The following post was written by guest-blogger Andrew S. Dreier, author of Strategy, Planning and Litigating to Win
Does the Oath Make
Witnesses More Truthful?
Surprisingly, swearing in witnesses may make them more
truthful, and there are more things you can do to help them along the path.
In The (Honest) Truth
About Dishonesty, behavioral economist Dan Ariely relates a series of
experiments on human truthfulness, and whether people who have an interest in
being dishonest can be prompted, or “cued,” to be truthful.
Participants were not told the true nature of the
experiment. Ariely’s team simply offered
them a cash bonus based on the number of correct responses they gave on a
test. He also made it appear incredibly
easy to cheat and not get caught, though in reality there were checks on the
participants performance of which the participants were unaware.
The first round of tests determined that most people
cheat. Some cheated a lot, but most
everyone cheated at least a little. Surprisingly,
the percentage of cheaters did not vary much as the chance of being caught further
decreased or as the size of the reward increased.
