Quarter of other folks apply regulations even without a drawback to breaking them

Would you apply a rule, even though doing so harms you and nobody would know in case you broke it? A chain of experiments means that 1 in 4 other folks just do that: obey regulations unconditionally, even within the absence of social force, punishment and private acquire. The effects problem conventional financial theories, which suppose that rule-following is pushed in large part by way of extrinsic incentives, and may reshape how we design new rules.

“Following or breaking rules is what human social behaviour often amounts to,” says Simon Gaechter on the University of…