Mis-Nudging Morality.

This article examines the effectiveness of a behavioral intervention designed to reduce self-serving behavior in workplace-like settings, specifically the practice of employees taking excessive compensation relative to their effort. Contrary to common expectations held by both laypeople and experienced managers, the intervention—asking individuals to state in advance (ex ante) the wage they believe they should be paid before having the opportunity to take money—was found to increase, rather than decrease, self-serving behavior. Through a series of incentive-compatible experiments, the authors demonstrate that this unintended effect arises because participants tend to state inflated wages hypothetically and then use these as reference points when taking actual compensation. However, modifying the intervention to make the wage-elicitation procedure more realistic and closely aligned with the actual payment experience mitigates this effect. These findings highlight the malleability of moral norms and underscore the importance of empirically testing behavioral interventions within contexts that closely resemble real decision environments to avoid counterproductive outcomes.