Combating the spread of misinformation at scale requires platform-level tools that can address the intentional sharing of misinformation without censorship. Across two pre-registered experiments, we test the potential of self-certification—a novel, user-driven mechanism that allows individuals to voluntarily signal that the information they are sharing is true, backed by their own money. In Experiment 1 (N = 1,490 social media users; 29,800 responses), participants chose to share or not share news headlines (control) or were given an additional option to share the headline and certify that its claim is true. These certifications were either cheap talk (costless) or backed by their own money (costly). Introducing costless certification increased participants’ sharing of true information, while costly certification both increased the sharing of true headlines and decreased the sharing of false headlines, primarily the interesting ones. Both forms of certification increased the average number of shared headlines. In Experiment 2 (N = 2,003 participants; 48,072 responses), participants were presented news headlines depending on their condition either without additional information (control), or with information revealing whether they were previously shared with or without self-certification. When headlines were labeled as certified (costly or costless), participants perceived both false and true headline claims to be more accurate. Our findings suggest that self-certification can increase the quality of information shared, increase sharing activity, and enhance perceptions of accuracy.

Increasing workplace diversity is a common goal. Given research showing that minority applicants anticipate better treatment in diverse workplaces, we ran a field experiment (N = 1,585 applicants, N = 31,928 website visitors) exploring how subtle organizational diversity cues affected applicant behaviour. Potential applicants viewed a company with varying levels of racial/ethnic or gender diversity. There was little evidence that racial/ethnic or gender diversity impacted the demographic composition or quality of the applicant pool. However, fewer applications were submitted to organizations with one form of diversity (that is, racial/ethnic or gender diversity), and more applications were submitted to organizations with only white men employees or employees diverse in race/ethnicity and gender. Finally, exploratory analyses found that female applicants were rated as more qualified than male applicants. Presenting a more diverse workforce does not guarantee more minority applicants, and organizations seeking to recruit minority applicants may need stronger displays of commitments to diversity.

What predicts a neighborhood’s adaptability to essential public health policies and shelter-in-place regulations that prevent the harmful spread of COVID-19? To answer this question, we present a novel application of human mobility patterns and human behavior in a network setting. We analyze 2 years of mobility data (January 2019 to December 2020) from New York City and construct weekly mobility networks between census block groups based on aggregated point-of-interest visit patterns. Our results indicate that neighborhoods’ socioeconomic and geographic characteristics play a significant role in predicting their adaptability to active shelter-in-place policies. Our simulation outcomes reveal that, alongside factors such as race, education, and income, the geographical attributes of neighborhoods, such as access to amenities that satisfy community needs are equally important factors in predicting neighborhood adaptability to public health policies. These findings offer valuable insights that can enhance urban planning strategies, thereby aiding pandemic mitigation efforts and fostering increased adaptability of urban areas in the face of exogenous shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Psychologists, economists, and philosophers have long argued that in environments where deception is normative, moral behavior is harmed. In this article, we show that individuals making decisions within minimally deceptive environments do not behave more dishonestly than in nondeceptive environments. We demonstrate the latter using an example of experimental deception within established institutions, such as laboratories and institutional review boards. We experimentally manipulated whether participants received information about their deception. Across three well-powered studies, we empirically demonstrate that minimally deceptive environments do not affect downstream dishonest behavior. Only when participants were in a minimally deceptive environment and aware of being observed, their dishonest behavior decreased. Our results show that the relationship between deception and dishonesty might be more complicated than previous interpretations have suggested and expand the understanding of how deception might affect (im)moral behavior. We discuss possible limitations and future directions as well as the applied nature of these findings.

Although scientists agree that replications are critical to the debate on the validity of religious priming research, religious priming replications are scarce. This paper attempts to replicate and extend previously observed effects of religious priming on ethical behavior. We test the effect of religious instrumental music on individuals’ ethical behavior with university participants (N = 408) in the Czech Republic, Japan, and the US. Participants were randomly assigned to listen to one of three musical tracks (religious, secular, or white noise) or to no music (control) for the duration of a decision-making game. Participants were asked to indicate which side of a vertically-bisected computer screen contained more dots and, in every trial, indicating that the right side of the screen had more dots earned participants the most money (irrespective of the number of dots). Therefore, participants were able to report dishonestly to earn more money. In agreement with previous research, we did not observe any main effects of condition. However, we were unable to replicate a moderating effect of self-reported religiosity on the effects of religious music on ethical behavior. Nevertheless, further analyses revealed moderating effects for ritual participation and declared religious affiliation congruent with the musical prime. That is, participants affiliated with a religious organization and taking part in rituals cheated significantly less than their peers when listening to religious music. We also observed significant differences in cheating behavior across samples. On average, US participants cheated the most and Czech participants cheated the least. We conclude that normative conduct is, in part, learned through active membership in religious communities and our findings provide further support for religious music as a subtle, moral cue.

Religion can have an important influence in moral decision-making, and religious reminders may deter people from unethical behavior. Previous research indicated that religious contexts may increase prosocial behavior and reduce cheating. However, the perceptual-behavioral link between religious contexts and decision-making lacks thorough scientific understanding. This study adds to the current literature by testing the effects of purely audial religious symbols (instrumental music) on moral behavior across three different sites: Mauritius, the Czech Republic, and the USA. Participants were exposed to one of three kinds of auditory stimuli (religious, secular, or white noise), and subsequently were given a chance to dishonestly report on solved mathematical equations in order to increase their monetary reward. The results showed cross-cultural differences in the effects of religious music on moral behavior, as well as a significant interaction between condition and religiosity across all sites, suggesting that religious participants were more influenced by the auditory religious stimuli than non-religious participants. We propose that religious music can function as a subtle cue associated with moral standards via cultural socialization and ritual participation. Such associative learning can charge music with specific meanings and create sacred cues that influence normative behavior. Our findings provide preliminary support for this view, which we hope further research will investigate more closely.