“If Others Are Honest, I Will Be Too”: Effects of Social Norms on Willingness to Fake During Employment Interviews

Applicant faking in employment interviews is a pressing concern for organizations. It has previously been suggested that subjective norms may be an important antecedent of faking, but experimental studies are lacking. We report a preregistered experiment (N = 307) where effects of conveying descriptive social norms (information about what most applicants do) on self-reported willingness to fake were examined. Although we observed no difference between the faking norm condition and the control condition, in which no norm was signaled, participants in the honesty norm condition reported lower willingness to fake compared to those in both the faking norm condition and the control condition. The latter supports the idea that conveying honesty norms may be an effective means of reducing faking, although future research needs to evaluate its usefulness in real employment interviews