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Heterogeneity in banker culture and its influence on dishonesty

Author

Listed:
  • Rahwan, Zoe
  • Yoeli, Erez
  • Fasolo, Barbara
Abstract
The social sciences are going through what has been described as a ‘reproducibility crisis’1,2. Highly influential findings derived from accessible populations, such as laboratories and crowd-sourced worker platforms, are not always replicated. Less attention has been given to replicating findings that are derived from inaccessible populations, and recent high-profile replication attempts explicitly excluded such populations3. Pioneering experimental work4 offered a rare glimpse into banker culture and found that bankers, in contrast to other professionals, are more dishonest when they think about their job. Given the importance of the banking sector, and before academics or policy-makers rely on these findings as an accurate diagnosis of banking culture, an exploration of their generalizability is warranted. Here we conduct the same incentivized task with bankers and non-bankers from five different populations across three continents (n = 1,282 participants). In our banker studies in the Middle East and Asia Pacific (n = 148 and n = 620, respectively), we observe some dishonesty, although—in contrast to the original study4—this was not significantly increased among bankers primed to think about their work compared to bankers who were not primed. We also find that inducing non-banking professionals to think about their job does not have a significant effect on honesty. We explore sampling and methodological differences to explain the variation in findings in relation to bankers and identify two key points. First, the expectations of the general population regarding banker behaviour vary across jurisdictions, suggesting that banking culture in the jurisdiction of the original study4 may not be consistent worldwide. Second, having approached 27 financial institutions, many of which expressed concerns of adverse findings, we expect that only banks with a sound culture participated in our study. The latter introduces possible selection bias that may undermine the generalizability of any similar field study. More broadly, our study highlights the complexity of undertaking a high-fidelity replication of sensitive, highly publicized fieldwork with largely inaccessible populations resulting from institutional and geographical barriers. For policy-makers, this work suggests that caution should be exercised in generalizing the findings of the original study4 to other populations.

Suggested Citation

  • Rahwan, Zoe & Yoeli, Erez & Fasolo, Barbara, 2019. "Heterogeneity in banker culture and its influence on dishonesty," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102656, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:102656
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/102656/
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Nils Köbis & Jean-François Bonnefon & Iyad Rahwan, 2021. "Bad machines corrupt good morals," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(6), pages 679-685, June.
    2. Heckelei, Thomas & Huettel, Silke & Odening, Martin & Rommel, Jens, 2021. "The replicability crisis and the p-value debate – what are the consequences for the agricultural and food economics community?," Discussion Papers 316369, University of Bonn, Institute for Food and Resource Economics.
    3. Heinicke, Franziska & König-Kersting, Christian & Schmidt, Robert, 2022. "Injunctive vs. descriptive social norms and reference group dependence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 199-218.
    4. Huber, Christoph & Huber, Jürgen, 2020. "Bad bankers no more? Truth-telling and (dis)honesty in the finance industry," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 472-493.
    5. Elisabeth Gsottbauer & Daniel Müller & Samuel Müller & Stefan T. Trautmann & Galina Zudenkova, 2020. "Social class and (un)ethical behavior: Causal versus correlational evidence," Working Papers 2020-10, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    6. Stoll, Julius, 2022. "The cost of honesty: Field evidence☆," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    7. Heinz, Matthias & Gill, Andrej & Schumacher, Heiner & Sutter, Matthias, 2020. "Trustworthiness in the Financial Industry," CEPR Discussion Papers 15147, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Martin Holmén & Felix Holzmeister & Michael Kirchler & Matthias Stefan & Erik Wengström, 2023. "Economic Preferences and Personality Traits Among Finance Professionals and the General Population," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(656), pages 2949-2977.
    9. Jens Rommel & Julian Sagebiel & Marieke Cornelia Baaken & Jesús Barreiro‐Hurlé & Douadia Bougherara & Luigi Cembalo & Marija Cerjak & Tajana Čop & Mikołaj Czajkowski & María Espinosa‐Goded & Julia Höh, 2023. "Farmers' risk preferences in 11 European farming systems: A multi‐country replication of Bocquého et al. ()," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(3), pages 1374-1399, September.
    10. An, Jiafu & Jiang, Mengfei & Xu, Jiaman, 2021. "Professional norms and risk-taking of bank employees: Do expectations of peers’ risk preferences matter?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    11. Andrej Gill & Matthias Heinz & einer Schumacher & Matthias Sutter, 2020. "Trustworthiness in the Financial Industry," Working Papers 2020-28, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    12. Gill, Andrej & Heinz, Matthias & Schumacher, Heiner & Sutter, Matthias, 2020. "Trustworthiness in the Financial Industry," IZA Discussion Papers 13583, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Andrej Gill & Matthias Heinz & Heiner Schumacher & Matthias Sutter, 2023. "Social Preferences of Young Professionals and the Financial Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(7), pages 3905-3919, July.
    14. Schram, Arthur & Zheng, Jin Di & Zhuravleva, Tatyana, 2022. "Corruption: A cross-country comparison of contagion and conformism," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 497-518.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    decision making; human behaviour;

    JEL classification:

    • F3 - International Economics - - International Finance
    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance

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