Ori Weisel (Tel Aviv University) 24.9.2026
It is our pleasure that Ori Weisel (Tel Aviv University) will present on Thursday, September 24, 2026, at 12:45 in room RB437 about the topic “Experiments on corrupt collaboration”.
Registration is not required and anyone who would like to attend is warmly invited.
It is also possible to participate online via MS Teams at this link. In case of any connection issues, please contact lubomir.cingl@vse.cz.
ABSTRACT: Humans are an especially cooperative species. We are also remarkably honest, even when tempted to lie to secure personal profit. A recent body of work demonstrates that when honesty and cooperation are at odds honesty often gives way to corrupt collaboration, suggesting that honesty and collaboration are tradeable moral currencies. In 20 countries (N≅11,500) we explored how the balance between individual (dis)honesty, collaborative (dis)honesty, and individual cooperativeness depends on the cultural setting, connecting to a growing body of research demonstrating significant cultural variation in ethical thinking and behavior. At the individual level, the tendency to engage in corrupt collaboration is positively related to individual dishonesty and negatively to individual cooperativeness. This result suggests that although a successful, mutually beneficial relationship with a partner, which is based on joint dishonesty, clearly requires cooperation, a cooperative disposition, which is related to a more general tendency toward moral behavior, seems to hinder such joint, corrupt enterprises. At the country level, the main result is that the tendency to switch from being honest when acting alone to being dishonest in collaboration with others is positively related to the Prevalence of Rule Violations in the country (PRV; a measure of political fraud, tax evasion and corruption). Our results are the first to demonstrate how individual and collaborative dishonesty co-vary across societies. Policies aimed at curbing dishonesty should take this variation into account.
BIO: Ori Weisel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy and the Program in Conflict Management and Mediation at Tel Aviv University. His interdisciplinary research draws on social psychology, behavioral economics, and experimental methods to examine cooperation and conflict within and between groups, with particular emphasis on the negative consequences of cooperation, including collaborative dishonesty and corruption. His work has appeared in leading journals, including PNAS, Psychological Bulletin, Nature Communications, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. He holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
