DENIAL: A conceptual framework to improve honesty nudges.

Strategies to mitigate dishonesty have met with limited success, leading behavioral ethics scholars to call for a deeper understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying dishonesty. In this article, I introduce a conceptual framework, DENIAL, that identifies four fundamental mechanisms, or justifications, which provide people a rationale to consider themselves as ethical while acting unethically. I derive these justifications from a review of scholarship within cognate fields, drawing on Moral Disengagement Theory and Neutralization Theory. I identify the victim (they Deserve it), the situation (I blame my Environment), the harm (I cause No Injury), and the social relationship (I have other ALlegiances) as fundamental justifications for dishonesty. I discuss how future mitigation strategies might harness these justifications to improve their efficacy.

Shame Broadcasts Social Norms: The Positive Social Effects of Shame on Norm Acquisition and Normative Behavior.

How does shame affect social cohesion? Prior work has drawn divergent conclusions to this question because shame can spur maladaptive behaviors for people who experience it. However, past work has overlooked the interindividual effects of shame-how one's expression of shame affects people who witness it. We investigated these social-learning effects of shame and identified norm transmission as a reliable route by which shame facilitates social cohesion. Across five studies and two supplemental studies with U.S.-based adult participants (N = 3,726), we manipulated whether someone conveys shame, no specific emotion, or other discrete emotions regarding their behavior. We then assessed the effect of this emotional expression on participants' norm inferences and norm-conforming behavior. We found that shame broadcasts particularly strong signals about social norms, and people adjust their behavior to align with these norms. We discuss how these findings challenge common conclusions about shame and generate insights about shame's influence on social life.

An experimental investigation of preference misrepresentation in the residency match.

The development and deployment of matching procedures that incentivize truthful preference reporting is considered one of the major successes of market design research. In this study, we test the degree to which these procedures succeed in eliminating preference misrepresentation. We administered an online experiment to 1,714 medical students immediately after their participation in the medical residency match-a leading field application of strategy-proof market design. When placed in an analogous, incentivized matching task, we find that 23% of participants misrepresent their preferences. We explore the factors that predict preference misrepresentation, including cognitive ability, strategic positioning, overconfidence, expectations, advice, and trust. We discuss the implications of this behavior for the design of allocation mechanisms and the social welfare in markets that use them.