I recall the bagel measure of cheating found that different industries had significantly different rates of cheating. This was a business where office break ro

I recall the bagel measure of cheating found that different industries had significantly different rates of cheating. This was a business where office break rooms had self-serve bagels, and you paid for it by putting money into a money box, on the honor system. Most people were honest, and so the business just dealt with the 10% or so who took a bagel without paying, as a cost of doing business. After a while, he realized that he had a measure of the general level of honesty by industry. I think Freakonomics wrote about this. I think clusters of cheating would be especially prevalent in cases where there was a finite pool of positions available, and more people than that who wanted to get a position. If you know others are cheating, it's a pretty strong rationalization for cheating yourself, and the more prevalent the cheating, the stronger the rationalization.