ArticleNature human behaviour2025
Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Subtle Morality-Related Cues Promote Honest Behavior in Adolescents: Evidence from Chinese Middle School Students.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The People versus Behavioral Science: Alignment between lay and scientific understanding of compliance.PloS one · 2026Article
- Article
- Honesty oaths for rule-following.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Promoting civil discourse on social media using nudges: A tournament of seven interventions.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
42 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Dishonest behaviours such as tax evasion impose significant societal costs. Ex ante honesty oaths-commitments to honesty before action-have been proposed as interventions to counteract dishonest behaviour, but the heterogeneity in findings across operationalizations calls their effectiveness into question. We tested 21 honesty oaths (including a baseline oath)-proposed, evaluated and selected by 44 expert researchers-and a no-oath condition in a megastudy involving 21,506 UK and US participants from Prolific.com who played an incentivized tax evasion game online. Of the 21 interventions, 10 significantly improved tax compliance by 4.5 to 8.5 percentage points, with the most successful nearly halving tax evasion. Limited evidence for moderators was found. Experts and laypeople failed to predict the most effective interventions, though experts' predictions were more accurate. In conclusion, honesty oaths were effective in curbing dishonesty, but their effectiveness varied depending on content. These findings can help design impactful interventions to curb dishonesty.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.