The Relationship between Years of Education and Honesty in Decision Making: An Experimental Study in College Students

Previous research has found that age, gender, social status, and some professions are correlated with honesty. However, it is unclear whether a central stage in higher education, undergraduate, affects honest behavior. Given that most undergraduate programs now emphasize the importance of ethics we expected modifications in honest behavior via education or changes in individual economic contexts (e.g. internships). To this end, undergraduate students of the first two and the last two semesters of economics and business, in an university with mandatory ethics courses, tossed a fair coin anonymously and reported the result through a survey (between-subjects design). Heads had monetary benefits in addition to the base pay for participating. It was found that both first and last semester students report probabilities significantly higher than 0.5. Activating professional identity slightly reduced this tendency and posterior probabilities indicate only a small increase in misreporting in the last semesters. The results suggest persistent dishonesty, observable from the start of higher education.