New project at the Social Mind Center led by Christophe Heintz / Beliefs fostering dishonest behavior: Combining ethnographic and experimental evidence (BFD)

The project will investigate the factors that determine people's attitudes toward social rules or norms that are aimed at improving social welfare. Dishonesty can be characterized as failing to respect these rules, and adhering to them can be necessary for stable cooperation and resolving collective action problems. However, against this first operational characterization, ethnographic and experimental data suggest that depending on the context, people may break a rule and still think of themselves as honest. Context systematically influence people’s attitude towards rules.

The project’s focus is on the contextual and cultural beliefs that determine negative attitudes towards the rules meant to increase social welfare and it will investigate what these beliefs are and how they spread.

The project's team include Victoria Fomina (Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology), Christophe Heintz (Department of Cognitive Science), Mia Karabegovic (Department of Cognitive Science), and Anand Murugesan (School of Public Policy), Davide Torsello (CEU Business School).