Losing a real-life lottery and dishonest behavior

We report the results of an experiment destined to examine the effect of winning and losing a real-life scratch-card lottery on subsequent dishonest behavior. People who were observed purchasing scratch cards at selling kiosks were offered, upon completing scratching their cards and discovering whether (and how much) they have won or lost, to participate in a simple task with monetary payoffs and an opportunity to increase their pay by acting dishonestly. The results reveal that lottery losers behave significantly more dishonestly than lottery winners and that honesty monotonically increases with the net profit derived from the lottery (amount won minus lottery price). It thus follows that winning a lottery has not the same effect on moral disengagement as winning a competition which has been shown in the literature to engender dishonest behavior.