We hypothesized that restraining the urge to void facilitates honest behavior

Urge to void and dishonest behavior: Evidence from a field experiment. Erez Siniver, Yossef Tobol, Gideon Yaniv. Economics Letters, April 27 2022, 110544. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2022.110544

Highlights

• We hypothesized that restraining the urge to void facilitates honest behavior.

• A die-under-the-cup experiment was run in a shopping center with WC entrants and exiters.

• WC entrants cheated significantly less than WC exiters.

• Cheating decreased with the intensity of the urge to void.

Abstract: The present paper reports the results of a study designed to investigate whether restraining the urge to void simultaneously facilitates self-control in the unrelated domain of dishonest behavior. We conducted a field experiment in a big shopping center with passersby who entered or exited the public WC. Participants were recruited by asking WC entrants and exiters if they could spare a few minutes of their time in return for a monetary reward. WC entrants indicated on a short questionnaire the intensity of their urge to void as well as its source (bladder/colon), whereas WC exiters indicated just the latter. All subjects were then offered to perform the Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi (2013) die-under-the-cup task which incentivizes cheating. The results reveal that WC entrants cheated significantly less than WC exiters, supporting the hypothesis that inhibiting visceral responses may spill over to inhibiting simultaneous dishonest behavior, and that cheating decreased with the intensity of the urge to void. No significant connection emerged between cheating and the voiding source.

JEL: C92 K42

Keywords: Urge to voidSelf-controlDishonest behaviorDie-under-the-cup task