中文版转自 FT中文

瑞士科研人员称，基于令人信服的科学证据，他们的研究得出一个结论——银行家会为了经济利益说谎。

这个苏黎世大学(University of Zurich)的研究团队，通过玩游戏的实验方式，证明“银行业的主流文化削弱和破坏了人们的诚信规范，说明重建诚信文化的举措非常重要”。

这项研究成果发布在顶尖学术期刊《自然》(Nature)杂志上。金融界近年来出现了多起流氓交易、利率操纵案件，以及种种避税丑闻，导致金融业“名誉扫地并出现信任危机”。研究人员们在论文中探讨了这些现象背后的心理机制。

共有200名银行家参与了这一研究，其中128人来自同一家未指明的国际银行。研究人员将参与人员随机分成了两组。游戏开始之前，“治疗组”被问到了一系列与工作有关的问题，比如“你在银行的职能是什么？”与此同时，“对照组”则要回答一系列与日常生活有关的问题，比如“你每周看几个小时电视？”
游戏参与者要在无人监督的情况下扔10次硬币，并在网上将结果汇报给研究人员。每扔一次硬币，提前猜对正反面的参与者会赢得20美元奖金。

如果每个人都完全诚实，每个小组中猜对的比例都应该是50%。实验结果显示，对照组的结果为51.6%，接近这一比例。至于事先曾考虑过银行业相关问题的治疗组，报出猜对的比例则为58.2%。统计上来说，该数字大幅倾向于不诚实汇报，作弊的比例估计为26%。

苏黎世团队的成员之一米歇尔•马雷夏尔(Michel Maréchal)表示，银行家在“对照组情况下行为普遍诚实”。“当有人提醒过他们的银行员工身份之后，相当比例的人变得不诚实起来。”

为考察这种效应是否是银行业特有的现象，研究人员对其他行业从业者（包括制药、电信以及IT行业）和学生开展了同样的实验。在这些实验中，预先被问到有关工作的问题并不会导致更多作弊现象。

在对该研究报告的评论中，里昂大学(University of Lyon)经济学教授马里•克莱尔•维勒瓦尔(Marie Claire Villeval)表示：“这些发现确认了有关金融业行为的部分流行观点的正确性……它对于确保该行业商业诚信文化、重建信任十分重要。”

根据苏黎世团队另一位成员阿兰•科恩(Alain Cohn)的说法，最重要的是“管理层应以身作则，展现出建设诚信商业文化的决心”。

苏黎世团队的研究人员还就恢复金融产业诚信的举措提出了一系列建议。比如，他们支持这样一种看法：银行家应该像医生发下希波克拉底誓言(Hippocratic oath)那样，发下职业誓言。他们认为，这么做将“促使他们考虑其行为对社会的影响，而不是将注意力集中在自身的短期收益上”。

译者/简易

英文版转自 The New York Times

As banking scandals have mounted over the past decade, some critics have suggested that the industry simply harbors a dishonest culture. Now, three economists from the University of Zurich have tested the idea.

They found that bankers were about as honest as anyone else — until they were reminded that they were bankers.

One hundred twenty-eight employees from a large international bank were assigned either to a group that answered questions about their profession (”What is your job?”) or general questions (“How much TV do you watch?”). Each employee was then asked to toss a coin 10 times and report the outcomes online.

There was an advantage, however, to lying: The subjects were told in advance that they would get a $20 reward if a given toss came up heads or tails — as long as the overall winning percentage they reported was greater than that of another randomly chosen participant.

The group that hadn’t been asked about their profession was largely honest, reporting a winning toss 51.6 percent of the time. The other group reported 58.2 percent winning tosses. The researchers calculated that 26 percent of the bankers in the latter group had cheated, compared with almost none of the first group.

To confirm their findings, the researchers performed the study again with people from other professions. Those people did not become more dishonest when asked about their work.

The findings, which were published in the journal Nature, suggest that bankers behave dishonestly only when they feel that is what is expected of them, said Alain Cohn, who is now with the University of Chicago. Perhaps, he said, banks should take a page from medicine and require their own version of the Hippocratic oath.

“It is very important to let employees know exactly what desired and undesired behaviors are,” he said in a conference call. “Then we could use a professional oath to activate these norms.”