Essays in Moral Decisions

On Thursday 12 September 2024 Jareef Bin Martuza will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.

We often make decisions about right and wrong. Beyond incentives and personal characteristics, what else might influence these moral decisions?

In his first article, Jareef Bin Martuza explores how recalling past behavior influences current actions. A large study (N=5,091) finds that when people remember a time they acted in a morally good way, they are more likely to behave prosocial afterward. This indicates a strong and consistent effect where recalling moral behavior encourages further moral actions.

The second article investigates how the size of a company impacts consumer dishonesty. Across eight experiments (total N=5,670), the findings suggest that people are more likely to cheat larger businesses than smaller ones. This biased behavior is driven by perceptions that big businesses are less vulnerable and less moral. As a result, large and growing businesses may be more targeted by consumer dishonesty.

Essays in Industrial Organization of Spatially Differentiated Markets

On Tuesday 20 August 2024 Alina Ozhegova will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend her thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.

Article three examines the role of group identities in dishonest behavior. In two large-scale experiments (total N=2,886) with Democrat and Republican voters, they find that while people are equally likely to cheat both their own and opposing political groups, they are more likely to lie if it benefits someone from their own group rather than the opposing group. This suggests that intergroup bias may lead to coalitional, rather than purely selfish, dishonesty.

Article four asks whether people believe others are similarly, more, or less dishonest than they truly are. Over a three-year research program (2022-2024) covering 31 different effects (total N=8,127), the meta-analysis found that people overestimate how dishonest others are by an average of 14 percentage points. This implies that the actual level of dishonesty in society is lower than most people believe.

The fifth and last article studies dishonesty across gender by recruiting 3,166 participants from nine countries. Participants were tempted to cheat another individual, whose gender was either male, female, or unspecified.

How and when group identity affects economic behavior

On 23 August 2024 Daniel Carvajal-Zuniga will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.

Importantly, females cheated other females 53.6% less than they did other males, suggesting favoritism among females may underlie gender bias in dishonesty.