, there is evidence that different neural activation patterns emerge in the human brain during self-serving and other-serving lying decisions [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR9\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e9\\u003c/span\\u003e], in particular at the anterior insula region of the brain. Personal attributes also influence the probability of dishonesty and lie aversion, and the propensity to cheat is on a continuous scale [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR13\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e13\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR14\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e14\\u003c/span\\u003e].\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThoughtfully designed experiments can uncover the mechanisms behind unethical, dishonest, fraudulent and corrupt behaviour in humans [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR5\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e5\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR10\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e10\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan additionalcitationids=\\\"CR16 CR17\\\" citationid=\\\"CR15\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e15\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u0026ndash;\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR18\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e18\\u003c/span\\u003e]. Dice rolling experiments have been developed to study different aspects of honesty and cheating. In a pioneering study by Fischbacher and F\\u0026ouml;llmi-Heus [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR19\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e19\\u003c/span\\u003e], participants rolled a dice in private and then reported the results. They won units of money equal to the reported number, except when it was six, in which case they got nothing. The reported values differed significantly from the uniform distribution: numbers six and one were significantly underrepresented, while numbers four and five were overrepresented, indicating participants were willing to lie to get a higher reward. Based on a meta-analysis of such experiments, it can be said that the rate of cheating is typically not high, as the subjects of the experiment obtain roughly a quarter of the maximum income that can be achieved through cheating. Truthfulness is strongly preferred, even in these anonymous experiments [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR20\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e20\\u003c/span\\u003e].\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eLewis et al. (2012) [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR21\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e21\\u003c/span\\u003e] modified Fischbacher and F\\u0026ouml;llmi-Heusi\\u0026rsquo;s (2008) [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR19\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e19\\u003c/span\\u003e] experiment to include donations for charity. Although they did not have a control group, they argued that participants\\u0026rsquo; incentives for donation encouraged dishonesty more than in the case of personal gain. Similarly, Clot et al. (2013) [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR22\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e22\\u003c/span\\u003e] have found that participants who imagine helping altruistically before the experiment cheat more than control participants in a similar dice-rolling experiment. An opposite type of incentive for dishonesty was investigated by Jacobsen and Piovesan (2016) [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR7\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e7\\u003c/span\\u003e]. Dishonesty was higher in their experimental group where they introduced a tax on the earnings compared to the no-tax control [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR7\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e7\\u003c/span\\u003e]. In another variant of the original experiment by Kohler et al. (2017), it was examined how individuals' propensity for honesty changes communication between the group members is allowed before making decisions [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR23\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e23\\u003c/span\\u003e]. They showed that communication rapidly and strongly pushed individuals toward increased cheating. Interestingly, the level of honesty in a similar dice rolling experiments also depended on the temporal distance to the upcoming holy day for religious subjects [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR24\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e24\\u003c/span\\u003e], or the temporal distance between the decision and the time of receiving the reward [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR25\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e25\\u003c/span\\u003e].\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eWeisel and Shalvi (2015) [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR16\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e16\\u003c/span\\u003e] conducted a collaborative variant of the dice rolling experiment which revealed, as they phrase, \\u0026ldquo;the dark side of cooperation: corrupt collaboration\\u0026rdquo;. In their setup, players were paired up, rolled their dice, and reported the value sequentially, and won money only if they reported the same value. In this setup, the player who rolled second could decide about winning money for both of them by reporting the same number as the partner even if it was a lie. They found that the reported values deviated from a uniform distribution even more in the collaborative situation compared to playing alone. Wouda et al. (2017) [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR26\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e26\\u003c/span\\u003e] replicated the \\u0026ldquo;aligned outcomes\\u0026rdquo; condition from Weisel and Shalvi (2015)\\u0026rsquo;s experiment. They received qualitatively similar results as Weisel and Shalvi, but the effect was smaller, which they attributed partly to differences between the participant pools: their participants had backgrounds in psychological studies, while Weisel and Shalvi\\u0026rsquo;s participants had backgrounds in economic studies.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eIn another study, where participants received payments depending on their self-reported performance on simple math tasks, the authors also concluded that when the outcome of an individual\\u0026rsquo;s dishonesty could benefit others, the level of cheating increased [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR10\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e10\\u003c/span\\u003e]. Using the so-called flexible-dot-task method, Hochman et al. (2021) [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR17\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e17\\u003c/span\\u003e] showed that cheating is even more pronounced when it benefits a favoured charity, either wholly or in part, than when the unethical behaviour is purely self-centred. Altruistic motivation increases cheating, whether it is towards another person or towards an organisation preferred by the altruist. The picture of altruism and cheating is further coloured by an experiment by Rahwan et al. (2018) [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR27\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e27\\u003c/span\\u003e]. They found that participants who resisted cheating in one experiment donated less to charity in another experiment, suggesting that charitable donations may indeed serve the purpose of balancing one's moral behaviour.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThe overall motivation of the experiments above is to investigate what influences morally unacceptable actions that yield benefits for the parties involved under controlled conditions. The general question is what external social conditions and internal personality traits facilitate or hinder corruption. In line with this, we aimed to investigate the extent to which the subjects' cost-free support for community-accepted goals is responsible for unethical, corrupt behaviour (cheating). In addition, we sought to better understand what personal characteristics may be associated with the level of cheating.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ch3\\u003eHypotheses\\u003c/h3\\u003e\\n\\u003cdiv id=\\\"Sec3\\\" class=\\\"Section2\\\"\\u003e\\u003ch2\\u003eMoral erosion and by-product altruism\\u003c/h2\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eIn Weisel and Shalvi (2015)\\u0026rsquo;s [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR16\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e16\\u003c/span\\u003e] experiment, participants playing with a partner lied more often than participants playing alone. We hypothesise that this effect is caused by two different mechanisms: moral erosion and by-product altruism. Moral erosion happens when the participants realise that their partners are immoral, i.e., probably cheat, and thus it seems to be more acceptable for them to cheat, too. By-product altruism means that by cheating, player B potentially increases the reward not only for himself but for player A too, thus in this case, corrupt behaviour has an additional purpose, which is helping others without a financial cost. Since altruistic behaviour has a positive effect on self-esteem [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR28\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e28\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR29\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e29\\u003c/span\\u003e] or adds an additional justification for the unethical act [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR17\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e17\\u003c/span\\u003e], this aspect of the experimental design is likely to increase the temptation to cheat further.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eTo tease out these effects we planned a series of experiments with a two-by-two design. The game was similar to that of [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR16\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e16\\u003c/span\\u003e] where participants played in pairs and could win only if they reported rolling the same value. Our participants were always assigned the role of player B, who saw the value reported by player A before they reported theirs, thus they could intentionally influence whether to get a reward or not. Player A was simulated by the computer (although participants were told that they played with a real person remotely). Player A was either honest (its reported values were sampled from a uniform distribution) or dishonest (higher values were sampled with higher probability) to test the moral erosion hypothesis. To test the by-product altruism hypothesis, half of the participants played the Charity game, where they had to choose a charity foundation which received a small donation if they won. The other half of the participants played the Simple game, where there was no donation involved.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThese two factors produce four conditions in a two-by-two design:\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cul\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eSH: Simple game with Honest partner\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eSD: Simple game with Dishonest partner\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eCH: Charity game with Honest partner\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eCD: Charity game with Dishonest partner\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003c/ul\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eWe statistically tested whether participants cheated, i.e., reported more doubles than expected by chance in each of the four conditions. We tested the moral erosion hypothesis by comparing the number of doubles in the conditions with the honest partner vs. the dishonest partner (SH-SD and CH-CD comparisons) and tested if there was an increasing trend of cheating in case of honest and dishonest partners. We tested the charity hypothesis by comparing the conditions with the charity game vs. the simple game (SH-CH and SD-CD comparisons). We predicted that both the presence of charity and a cheating partner would increase the propensity to cheat. We did not have any expectations as to which one of these effects would be stronger.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eSample sizes and statistical tests regarding these hypotheses were pre-registered (see Disclosures).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/div\\u003e\\n\\u003ch3\\u003ePersonality and cheating\\u003c/h3\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eApart from the pre-registered analyses, we also did exploratory data analysis to see if there is an association between participant behaviour in the game and certain personality traits.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eEvidence suggests that certain moral domains influence performance and behaviour in economic exchange games [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR30\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e30\\u003c/span\\u003e], thus we wanted to see whether cheating in our experiment was also influenced by moral domains. The \\u003cem\\u003eMoral Foundations questionnaire\\u003c/em\\u003e is a reliable tool to measure individual differences in five main moral domains: Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR31\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e31\\u003c/span\\u003e]. We used the validated Hungarian version of this questionnaire [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR31\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e31\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR32\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e32\\u003c/span\\u003e] to explore our hypotheses:\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cul\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eWe did not expect the moral domain \\u003cem\\u003eHarm/care\\u003c/em\\u003e to be associated with cheating \\u003cem\\u003eper se\\u003c/em\\u003e. However, as the charity setting could evoke helping behaviour, we expected people with high scores along this domain to cheat more in the charity settings (CH, CD).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eWe expected the moral domain \\u003cem\\u003eFairness/reciprocity\\u003c/em\\u003e to be associated with less cheating, as people high in fairness would be less likely to violate the rules.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eWe expected the moral domain \\u003cem\\u003eIngroup/loyalty\\u003c/em\\u003e to be associated with a larger propensity for cheating, especially with a dishonest partner (conditions SD and CD).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eWe expected the moral domain \\u003cem\\u003eAuthority/respect\\u003c/em\\u003e to be associated with less cheating, due to the respect for the rules of the game.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eWe did not expect the moral domain \\u003cem\\u003ePurity/sanctity\\u003c/em\\u003e to be associated with cheating.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003c/ul\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eAccording to the Social Dominance Theory, most contemporary human societies are organized as group-based social hierarchies [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR33\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e33\\u003c/span\\u003e]. The \\u003cem\\u003eSocial Dominance Orientation Questionnaire\\u003c/em\\u003e is a tool to measure individual differences in how we think about social domination and power [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR34\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e34\\u003c/span\\u003e]. The questionnaire was originally designed to tackle one factor, but later it turned out that a bifactorial model describes social dominance orientation better [\\u003cspan additionalcitationids=\\\"CR35\\\" citationid=\\\"CR34\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e34\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u0026ndash;\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR36\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e36\\u003c/span\\u003e]. One subfactor is the SDO-Dominance, which is associated with the support of group-based dominance, even if it takes oppressive or violent acts. The other is the SDO-Anti-egalitarianism, which is associated with a preference for inequality, and an aversion towards the egalitarian redistribution of resources [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR34\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e34\\u003c/span\\u003e]. For that reasons\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cul\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eWe hypothesised that social dominance orientation in general would be associated with a higher propensity for cheating.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eFurthermore, we predicted that people higher in each of the subfactors will not show a higher propensity for cheating in the charity condition. The reason for this is that these people tend to be less keen on helping those in need, therefore we expected that the charity opportunity would not affect their behaviour.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003c/ul\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e The study was approved by the Hungarian United Psychological Research Ethics Committee (Egyes\\u0026iacute;tett Pszichol\\u0026oacute;giai Kutat\\u0026aacute;si Etikai Bizotts\\u0026aacute;g, Ref. No. 2019/07).\\u003c/p\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"Results\",\"content\":\"\\u003cdiv id=\\\"Sec6\\\" class=\\\"Section2\\\"\\u003e\\u003ch2\\u003eThe game\\u003c/h2\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThe experiment was implemented in z-Tree. The corresponding files can be downloaded from the preregistration. In this we followed Weisel and Shalvi (2015) [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR16\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e16\\u003c/span\\u003e], and most of the screens are translations of their screens. Screenshots and the translation of the scripts are provided in Supporting information S5.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThe game starts by explaining that participants will get 200 HUF (about 0.5 EUR) just for appearing on time, but they will have the chance to win additional money through a game. The program asks for the participant\\u0026rsquo;s age and gender, then assures them that the game is anonymous and that they will not be monitored during the game. Next, there are instructions on screen for practising rolling the dice with the cup and peeking through the hole in the lid to read the value.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThen, the rules of the game are explained. Participants are told that there is another participant in another university with whom they would play several rounds of the game through the internet (in fact, there is no other participant: the actions of the \\u0026ldquo;other participant\\u0026rdquo; are preprogrammed in the game). They are also told that the number of rounds would be more than 10 but less than 30 (in fact, the number of rounds is always exactly 20).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eParticipants either play the Charity Game or the Simple Game. For participants who play the Charity Game, it is explained that if they win some money at the end of the game, a charity foundation also receives a donation of 300 HUF. They are shown three options for local charities to choose from (Rex Dog Shelter Foundation, Together for the Children with Leukaemia and Pearl Foundation for the Abolishment of Child Poverty).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eParticipants in both games are told that they are the second players in each round: their partner would roll the dice first, and enter the value in the game so they would see it before their turn to roll the dice and enter their value. Their reward depends on both of the rolled numbers. The next few screens explain the rule for calculating the reward: participants get a reward only if they report the same number as their partners did. In this case, they both get the score of 300 HUF times the value of the reported number; if they report different numbers, their score is 0.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eParticipants are explained that at the end of the game, the computer will randomly select one round and both participants (and the charity) will be paid the score of this single round in HUF.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eNext, there are five practice screens, where participants can enter both numbers to see how the reward is calculated. Finally, participants play 20 rounds of the game. After each round the score appears on the screen, along with the possible donation sum and beneficiary, if applicable. After 20 rounds the computer randomly selects one round and its score stays on the screen for the experimenter to see.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/div\\u003e\\n\\u003ch3\\u003eThe distribution of reported numbers\\u003c/h3\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eRolling a fair die produces uniformly distributed numbers between one and six. Deviating from the uniform distribution when reporting the rolled values indicates cheating, however, uniform distribution of the reported numbers does not necessarily mean that participants do not cheat. If their \\u0026ldquo;partner\\u0026rdquo; reports uniformly distributed numbers, participants may cheat by matching these numbers to produce doubles, thus, reporting uniformly distributed numbers themselves.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eReported values in conditions with a dishonest partner (SD and CD) are significantly different from the uniform distribution (SD:\\u003cspan class=\\\"InlineEquation\\\"\\u003e\\u003cspan class=\\\"mathinline\\\"\\u003e\\\\(\\\\:\\\\chi\\\\:\\\\)\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003csup\\u003e2\\u003c/sup\\u003e=11.2, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.050; CD: \\u003cspan class=\\\"InlineEquation\\\"\\u003e\\u003cspan class=\\\"mathinline\\\"\\u003e\\\\(\\\\:\\\\chi\\\\:\\\\)\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e \\u003csup\\u003e2\\u003c/sup\\u003e=14.4, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.012). Similarly, when playing with an honest partner but without the opportunity of donating to a charity (SH), the distribution of the reported numbers differ from uniform distribution (\\u003cspan class=\\\"InlineEquation\\\"\\u003e\\u003cspan class=\\\"mathinline\\\"\\u003e\\\\(\\\\:\\\\chi\\\\:\\\\)\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e \\u003csup\\u003e2\\u003c/sup\\u003e=14.7, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.011), while distribution of reported numbers did not differ significantly from the uniform distributions at the CH condition (\\u003cspan class=\\\"InlineEquation\\\"\\u003e\\u003cspan class=\\\"mathinline\\\"\\u003e\\\\(\\\\:\\\\chi\\\\:\\\\)\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e \\u003csup\\u003e2\\u003c/sup\\u003e=3.3, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.65) (Fig.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003cspan refid=\\\"Fig1\\\" class=\\\"InternalRef\\\"\\u003e1\\u003c/span\\u003e) (for distributions see Supporting information Table \\u003cspan refid=\\\"MOESM1\\\" class=\\\"InternalRef\\\"\\u003eS1\\u003c/span\\u003e). However, these results do not inform us reliably whether participants cheated or not (Fig.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003cspan refid=\\\"Fig1\\\" class=\\\"InternalRef\\\"\\u003e1\\u003c/span\\u003e).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cdiv id=\\\"Sec8\\\" class=\\\"Section2\\\"\\u003e\\u003ch2\\u003eThe number of doubles\\u003c/h2\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThe number of reported doubles was significantly higher than its expected value of 3.33 in conditions when there was an opportunity to donate to a charity (CH: W\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;489, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.007, mean\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;5.278, median\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;4; CD: W\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;599, p\\u0026thinsp;\\u0026lt;\\u0026thinsp;0.001, mean\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;5.750, median\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;5), and the difference was not significant in conditions without the donation opportunity (SH: W\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;400, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.147, mean\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;4.028, median\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;4; SD: W\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;407, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.123, mean\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;4.250, median\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;3) (Fig.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003cspan refid=\\\"Fig2\\\" class=\\\"InternalRef\\\"\\u003e2\\u003c/span\\u003e). In each three of the conditions (SD, CH, CD), there was one participant who reported the same number as the computer every time (see dots on the uppermost lines on the diagram).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eWhen comparing the two simple conditions to each other, there is no difference between the number of doubles (SH vs SD: W\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;635.5, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.445), and similarly, when comparing the two charity conditions to each other, there is no difference between the number of doubles (CH vs. CD: W\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;551.5, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.138), indicating that a dishonest partner does not increase cheating. Comparing conditions across the presence of charity, SH to CH shows no significant difference (W\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;538, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.107), but SD vs CD differ significantly (W\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;434, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.008, Fig.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003cspan refid=\\\"Fig2\\\" class=\\\"InternalRef\\\"\\u003e2\\u003c/span\\u003e). These findings indicate that charity plays a more important role than the honesty of the partner when deciding about cheating.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eThis result is supported by the linear model investigating the effect of by-product altruism (charity or simple game setting), the honesty of the partner (honest or dishonest) on the number of reported doubles: only the charitable opportunity showed a significant effect on corruption, the charity setting increasing the number of reported doubles (Table\\u0026nbsp;\\u003cspan refid=\\\"Tab1\\\" class=\\\"InternalRef\\\"\\u003e1\\u003c/span\\u003e).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cdiv class=\\\"gridtable\\\"\\u003e\\u003ctable float=\\\"Yes\\\" id=\\\"Tab1\\\" border=\\\"1\\\"\\u003e\\u003ccaption language=\\\"En\\\"\\u003e\\u003cdiv class=\\\"CaptionNumber\\\"\\u003eTable 1\\u003c/div\\u003e\\u003cdiv class=\\\"CaptionContent\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cb\\u003eThe effect of game (simple or charity), partner (honest or dishonest) on the number of reported doubles.\\u003c/b\\u003e Asterisk represents a significant difference (* = p\\u0026thinsp;\\u0026lt;\\u0026thinsp;0.05).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/div\\u003e\\u003c/caption\\u003e\\u003ccolgroup cols=\\\"6\\\"\\u003e\\u003cdiv align=\\\"left\\\" class=\\\"colspec\\\" colname=\\\"c1\\\" colnum=\\\"1\\\"\\u003e\\u003c/div\\u003e\\u003cdiv align=\\\"left\\\" class=\\\"colspec\\\" colname=\\\"c2\\\" colnum=\\\"2\\\"\\u003e\\u003c/div\\u003e\\u003cdiv align=\\\"left\\\" class=\\\"colspec\\\" colname=\\\"c3\\\" colnum=\\\"3\\\"\\u003e\\u003c/div\\u003e\\u003cdiv align=\\\"left\\\" class=\\\"colspec\\\" colname=\\\"c4\\\" colnum=\\\"4\\\"\\u003e\\u003c/div\\u003e\\u003cdiv align=\\\"left\\\" class=\\\"colspec\\\" colname=\\\"c5\\\" colnum=\\\"5\\\"\\u003e\\u003c/div\\u003e\\u003cdiv align=\\\"left\\\" class=\\\"colspec\\\" colname=\\\"c6\\\" colnum=\\\"6\\\"\\u003e\\u003c/div\\u003e\\u003cthead\\u003e\\u003ctr\\u003e\\u003cth align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c1\\\"\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/th\\u003e\\u003cth align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c2\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eEstimate\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/th\\u003e\\u003cth align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c3\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eStd. Error\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/th\\u003e\\u003cth align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c4\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003et value\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/th\\u003e\\u003cth align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c5\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003ePr(\\u0026gt;|t|)\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/th\\u003e\\u003cth align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c6\\\"\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/th\\u003e\\u003c/tr\\u003e\\u003c/thead\\u003e\\u003ctbody\\u003e\\u003ctr\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c1\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e(Intercept)\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c2\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e5.667\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c3\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e0.511\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c4\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e11.121\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c5\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e\\u0026lt;\\u0026thinsp;0.001\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c6\\\"\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003c/tr\\u003e\\u003ctr\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c1\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eGame (simple)\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c2\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e-1.375\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c3\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e0.591\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c4\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e-2.328\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c5\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cb\\u003e0.021*\\u003c/b\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c6\\\"\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003c/tr\\u003e\\u003ctr\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c1\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003ePartner (honest)\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c2\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e-0.347\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c3\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e0.591\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c4\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e-0.588\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c5\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e0.557\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colname=\\\"c6\\\"\\u003e\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003c/tr\\u003e\\u003ctr\\u003e\\u003ctd align=\\\"left\\\" colspan=\\\"6\\\" nameend=\\\"c6\\\" namest=\\\"c1\\\"\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003eF(2,149)\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;2.88, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;\\u0026lt;\\u0026thinsp;0.001, Adj.R\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003csup\\u003e\\u003cem\\u003e2\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/sup\\u003e\\u0026thinsp;\\u003cem\\u003e=\\u0026thinsp;0.026\\u003c/em\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/td\\u003e\\u003c/tr\\u003e\\u003c/tbody\\u003e\\u003c/colgroup\\u003e\\u003c/table\\u003e\\u003c/div\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eTo test for moral erosion, we examined whether subjects were more (or less) likely to report doubles at the end of the series of dice rolls than at the beginning. We found that the number of doubles reported for the first 10 dice rolls did not differ significantly from the number of doubles reported for the second 10 dice rolls in any of the settings (Fig.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003cspan refid=\\\"Fig3\\\" class=\\\"InternalRef\\\"\\u003e3\\u003c/span\\u003ea). Similarly, we found no significant trend between the number of dice rolls and the number of doubles (Table S3). We also looked at whether higher winnings, i.e., doubling larger numbers, were more tempting to cheat. Therefore, we compared the frequency of doubles when rolling 1, 2, or 3 with cases when rolling 4, 5, or 6. Although in the latter case doubles are reported at a higher rate in all settings, this was only significant in the SH setting (Fig.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003cspan refid=\\\"Fig3\\\" class=\\\"InternalRef\\\"\\u003e3\\u003c/span\\u003eb).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003c/div\\u003e\\n\\u003ch3\\u003eCorruption and psychological traits\\u003c/h3\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eTo study the relationship between psychological traits and corruption, we used Spearman correlation between the number of reported doubles and the subscales of the Moral Foundation Questionary (MFQ) and the Social Dominance Questionary (SDO7) (See Methods and Supporting information S8.). In the CD condition the three subscales of MFQ, Harm, Ingroup and Purity showed a significant negative relationship with the number of reported doubles (Fig.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003cspan refid=\\\"Fig4\\\" class=\\\"InternalRef\\\"\\u003e4\\u003c/span\\u003e), indicating that those people tend to be less corrupt in this experimental setup who value kindness, gentleness, and nurturance (had a high value on Harm), patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group (had a high value in Ingroup subscale) and self-discipline, self-improvement, naturalness, and spirituality (had a high value in Purity subscale). In the SH condition, one subscale of SDO7, Anti-egalitarian, showed a negative relationship with the number of reported doubles, indicating that when one values more nonegalitarian, hierarchical relationships between groups, (had a higher value in Anti-egalitarian) tend to be less corrupt. The other two settings (CH, SD) were not significantly correlated with any of the psychological indices, and interestingly, the SDO7 indices did not show a significant correlation with the number of reported doubles in the other settings.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eHowever, when we consider the effect of the psychological traits together, only the MFQ Harm subscale showed a negative relationship with the number of doubles and only in the CD condition, indicating that in case of a strong pressure to be corrupt, people who are more sensitive to the suffering of creatures are less likely to be corrupt (F(7,28)\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;2.96, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.02, R\\u003csup\\u003e2\\u003c/sup\\u003e\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.28, t(28) = -2.50, p\\u0026thinsp;=\\u0026thinsp;0.02; Fig.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003cspan refid=\\\"Fig5\\\" class=\\\"InternalRef\\\"\\u003e5\\u003c/span\\u003e, Supporting information S8.).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"Discussion\",\"content\":\"\\u003cp\\u003eOur first, and compared to similar previous experiments rather surprising, finding is that subjects do not cheat significantly in all four settings. In case of non-charity settings (i.e. Simple game: SH, SD), the extent of cheating was not significant, while a significant level of cheating was observed in the original experiment by Weisel and Shalvi (2015)[\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR16\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e16\\u003c/span\\u003e]. This may be due to the difference in the educational and social background of the subjects in our experiment, as a similar effect was already shown in a previous paper [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR26\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e26\\u003c/span\\u003e]. In the original experiment, the subjects were economics students, whereas in ours they were mainly biology and psychology students. For the latter group, maintaining a positive self-image may be more important than maximising financial gain, which may be expected to motivate economics students more because of their training [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR26\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e26\\u003c/span\\u003e]. This pattern also reflects the understanding that people may fall into two main types, or more precisely somewhere on the continuum between two extremes, economic types and ethical types when facing a decision to lie or not [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR14\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e14\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR37\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e37\\u003c/span\\u003e]. Cultural differences may also be behind the lower levels of cheating in our study [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR38\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e38\\u003c/span\\u003e], although this is less likely, or it may be due to the small amount of money to be gained by lying [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR39\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e39\\u003c/span\\u003e]. The extent of cheating may also have been reduced by the fact that the test subjects played individually. Although they were alone in the test room and no-one else observed the rolled number, the moral pressure on them may still have been stronger comparing to the experiments where more subjects played simultaneously.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eAnother surprising result in the SH (Simple-Honest) setting is that while the level of cheating is not significantly different from random, the distribution of reported die rolls is significantly different from the uniform distribution. On closer analysis of the data, it appears that players reported more sixes and fewer singles than would be expected from a uniform distribution (Supporting Information, Table S3). This could easily be the result of a sampling fluctuation, but it could also be the case that some players did not understand the game accurately and believed that if they reported a higher number they were more likely to win, regardless of the partner's roll.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eWe have shown that the intensity of cheating, that is the level of corruption is increased by the possibility of donating to a charity, a form of by-product altruism that may compensate for the self-directed negative emotion, such as guilt, triggered by unethical, corrupt behaviour [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR40\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e40\\u003c/span\\u003e]. Our results show that the possibility of donating for charity increases cheating more than observing the actions of a dishonest partner. The results of our experiment suggest that moral distress caused by corrupt behaviour can be effectively mitigated if the corrupt actors convince themselves that they are actually doing something beneficial to others or for the society, too. In concordance with this conclusion a series of studies found that selfish and prosocial, reputation-risky, detectable and reputation-safe, non-detectable lies activate different brain regions [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR9\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e9\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR41\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e41\\u003c/span\\u003e, \\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR42\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e42\\u003c/span\\u003e]. This may be why corruption is followed at the highest rate in cases when social norms are deteriorated so that an act of corruption does not violate the norm extensively, the corrupt act is less likely to be found out, or there is a prosocial element masking the selfish motivation behind a corrupt behaviour [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR43\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e43\\u003c/span\\u003e]. It is interesting to note that, consistent with our findings, populist establishments typically present their corrupt activities as helping national capitalism and thus the development of the whole country [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR44\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e44\\u003c/span\\u003e] transforming an act of selfish corruption into a prosocially motivated act in the mindset of society and the corrupt regime itself. In fact, this argument follows the same logic with an opposite cause-effect relationship than the argument that prosocial behaviour is often motivated by selfish motives [\\u003cspan citationid=\\\"CR45\\\" class=\\\"CitationRef\\\"\\u003e45\\u003c/span\\u003e]. Here we say that selfish behaviour is justified by a by-product prosocial benefit. The observation that the dishonest partner has no significant effect on the level of cheating and that we found no evidence of moral erosion could be the consequence of the relatively small amount of money that subjects can win, or/and it could happen because the 20 round series was too short to realize that the partner is definitely a cheater (see the bottom row of Fig.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003cspan refid=\\\"Fig1\\\" class=\\\"InternalRef\\\"\\u003e1\\u003c/span\\u003e ) The latter possibility is supported by the fact that we found no increase in the number of doubles during sessions with a dishonest partner (Fig.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003cspan refid=\\\"Fig3\\\" class=\\\"InternalRef\\\"\\u003e3\\u003c/span\\u003e).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eSince cheating is a highly moral issue in such an experimental situation, we expected that the moral attitudes of the subjects would be related to the expression of corrupt behaviour. Our analysis suggests that this relationship is only clearly evident in the most morally challenging DC (Dishonest-Charity) setting. As expected, subjects with higher MFQ scores, i.e. stronger moral integrity, were less likely to cheat in this setting. However, it is interesting to note that not always the expected MFQ domains show a significant relationship with the level of cheating. For example, we expected the \\u003cem\\u003eFairness/reciprocity\\u003c/em\\u003e domain to be associated with less cheating, as people high in fairness would have a more difficult time violating the rules. Similarly, we expected the moral domain \\u003cem\\u003eAuthority/respect\\u003c/em\\u003e to be associated with less cheating, due to the respect for the rules of the game. But no significant correlation was found in these two cases. We hypothesised that social dominance orientation (SDO) factors would be associated with a higher propensity for cheating. However, no such associations were found with the exception in the SH setting and even then the effect was measured in the opposite direction. Since in the SH setting only the distribution of rolls was significantly different from the uniform distribution, but the level of cheating was not significant, we believe that the relationships between SDO factors and cheating do not provide reliable information. This is probably due to high stochasticity of the sample under study. Consequently, the relationship between the SDO factors and the level of cheating is therefore cannot be interpreted reliably and further studies will be needed to explore this.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\u003cp\\u003eAs in all cases, there were limiting factors in this series of experiments. Perhaps, most importantly, the money to be won was probably too small to stimulate intensive cheating. Furthermore, because of the COVID pandemics and the consequent lock-downs, the experiment took so long that inflation further decreased the value of the target yield.\\u003c/p\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"Conclusion\",\"content\":\"\\u003cp\\u003eOur most important result is that by-product altruism had a larger effect on participants\\u0026rsquo; cheating behaviour than moral erosion caused by the dishonesty of the partner in our experimental setting. Examining a number of behavioural factors, we found a clear correlation between behavioural factors and the level of cheating only in the most morally challenging case (CD: Charity-Dishonest case), indicating that there are many factors that combine to influence the decision in this game. Putting our results in a broader context, there could be a strong excuse for unethical, corrupt, or immoral behaviour if the parties feel that their cheating act also provides some sort of benefits for others or for the society, in addition to the personal, selfish gains.\\u003c/p\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"Methods\",\"content\":\"\\u003ch2\\u003eParticipants\\u003c/h2\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eParticipants were recruited mainly from the Faculty of Science of E\\u0026ouml;tv\\u0026ouml;s Lor\\u0026aacute;nd University, through flyers (see Supporting information S1) and calls for participation in Facebook groups. We expected most participants to be university students: mostly undergraduates of biology, chemistry, geography and psychology. Recruitment started on September 15, 2019, and ended on November 21, 2023. The average age of the participants was 22.6\\u0026plusmn;6 years. Among the 144 participants there were 96 (67%) women and 47 (33%) men, 1 participant preferred not to give her/his gender.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eParticipants who did not finish the experiment for any reason (either because they were unwilling or because of technical difficulties) were excluded from data analysis. We kept recruiting participants until we reached the sample size specified by the power analysis in all experimental conditions for our confirmatory data analysis: 36 participants per condition Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions. The only person who communicated with the participants, was unaware of which of the four treatments each participant had been assigned to, creating a double blind situation\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ch2\\u003eExperimental setting and procedures\\u003c/h2\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eOur plan was to have the same researcher, conduct all experiments. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the consequent closing of the university building, the experiment took much longer than expectedDorottya Deli ran the experiments between 8th of October 2019 and 16th February 2021, Borb\\u0026aacute;la K\\u0026iacute;v\\u0026eacute;s ran the experiments between 4th of October 2021 and 20th of April 2023, Judit Mokos ran the experiments between 16th of May 2023 and 24th of November 2023. The effect of the experimenter on the game-behaviour were tested and no effect was found (see Supporting information S8).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe experimenter made an appointment with participants in e-mail and met them one-by-one at the Faculty of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology, where our experimental room was situated. The experimenter followed a written protocol (see Supporting information S2) for conducting the experiments, including the scripts for what to say to the participants.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe experimental room is about 3x4 m, with white walls without any objects and non-necessary furnitures, The experimental desk is to the right of the door with a chair and all other materials necessary for the experiment: a notebook, a mouse, a lidded cup with a hole on top and a dice in it and a sheet of paper with the informed consent. (For pictures of the experimental room and all the equipment used, see Supporting information S3)\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe experimenter asked the participant to sign the informed consent form (see Supporting information S4) and then to take a random four-digit number from an envelope of number cards that would be used to connect the results of the game with the questionnaires. The participants took their number with them after the experiment. \\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe experimenter then told the participant that all instructions for the game would be on screen and that she would be in the opposite room should the participant have questions (see Supporting information S5). Then she asked them to come and get her when the game was over.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eAfter this, the experimenter left the room and the participant went through the steps of the game alone. When the game was over, the participant informed the experimenter. She went back to the experimental room, where the last screen on the computer showed the reward that the participant won during the game. The experimenter wrote down the reward on the number card.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe experimenter then opened a Google Form in the browser, which contained the Moral Foundations Questionnaire [31,32]( see Supporting information S6) and the Social Dominance Questionnaire [34,36](see Supporting information S6). The experimenter left the room until the participant filled out the questionnaires.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eFinally, the experimenter paid the participant, they signed a receipt and then she concluded the experiment.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ch2\\u003eDisclosures\\u003c/h2\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eWe preregistered a full Methods section and analysis scripts on the Open Science Framework, together with the materials (code for the game, questionnaires, etc.) or pictures of the materials we used. All materials can be downloaded from: https://osf.io/vsfnd. All experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. Informed consent was obtained from all the participants.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ch2\\u003ePsychological traits\\u003c/h2\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThe Moral Foundations Questionnaire [31,32] (MFQ) and the seven-item Social Dominance Questionnaire [34,36] (SDO7) was recorded. MFQ contains five subscales (Authority underlies virtues of leadership and followership, Fairness underlies the virtues of justice and rights, Harm underlies the virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance, Ingroup underlies the virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group, and Purity underlies the virtues of self-discipline, self-improvement, naturalness, and spirituality). SDO7 measures the participant\\u0026rsquo;s support for social hierarchy and contains two subscales (The \\u003cem\\u003eDominance\\u003c/em\\u003e subscale indicating when participants value in-group dominance over out-group, and \\u003cem\\u003eAnti-Egalitarianism subscale\\u003c/em\\u003e indicating when value nonegalitarian, hierarchical relationships between groups), and the average of the items represents overall social dominance. For more details see the Supporting information S6.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ch2\\u003eStatistical methods\\u003c/h2\\u003e\\n\\u003ch3\\u003ePower analysis\\u003c/h3\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eIn designing the experiments, we used power analysis based on previous papers to estimate the sample size. A detailed description of the analysis can be found in Supporting information S7.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ch3\\u003eData analysis\\u003c/h3\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eOur null hypothesis is that the reported values come from a uniform distribution, i.e. numbers from 1 to 6 are reported with the same probability, since we used a fair dice (previously tested, chi-square goodness-of-fit test, n=703, p=0.9198). Our alternative hypothesis is that participants cheat and report doubles in order to inflate their chance for a reward. \\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThis would lead to skewed distributions when the participant plays with a dishonest simulated partner who reports larger numbers with higher probability. In case of an honest simulated partner, whose dice throw values were sampled from a uniform distribution, we expect that the participants\\u0026apos; reported values also come from a uniform distribution (although it is possible that participants try to signal to their supposed partners to cheat by occasionally reporting 6s, but we do not expect this to create a significant difference).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eWe used chi-square goodness of fit tests to test whether the reported values come from a uniform distribution, separately for each condition. We have specified \\u003cem\\u003esimulate.p.value = TRUE\\u003c/em\\u003e, so the \\u003cem\\u003echisq.test\\u003c/em\\u003e R function uses a test statistic and P-value based on a Monte Carlo approach. In this case, there is no assumed chi-square distribution for the test statistic, so there is also no df parameter involved. We decided not to use Kolmogorov-Smirnov, because the large number of ties in our sample makes this test unreliable.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eUltimately, participants must report doubles, i.e. match their reported values to that of Player A, in order to increase the probability of their payoff. The chi-square test cannot detect cheating in those groups where player A is honest, even if player B cheats on each and every round, because the distribution of reported values would still come from a uniform distribution. Testing the mean of the reported numbers against an expected value of 3.5 does not make sense for the same reasons.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eTherefore, we tested whether the number of doubles is higher than its expected value with one-sided one-sample Wilcoxon signed-rank U tests (one-sided one sample Mann-Whitney test) in each condition (the probability of throwing a double is 1/6; the expected number of doubles in 20 rounds is 20*1/6 = 3.33 in case of a fair dice and honest player).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eWe compared the number of doubles in pairs of conditions with one-sided two-sample Mann-Whitney U tests: the effect of dishonest partners vs honest partners in the simple game and in the charity game and the effect of charity vs no charity with honest partner and with dishonest partner. We note that if there is a ceiling effect in both of the compared conditions, the effect cannot be detected.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eWe tested the effect of predictors with linear regression. The dependent variable was the number of reported doubles (interval) and the predictors were game (binary) and partner (binary).\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003ch3\\u003eExploratory data analysis\\u003c/h3\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eWe did not preregister data analysis regarding the questionnaire data. To study the relationship between corruption psychological traits, a series linear model was fitted for the four conditions separately, where the dependent variable was the number of doubles reported by the participants, and the explanatory variables were the MFQ Authority, MFQ Fairness, MFQ Harm, MFQ Ingroup, MFQ Purity, SDO7 Dominance and SDO7 Egalitarian subscales. To fit the linear model the \\u003cem\\u003elm\\u003c/em\\u003e function from the \\u003cem\\u003estats\\u003c/em\\u003e R package, to obtain p values the \\u003cem\\u003esumm\\u003c/em\\u003e function from the \\u003cem\\u003ejtools\\u003c/em\\u003e R package was used.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"Declarations\",\"content\":\"\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eAcknowledgements\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eWe are grateful to the Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology at E\\u0026ouml;tv\\u0026ouml;s University for providing the experimental room.\\u0026nbsp;\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eAuthor contributions\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eBG, AF, JM, IS and ZV planned the research. JM wrote the code for the experiment. DD, BK and JM performed the experiments. AF and JM analysed the data. BG, AF, JM, IS and ZV wrote the paper. IS supervised the research project.\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eData availability statement\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eAll our data can be downloaded from here:\\u0026nbsp;https://repo.researchdata.hu/privateurl.xhtml?token=53a8049d-4578-4ee5-9eb0-b4e28539c042\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003e\\u003cstrong\\u003eFunding Declaration section of the manuscript\\u003c/strong\\u003e\\u003c/p\\u003e\\n\\u003cp\\u003eThis work is supported by\\u0026nbsp;\\u003cstrong\\u003eHungarian Scientific Research Fund\\u003c/strong\\u003e, Grant ID K128289.\\u003c/p\\u003e\"},{\"header\":\"References\",\"content\":\"\\u003col\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cspan\\u003eBoyd, R. \\u0026amp; Richerson, P. J. Culture and the evolution of human cooperation. \\u003cem\\u003ePhilos. Trans. R Soc. Lond. B Biol. 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Chapter 9: Corruption and populism: the linkage. In A Research Agenda for Studies of Corruption. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Retrieved Nov 22, 2024, from (2020). \\u003cspan class=\\\"ExternalRef\\\"\\u003e\\u003cspan class=\\\"RefSource\\\"\\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.4337/9781789905007.00016\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003cspan address=\\\"10.4337/9781789905007.00016\\\" targettype=\\\"DOI\\\" class=\\\"RefTarget\\\"\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003cli\\u003e\\u003cspan\\u003eRaihani, N. J. \\u0026amp; Power, E. A. No good deed goes unpunished: the social costs of prosocial behaviour. \\u003cem\\u003eEvol. Hum. Sci.\\u003c/em\\u003e \\u003cb\\u003e3\\u003c/b\\u003e, e40. \\u003cspan class=\\\"ExternalRef\\\"\\u003e\\u003cspan class=\\\"RefSource\\\"\\u003ehttps://do.org/10.1017/ehs.2021.35\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003cspan address=\\\"https://do.10.1017/ehs.2021.35\\\" targettype=\\\"DOI\\\" class=\\\"RefTarget\\\"\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003c/span\\u003e (2021).\\u003c/span\\u003e\\u003c/li\\u003e\\u003c/ol\\u003e\"}],\"fulltextSource\":\"\",\"fullText\":\"\",\"funders\":[],\"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow\":false,\"hasManuscriptDocX\":true,\"hasOptedInToPreprint\":true,\"hasPassedJournalQc\":\"\",\"hasAnyPriority\":false,\"hideJournal\":false,\"highlight\":\"\",\"institution\":\"\",\"isAcceptedByJournal\":false,\"isAuthorSuppliedPdf\":false,\"isDeskRejected\":\"\",\"isHiddenFromSearch\":false,\"isInQc\":false,\"isInWorkflow\":false,\"isPdf\":false,\"isPdfUpToDate\":true,\"isWithdrawnOrRetracted\":false,\"journal\":{\"display\":true,\"email\":\"info@researchsquare.com\",\"identity\":\"scientific-reports\",\"isNatureJournal\":false,\"hasQc\":true,\"allowDirectSubmit\":false,\"externalIdentity\":\"scirep\",\"sideBox\":\"Learn more about [Scientific Reports](http://www.nature.com/srep/)\",\"snPcode\":\"\",\"submissionUrl\":\"\",\"title\":\"Scientific Reports\",\"twitterHandle\":\"\",\"acdcEnabled\":true,\"dfaEnabled\":true,\"editorialSystem\":\"stoa\",\"reportingPortfolio\":\"Scientific Reports\",\"inReviewEnabled\":true,\"inReviewRevisionsEnabled\":true},\"keywords\":\"\",\"lastPublishedDoi\":\"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7393702/v1\",\"lastPublishedDoiUrl\":\"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7393702/v1\",\"license\":{\"name\":\"CC BY 4.0\",\"url\":\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/\"},\"manuscriptAbstract\":\"\\u003cp\\u003eExploring the motivations behind fraudulent behaviours, such as corruption, are often done using dice-rolling experiments. In the present experiment, we investigated how the willingness for cheating is influenced by (i) the cheating behaviour of a partner and (ii) by-product altruism (cost-free charity). We studied four settings of the dice-rolling game, with and without a cheating partner and with and without by-product altruism. Following the game phase, subjects filled out the Moral Foundations Questionnaire and the Social Dominance Orientation questionnaires. We found that while in the non-charity settings the cheating is not experienced independently of the chatting behaviour of the partner, but it is significantly increased by the possibility of donating to charitable foundations. Subjects with a stronger moral integrity were less likely to cheat in the cheating partner and charity option settings. No clear associations were found between cheating and Social Dominance Orientation. Our results showed that the chance of engaging in corrupt behaviour is significantly increased if the subjects perceive that they are doing a socially beneficial act as a by-product of their unethical behaviour.\\u003c/p\\u003e\",\"manuscriptTitle\":\"I did it for their sake! - Social benefit drives corruption in a dice rolling experiment\",\"msid\":\"\",\"msnumber\":\"\",\"nonDraftVersions\":[{\"code\":1,\"date\":\"2025-09-29 17:30:58\",\"doi\":\"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7393702/v1\",\"editorialEvents\":[{\"type\":\"communityComments\",\"content\":0},{\"type\":\"decision\",\"content\":\"Revision requested\",\"date\":\"2025-12-23T04:44:55+00:00\",\"index\":\"\",\"fulltext\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"editorInvitedReview\",\"content\":\"\",\"date\":\"2025-12-22T15:53:32+00:00\",\"index\":\"hide\",\"fulltext\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"reviewerAgreed\",\"content\":\"31878841055984052745738798642989969982\",\"date\":\"2025-11-21T14:28:10+00:00\",\"index\":\"hide\",\"fulltext\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"editorInvitedReview\",\"content\":\"\",\"date\":\"2025-11-20T13:54:57+00:00\",\"index\":\"hide\",\"fulltext\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"reviewerAgreed\",\"content\":\"135061355820925926574894751733690297969\",\"date\":\"2025-11-18T07:30:17+00:00\",\"index\":\"hide\",\"fulltext\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"reviewerAgreed\",\"content\":\"210994483775194207254318831134715049086\",\"date\":\"2025-11-18T05:16:07+00:00\",\"index\":\"hide\",\"fulltext\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"reviewersInvited\",\"content\":\"\",\"date\":\"2025-09-18T07:49:55+00:00\",\"index\":\"\",\"fulltext\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"editorAssigned\",\"content\":\"\",\"date\":\"2025-09-09T01:51:15+00:00\",\"index\":\"\",\"fulltext\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"editorInvited\",\"content\":\"\",\"date\":\"2025-09-02T13:45:52+00:00\",\"index\":\"\",\"fulltext\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"checksComplete\",\"content\":\"\",\"date\":\"2025-08-21T07:56:27+00:00\",\"index\":\"\",\"fulltext\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"submitted\",\"content\":\"Scientific Reports\",\"date\":\"2025-08-21T07:29:41+00:00\",\"index\":\"\",\"fulltext\":\"\"}],\"status\":\"published\",\"journal\":{\"display\":true,\"email\":\"info@researchsquare.com\",\"identity\":\"scientific-reports\",\"isNatureJournal\":false,\"hasQc\":true,\"allowDirectSubmit\":false,\"externalIdentity\":\"scirep\",\"sideBox\":\"Learn more about [Scientific Reports](http://www.nature.com/srep/)\",\"snPcode\":\"\",\"submissionUrl\":\"\",\"title\":\"Scientific Reports\",\"twitterHandle\":\"\",\"acdcEnabled\":true,\"dfaEnabled\":true,\"editorialSystem\":\"stoa\",\"reportingPortfolio\":\"Scientific Reports\",\"inReviewEnabled\":true,\"inReviewRevisionsEnabled\":true}}],\"origin\":\"\",\"ownerIdentity\":\"4e52a0e7-35ab-4d69-8c92-6c2c46069a71\",\"owner\":[],\"postedDate\":\"September 29th, 2025\",\"published\":true,\"recentEditorialEvents\":[],\"rejectedJournal\":[],\"revision\":\"\",\"amendment\":\"\",\"status\":\"under-review\",\"subjectAreas\":[{\"id\":55450387,\"name\":\"Physical sciences/Mathematics and computing\"},{\"id\":55450388,\"name\":\"Biological sciences/Psychology\"},{\"id\":55450389,\"name\":\"Social science/Psychology\"}],\"tags\":[],\"updatedAt\":\"2026-04-20T09:24:22+00:00\",\"versionOfRecord\":[],\"versionCreatedAt\":\"2025-09-29 17:30:58\",\"video\":\"\",\"vorDoi\":\"\",\"vorDoiUrl\":\"\",\"workflowStages\":[]},\"version\":\"v1\",\"identity\":\"rs-7393702\",\"journalConfig\":\"researchsquare\"},\"__N_SSP\":true},\"page\":\"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]\",\"query\":{\"redirect\":\"/article/rs-7393702\",\"identity\":\"rs-7393702\",\"version\":[\"v1\"]},\"buildId\":\"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7\",\"isFallback\":false,\"isExperimentalCompile\":false,\"dynamicIds\":[84888],\"gssp\":true,\"scriptLoader\":[]}","source_license":"CC-BY-4.0","license_restricted":false}