How does probabilistic harm affect dishonesty? An experiment.

Negative consequences of dishonest behavior prevent people from breaking rules for selfish gains. However, harm caused by many kinds of dishonest behavior is uncertain. In the present study, we let participants to break rules in a sorting task in order to increase their rewards while simultaneously harming a third party, simulating a bribe-taking. We varied the probability with which the harm occurred while keeping the expected size of harm constant across experimental conditions. We found that uncertainty of negative consequences of corrupt behavior had no effect on bribe-taking.