Until recently, one of the most influential articles on the empirical psychology of honesty was Shu, Mazar, Gino, Ariely, and Bazerman 2012, which purported to show, across three studies, that people who sign honesty pledges at the beginning of a process in which dishonesty is possible will be much more honest than those who sign at the end of the process. The result is intuitive (if you sign before doing a task, that might change your behavior in a way that signing after wouldn't), and it suggests straightforward, practical interventions: Have students, customers, employees, etc., sign honesty pledges before occasions in which they might be tempted to cheat.
Unfortunately, there appear to have been not just one but two separate instances of fraud in this study, and the results appear not to replicate in an honest (presumably), preregistered replication attempt.
The first fraud was revealed in 2021, and concerned customers' honest or dishonest reporting of mileage to an insurance company. The data appear to have been largely fabricated, either by Ariely or by whoever supplied him the data; none of the other collaborators are implicated.
The second fraud was revealed last week, and appears to be entirely separate, involving multiple papers by Gino, including Study 1 in the already-retracted Shu et al. 2012. In Shu et al., Study 1, participants could receive financial advantage by overreporting travel expenses or how many math puzzles they had solved earlier in the experiment, and purportedly there was less overreporting if participants signed an honesty pledge first. Several participants' results appear to have been strategically shifted from one condition to another to produce the reported effect. In light of an apparent pattern of fraud across several papers, Harvard has put Gino on administrative leave.
Yes, two apparently unrelated instances of fraud, by different researchers, on the very same famous article about honesty.
For those who follow such news, Gino's case might bring to mind another notorious case of fraud by a Harvard psychologist: In 2010, Marc Hauser, was found to have faked and altered data in his work on rule-learning in monkeys (e.g., here) and subsequently resigned his academic post.
I have three observations:
First, Gino, Ariely, and Hauser are (or were) three of the most prominent moral psychologists in the world. Although Hauser's discovered fraud concerned monkey rule-learning, he was probably as well known for his work on moral cognition, which culminated in his 2006 book Moral Minds. This is a high rate of discovered fraud among leading moral psychology researchers, especially if we assume that most fraud goes undiscovered. I am struck by the parallel to my series of papers on the moral behavior of ethicists (overview here). Ethicists, and apparently also moral psychologists, appear to behave no better on average than socially similar people who don't study morality.
One might think that ethics and moral psychology would either (a.) tend to draw people particularly interested in advancing ethical ends (for example, particularly attuned to the importance of honesty) and thus presumably personally more ethical than average or (b.) at least make ethics personally more salient for them and thus presumably motivationally stronger. Either neither (a) nor (b) are true or studying ethics and moral psychology also has some countervailing negative effect.
Second, around the time of the discovery of his fraud, Hauser was working on a book titled Evilicious, concerning humans' widespread appetite for behaving immorally, and similarly Gino recently published a book titled Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life. The titles perhaps speak for themselves: Part of studying moral psychology is studying bad moral psychology. (The "rebels" Gino celebrates might not be breaking moral rules -- celebrating that might impair sales and lucrative speaking gigs -- but the idea does appear to generalize.)
Third, the first and second observation suggest a mechanism by which the study of ethics and moral psychology can negatively affect the ethics of the researcher. If people mostly aim -- as I think they do -- toward moral mediocrity, that is, not to be good or bad by absolute standards but rather to be about as morally good as their peers, then if your opinion about what is common changes, your own behavior will tend to change accordingly to match. The more you study the worst side of humanity, the more you can think to yourself "well, even if X is bad, it's not as bad as all that, and people do X all the time". If you study dishonesty, you might be struck by the thought that dishonesty is everywhere -- and then if you are tempted to be dishonest you might think, "well, everyone else is doing it". I can easily imagine someone in Gino's position thinking, probably most researchers have from time to time shifted around a few rows of data to make their results pop out better. Is it really so bad if I do it too? And then once the deed has been done, it probably becomes easier, for multiple reasons, to assume that such fraud is widespread and just part of the usual academic game (grounds for thinking this might include rationalization, positive self-illusion, and using oneself as a model for thinking about others).
I do still think and hope that fraud is very much the exception. In interacting with dozens of researchers over the years and working through a variety of raw datasets, I've seen some shaky methodology and maybe a few instances of unintentional p-hacking; but I have never witnessed, suspected, seen signs of, or heard any suggestion of outright fraud or data alteration.
14 comments:
I wonder whether the vast publicity of the internet prods researchers to fudge data- not to appear right and brilliant but not to appear wrong and tarnish their reputation which now as in Othello's day is everything.
It may be real or perceived humiliation that causes this unethical behavior.
You, Eric, may feel some of the same pressures these eminences do- I can only imagine
This reminds me of a phenomenon we see regularly in the video game speed running community, and I wonder if some insights from there might be illuminating here.
"Speed running", for those that don't know, is the practice of trying to complete a video game in the fastest time possible, either for fun or competitively against others. In order to compete, people will record themselves playing the game and then upload that video where it can be evaluated by a referee and if deemed genuine then placed on a leaderboard. (Fun fact, I hold two speed running world records on extremely unpopular NES games!).
As one might expect, there are occasional attempts to submit fraudulent speed run videos. What is most interesting to me, and what strikes me as similar to the case you write about in this post, is that quite often the fraud is perpetrated by the most talented players of that particular game. Players who might already have the world record and have no one else anywhere near to taking it from them. Players who, undeniable by anyone in the community, could achieve the fraudulent achievement legitimately if they wanted to. On first glance it is perplexing. You would think that the most fraud would come from players driven to it by their own inability to achieve the times they want. Why would the best players in the world regularly submit fraudulent speed run videos?
It seems to me, and to many others (the youtuber Karl Jobst has some amazing videos on this subject if anyone is interested), that it is precisely because these people are so skilled and sure of them selves that they are more likely to attempt fraud. Someone who has put in thousands or tens of thousands of hours practicing a video game, who has broken record after record, knows that they have it in them to do it. They also know how long it might take and how much effort will go into it. So, if you are positive you could do it, what harm is submitting a fake video, right? You are sure in your abilities. If given the time you could get that record legitimately just like you have before. So why go through the trouble? You have already put in the work. You have earned this. On top of that, you know this game better than anyone else on the planet, so perhaps you are in the unique position to know exactly HOW to make a fraudulent video look real. On top of that, you are already respected in the community and your videos will come under less scrutiny than a newcomer who isn't already vetted. It is perfect storm for a sort of self righteous dishonesty.
I wonder if something similar is going on here. You have researchers who are at the top of their fields. Have put in the time and effort, over decades, mastering their craft and refining their research. They are very confident in their hypothesis. But you know how research goes, especially with human subjects. Things don't always come out clean. But they are the world's top expert in this subject! They have thought this through for years and are very confident the data will support their view once they get the experiment design perfect. If they scrap this study maybe it will take a year to get more funding, run experiments, collect data, work with collaborators, etc. How does that help anyone? Why not just fudge the numbers so it shows what they know it would if the study were done correctly. If only we had unlimited time, right? But we don't. They feel justified in this BECAUSE they are an expert and so sure of their skills.
Side note, I wonder if something similar happens in those situations in which the police end up (intentionally or not) framing subjects. The detective has been on the force for 20 years, they trust their intuitions. This guy is guilty. No doubt. I just don't have the evidence to support it. Fill in the rest.
Thanks for the comments, folks!
Howie: Yes, that seems plausible. On fudging the data: I can imagine feeling that temptation, yes. But I actually don't feel it because the possibility doesn't even occur to me -- kind of like it just wouldn't occur to me to steal someone's lunch. What feels more like temptation is a bit of p-hacking -- tweaking the analyses or exclusion conditions a bit to make the result come out better, since (unless it's pre-registered) there is some freedom there. I do try to resist this and in fact have occasionally erred on the side of being conservative by choosing the analysis that looks worse for my results rather than better, just to be safe.
Chris: What a brilliant and thoughtful comparison and analysis! That seems very plausible -- including the extension to police.
I guess this information channels my inner pragmatist. The question that emerged is: what in the world were they thinking? If the temptation to cheat is so embedded within our consciousness that an urge to beat the odds and crash a system is irresistable, it appears to support one writer's assertion concerning "astronomical" existential risk of human extinction. (To be fair and above-board here, I don't recall if he actually used the word extinction, but the prognosis was grim, nonetheless. And other thinkers have used the e word.) I suppose we are reckless by nature...a lot of that goes on everyday, in my 'scrutiating ordinary life.
Psychology, psychiatry, sociology, cognitive science… or the study of human function in general (excepting economics I’d say), are horribly troubled fields. Therefore instead of “making it”, the actual incentive has been “to fake it”. How would you feel if you had devoted your entire life to advancing a given soft science, and yet empirical data would not actually validate your ideas? Wouldn’t you tend to feel that you personally deserve better than failure? Thus you might fudge a few numbers and such to get what you deserve. Apparently that (along with charisma and such) is how people get ahead in these sorts of fields today.
The essential reason that the central behavior science of psychology is so challenging, I think, is because it’s difficult for us to begin from the foundation that we’re all self interested products of our circumstances. Here I speak of not yet accepted basic theory, potentially Newtonian in scope, sometimes referred to as “psychological egoism”. And why is this position so difficult to begin with? Because our societies tend to punish us for doing so by means of the social tool of morality, I think. The only reason that economists have been able to formally found their science upon our self interested nature (and then used this premise to develop unusually strong theory regarding human function), is because it’s an outlying behavioral science and so hasn’t threatened the moral order of things. Once central behavior scientists also become able to formally acknowledge our self interested nature in the face of countering social pressure, empirical observations should finally begin to make sense. Until then I’ll smile and shake my head at all this confusion. From my own perspective there is nothing at all strange about how humans today are sometimes caught being human. But how might human societies be structured to fix what’s not yet even academically understood? Our soft sciences will surely first require some hardening.
Thanks for the spot-on assessment, Eric. It is really simpler than I thought. I was mostly taught to look for the best in everyone until he or she provided sufficient proof, demonstrating otherwise. When I worked in state government, I reported to a cadre of bosses over a span of thirty years, some having more formal education than I, some, less. Such positions,(and access to them), are politically charged and therefore subject to whims and administration changes. I sorta knew that, going in, but was still pretty green. What did quickly enter my consciousness was the fact that had the wrong party affiliation. Lurking behind that was race and sex. By the time I had twenty years under my expanding belt, I fully understood there was no further opportunity for advancement. So, I rode it out, having a nice deferred compensation plan in place, and calmly left the room in 2008. Now, I do philosophy.
Here's a hypothesis to explain both the ethicists and moral psychologists at once: Morality might be like a good joke or romance. Analyzing how it works removes it's charm.
I like that, Daniel. A lot. Insofar as there are many limbs and branches of social and behavioral science these days coupled with interdisciplinary interests, preferences and motives, it must be very hard indeed to carve out a niche. Were I to characterize it in some fashion, I guess I'd call it the fishbone effect. You may remember those ideagraphs---though I never heard them called such. Brainstorming tools, akin in a primitive way, perhaps, to one usage of the term algorithm, casually flung about now.
In short, these professionals need to know something about anything remotely connected with what it is they have been trained to know. And, should they NOT, they must be clever enough to 'fake it' until making it...kind of along the lines of Eric's remarks. As Ken Wilber used to say and write: and just so. Sin duda ninguna, mi hermano? Ya,lo creo que si.
Definitely continue to look for the best in others (and yourself) Paul, pending evidence. How different might things have otherwise gone for Gandhi?
Hilarious Daniel, let’s hope that soft scientists don’t tarnished their fields’ current massive charm… by means of effective explanations!
Bad weather coming in...I will get back to this. Maybe. In any case, remember my remark on interests,preferences and motives. Anyone can understand that if they want or choose to do so. This goes to both Davidson (propositional attitudes) and,the ancient argument over free will,which emerged into Searle's notions on direction of fit. Try harder to think better. Yawn. Waiting for the storm. Should be fun if it is the last thing I do. I can imagine the last thing I might do. Consciousness affords me that capacity. No worries there,either.
NYT on honesty...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/24/business/economy/francesca-gino-harvard-dishonesty.html
Interesting. In a pathetic, self-contradictory way. BTW, the bad weather missed us---went north instead. Others in our state were not as lucky as we. I considered a final comment on this honesty/dishonesty thing. But there is no point in worrying about it.
Anyone who followed the exchange is free to connect his or her dots. Nothing more for me to say.
Hi Eric,
Love your work! The (lack of a) link between the study and the practice of ethical behaviour is a fascinating prospect, especially for those of us who were attracted to the study and teaching of ethics as a fundamentally edifying exercise. However, there is one point that I'd like to raise - and I'll allow here that this might be coloured by my own recent departure from academia. I'd question whether the best way to assess the effect of the study of ethics is by measuring the behaviour of the most successful researchers in the field. Because, in my experience, there were fairly noticible personal differences between those of us drawn to the learning and teaching side of ethics, and those of us most successful in the dog-eat-dog arena of academic publication and research. Thus where you say:
"Either neither (a) nor (b) are true or studying ethics and moral psychology also has some countervailing negative effect."
I would suggest that perhaps in your sample the effect of (a) and/or (b) is swamped by the requirement to be successful in the hyper-competitive environment of academia. If you want to test for the effect of the study of ethics, specifically, perhaps a study of grad students would make an interesting comparison?
Anton, 'to be moved by attraction'...thanks...
...please an example of a studding, learning, teaching exercise environment about ethics...
Is-Was it towards self knowledge and will...
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