Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Fukushima University
Policy Design Lab, Tohoku University

Doshisha University

Fukushima University

The University of Tokyo

The injustice caused by public-sector workers can cause great harm to society. In this study, we conducted an experiment to investigate the misconduct of public-sector workers. We divided prospective public servants into two groups: treatment and control groups. To measure their cheating behaviors in the treatment group, participants were required to carry out a priming task to strengthen their awareness as future public servants, before conducting a cheating task (20 rounds). In the control group, participants conducted a cheating task after carrying out a task unrelated to public service. We found a non-monotonic effect of the treatment on misbehavior. We believe that our treatment had an effect on mitigating dishonest behaviors as well as promoting loss-averse behaviors. We infer that the priming effect promoted the dishonest behavior in future public servants in the loss domain.