Lies have long legs. Cheating, public scrutiny and loyalty in teams

Do people cheat more if it helps their team? And what if their actions are disclosed to their peers? To answer these questions, we run a lab-in-the-field experiment with girl and boy scouts during their summer camps. Scout troops are organized in patrols: these are thus naturally occurring and persistent teams which undertake many different activities and own common goods. These teams di↵er in many respects from the minimal groups typically used in the lab. While we find a very low overall level of cheating, our results show that subjects cheat more frequently when their decision is disclosed to peers in their team. This is in contrast with findings from other studies analyzing di↵erent forms of scrutiny. On the other hand, no significant di↵erence is observed when cheating rewards the team rather than the individual.