Beliefs versus Reality: People Overestimate the Actual Dishonesty of Others

Do people believe that others are similarly, more, or less dishonest than they truly are? In a research program on moral decision-making consisting of 31 different effects from 11 experiments (N = 8,127), participants could anonymously decide to lie for personal gain. Crucially, we also asked all participants to estimate what percentage of others would lie in that situation. An internal meta-analysis of all incentive-aligned and scenario-based experiments revealed that people substantially overestimate others' dishonest behavior (Hedges’ g = 0.61; k = 31; N = 8,127), by 14 percentage points on average. Does such belief inaccuracy matter? Study 2 (N = 981) found that providing correct information about actual honesty levels enhanced pro-social beliefs about others. Study 3 (N = 285) found that professional managers have pessimistic beliefs about people’s real-world dishonest behavior (e.g., insurance fraud, tax evasion, workplace theft), and greater moral pessimism predicts greater support for freedom-reducing countermeasures.