Marc Wyszynski

• The present study investigated to what extent attitudes toward tax evasion and social benefit fraud are influenced by framing, media priming, and the individual tendency to prejudices. It was further examined whether debiasing interventions could reduce or eliminate possible effects of framing and media priming. Tax evasion and social benefit fraud are interpreted here as a fraud on the community of solidarity. Two experiments were conducted. First, the effect of framing of the mode of accomplishing the fraud (withhold vs withdraw resources) was investigated. Participants evaluated the behavior of individuals that withheld or withdrew resources from a community. In an additional condition, individuals who withheld resources were labeled as “wealthy” and those who withdrew resources as “unemployed” persons (priming condition). Neither framing- nor priming-effects were found. Second, the effects of framing in a more loose sense, media priming, prejudice, and debiasing were investigated. Participants were asked to dis-/agree with 11 statements about either wealthy people in context with tax evasion or unemployed people in context with social benefit fraud. Media priming was considered as a further condition: Before their judgment, participants read a newspaper article about an individual case of tax evasion or social benefit fraud. The tendency to prejudices was measured with the Social-Dominance-Orientation scale. Half of the sample received a debiasing-intervention. The results suggest that individuals have more negative attitudes toward tax evader than toward people who committed social benefit fraud. Since no framing effects were found in the first experiment, the different attitudes cannot be attributed to the framing of the mode of accomplishing the fraud. Furthermore, media priming, prejudice, and debiasing seem to further influence attitudes towards people who have committed fraud on a community of solidarity.