Financial Times recently printed an article
about a study done by researchers at the University of Zurich which suggested that
bankers have a tendency to lie for financial gain. The study used a control
group and treatment group of bankers. The bankers in the control group were
asked questions about their everyday life (for example, “How many hours of
television do you watch per week?”). The bankers in the treatment group were
asked questions relating to what they did at work as a banker. They then gave
each group a coin, had them toss it ten times, and then had them self-report their
results. The participants were told beforehand whether heads or tails would
count as a success. If no cheating took place, the average amount of heads
compared to tails should have been very close to 50/50 for each group. In the
control group this was the case, but the group who had been primed with
thinking about their profession as bankers reported 58.2% winning tosses.
From these results, the researchers estimate that 26% of the bankers in the
treatment group cheated.
