The business culture in the banking industry may favour dishonest behaviour, a new study suggests. The authors asked 128 employees from a large international bank to play a game where they could keep the money they earned in a coin tossing game.
The employees that were asked job-related questions before the experiment started cheated and reported higher earnings in the game more often than the employees who were asked unrelated questions. The effect was not shown among students or people who did not work for banks, suggesting that the phenomenon is specific to ‘banking culture.’
Original research paper published in Nature on November 19, 2014.
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