Chinese the most dishonest, Japanese and British the least, study finds
People in 15 countries took part in two tests in which they had a financial incentive to cheat; Asia’s poor showing on coin-flip test may reflect different attitudes to gambling, study’s lead author says
Chinese people are the most dishonest and British and Japanese people the most honest, according to a study of truthfulness involving more than 1,500 people from 15 countries.
Seventy per cent of the research participants from China cheated in one of two online tests, said researchers at the University of East Anglia in Britain. They found some dishonesty among people in all 15 countries.
In the first test, participants were asked to flip a coin and state whether it landed on “heads” or “tails”. They knew if they reported that it landed on heads, they would be rewarded with US$3 or US$5.
If the proportion reporting heads was more than 50 per cent in a given country, this indicated that people were being dishonest, the researcher said.
Surprisingly, people were more pessimistic about the honesty of people in their own country than of people in other countries
Participants from China were found to be the least honest, with 70 per cent estimated to have lied about which side coins landed on, compared to 3.4 per cent of British participants, who emerged as the most honest in this test.