Cheating more for less: Upward social comparisons motivate the poorly compensated to cheat

•We examine how economic motives and fairness concerns interact to influence cheating.•We manipulate pay-level and awareness of others’ pay in a task that allows cheating.•Underpaid participants cheat more only when they are aware others are earning more.•Effect is driven by aversive social comparisons, rather than counterfactual thinking.•Fairness concerns override economic motives for the underpaid.

Intuitively, people should cheat more when cheating is more lucrative, but we find that the effect of performance-based pay-rates on dishonesty depends on how readily people can compare their pay-rate to that of others. In Experiment 1, participants were paid 5 cents or 25 cents per self-reported point in a trivia task, and half were aware that they could have received the alternative pay-rate. Lower pay-rates increased cheating when the prospect of a higher pay-rate was salient. Experiment 2 illustrates that this effect is driven by the ease with which poorly compensated participants can compare their pay to that of others who earn a higher pay-rate. Our results suggest that low pay-rates are, in and of themselves, unlikely to promote dishonesty. Instead, it is the salience of upward social comparisons that encourages the poorly compensated to cheat.