Even subliminal eye images triple honest payment on an honor system.

Evidence

Are people therefore less likely to cheat the system when they sense that someone is watching them? In one field study, researchers placed a self-service coffee stand in the hallway of a university building and an “honesty box.” Passersby could avail themselves of some coffee, and leave money in the box. On some randomly assigned weeks, a poster with watchful human eyes was hanging above the stand; on other days, the poster showed various types of flowers. Despite the fact that consumption rates were similar across the two conditions, significantly more money was left on weeks when the poster with eyes was hanging on the wall. On average, people left 2.76 times as much money in the weeks with eyes. The feeling of being watched, even as subtle as posters of eyes on a wall, curbed cheating when no one was present to make sure the system works. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 92

Categorization

• XREF: This is the direct empirical anchor for Norenzayan’s Big God mechanism that the reader is testing against Father Rodrigues’s omniscient-observer psychology in Silence.
• SHARE: The eye-poster coffee study is a classic that a specific colleague working on reputation signaling would enjoy.
• CANDY: A poster of eyes tripled coffee-money honesty — nice dinner-party fact.