The Honesty Experiment



It’s no surprise that people are more honest when they know that they’re being watched. But what about just reminding them of the idea of being watched, without them actually being watched?

For years, people at the University of Newcastle’s Division of Psychology have an honor (or trust) system where they are requested to deposit payment for coffee in an "honesty box." There was a note saying how much they should pay.

In 2006, Melissa Bateson and colleagues decided to do a little experiment: they placed an image above the note. They alternate between two pictures: one week they would use a picture of eyes and the other week, flowers.

After 10 weeks, they plotted the amount of money received versus drinks consumed and found that people paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed!

Here’s the study: Link [PDF] - via Think or Thwim


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Posted on January 18, 2008 at 4:23 am by Alex
Category: Science & Tech

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11 comments to "The Honesty Experiment"

  • k
    January 18th, 2008 at 7:33 am

    That’s really cool. I like how big of a difference there is from picture to picture.

  • Zach
    January 18th, 2008 at 9:38 am

    This has been done. I think I read about it in Freakonomics. It was a man who sold bagels on the honor system at offices. He added eyes and stealing decreased.

  • Jon
    January 18th, 2008 at 9:49 am

    Look at that last set of eyes - I can see why people were the most honest that week.

  • Vako
    January 18th, 2008 at 10:43 am

    Flower-power vs. Big Brother… One is good for productivity and function. The other is dysfunctional.

    Very interesting little piece of research. And very telling. (assuming it was conducted true).

    Democracy = entropy and failure.

    Authority = balance and functionality.

  • estapler
    January 18th, 2008 at 11:14 am

    Veronica Loughran: “How much money did you leave up there?”
    Dante: “Like three dollars in mixed change and a couple of singles. This time in the morning, people just get a paper or coffee.”
    Veronica: “You’re trusting.”
    Dante: “Why do you say that?”
    Veronica: “How do you know they’re taking the right amount of change or even paying for what they take.”
    Dante: “Theoretically, people see money on the counter, no one around, they think they’re being watched.”
    Veronica: “Honesty through paranoia.”

    -Clerks

  • AWOL
    January 18th, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    I know the picture is a very limited sample, but it’s kind of interesting how the men’s eyes seem to generate more “honesty”.

    But again, there are only two men, two woman and what i can only guess is an androgenous vampire in the middle there…

  • robgonzo
    January 18th, 2008 at 3:36 pm

    so from now on I’m going to put a picture of eyes on anything I leave in the breakroom fridge…

  • Pudifoot
    January 19th, 2008 at 12:40 am

    i don’t think it is the eyes that make people honest. It seems to me that flowers make people evil!!!!

  • donna
    January 19th, 2008 at 3:18 am

    Flowers are generally a gift, so maybe people perceived that they didn’t need to pay since they were being given a “gift”…

  • Johnny87
    January 19th, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    I think people are reading too much into the significance of the flowers. The way I saw it was, flowers are a generic decoration that you wouldn’t associate with the coffee, whereas the eyes make people think “What’s with the eyes? Big brother or what? Oh yeah, the coffee…”

    Be interesting to repeat this with some method of working out whether more people were paying up, or whether the people who pay were paying more. Maybe a secret camera, but that might defeat the object by validating people’s paranoia.

  • ferrocyanide
    January 19th, 2008 at 5:14 pm

    Notice that the eyes looking straight forward cause the greatest reactions. The first flower picture from the top made people pay more than the second eye picture. Maybe it’s about symmetry or something.

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