Hypothesis
Asking people to sign a veracity statement at the beginning rather than the end of a self-report form would increase honest reporting, as a landmark 2012 PNAS paper reported.
What failed
Across five conceptual replications (n = 4,559) and one highly powered, preregistered direct replication (n = 1,235) run with the original authors, signing first had no effect on honest reporting.
Broken assumption
Signing an honesty pledge before filling in a form, rather than after, reduces dishonest reporting.
Why
The paper reports a consistent null across all six studies; it stresses updating the record because government agencies had already adopted the practice.
From the published paper: Kristal et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020. ↗CC BY