什么时候可以信任一个银行家？

Nature 516 (7529)

发表日期：2014年12月4日

人们普遍认为，不道德的商业行为在金融行业的文化中广泛存在。在这项研究中，Ernst Fehr及同事着手寻求支持这一观点的科学证据。他们发现，在设计用来揭示不诚实行为的一个实验游戏中，一家大型国际银行的员工的行为基本上与我们其他人一样诚实。但在设计用来模仿他们职业的竞争特性的测试中，这些银行员工中很多开始表现出不诚实的行为。那些来自其他行业的人士及学生志愿者没有表现出这种效应。作者得出结论认为，如果金融机构要重新获得我们的信任，它们就需要通过改变与其员工职业身份相关的行为准则来鼓励诚实行为。

Business culture and dishonesty in the banking industry

Alain Cohn,Ernst Fehr& Michel André Maréchal

Trust in others’ honesty is a key component of the long-term performance of firms, industries, and even whole countries1, 2, 3, 4. However, in recent years, numerous scandals involving fraud have undermined confidence in the financial industry5, 6, 7. Contemporary commentators have attributed these scandals to the financial sector’s business culture8, 9,10, but no scientific evidence supports this claim. Here we show that employees of a large, international bank behave, on average, honestly in a control condition. However, when their professional identity as bank employees is rendered salient, a significant proportion of them become dishonest. This effect is specific to bank employees because control experiments with employees from other industries and with students show that they do not become more dishonest when their professional identity or bank-related items are rendered salient. Our results thus suggest that the prevailing business culture in the banking industry weakens and undermines the honesty norm, implying that measures to re-establish an honest culture are very important.