Committed (dis)honesty: A systematic meta-analytic review of the divergent effects of social commitment to individuals or honesty oaths on dishonest behavior.

People feel committed to other individuals, groups, organizations, or moral norms in many contexts of everyday life. Such social commitment can lead to positive outcomes, such as increased job satisfaction or relationship longevity; yet, there can also be detrimental effects to feeling committed. Recent high-profile cases of fraud or corruption in companies like Enron or Volkswagen are likely influenced by strong commitment to the organization or coworkers. Although social commitment might increase dishonest behavior, there is little systematic knowledge about when and how this may occur. In the present project, we reviewed 20,988 articles, focusing on studies that experimentally manipulated social commitment and measured dishonest behavior. We retained 445 effect sizes from 121 articles featuring a total of 91,683 participants across 33 countries. We found no evidence that social commitment increases or reduces dishonest behavior in general. Nonetheless, we did find evidence that the effect strongly depends on the target of the commitment. Feeling committed to other individuals or groups reduces honest behavior (