IF YOU DON'T THINK GOD IS WATCHING...:

As the saying goes, one good turn deserves another, and in our experiment, it seemed this was true. Those people who followed the golden rule earned more from the negotiations, compared to the people who chose to go against the golden rule.

But while the figure of 93% indicates that most people followed the golden rule, which sounds encouraging, we found that if people knew their behavior was not being observed by their opponents, then the percentage of golden rule behavior dropped by nearly 20%, and only 73% of participants stuck to the rule.

This finding echoes observations from social psychology that show people behave in a nicer way when they know they are being watched. Indeed, even a poster with eyes on it changes how people behave. And it seems when the chance of being observed is low, people are more prone to evade a moral code.

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