When foul play seems fair: Exploring the link between just deserts and honesty

•We investigate the effect of the violation of distributive justice on honesty.•Violation of distributive justice results in greater dishonesty.•This spillover effect also arises when dishonesty does not imply redistribution.•Both rule-advantaged and disadvantage subjects react to violations of meritocracy. The distributive justice norm of “just deserts”—i.e. the notion that one gets what one deserves—is an essential norm in a market society, and honesty is an important factor in economic and social exchange. We experimentally investigate the effect of violations of the distributive justice norm of “just deserts” on honesty in a setting where behaving dishonestly entails income redistribution. We find that the violation of the just deserts norm results in a greater propensity toward dishonesty. We then test a more general proposition that violations of just deserts induce dishonesty, even in cases where dishonesty does not have redistributive consequences. Our results confirm this proposition but only for cases in which the violation of just deserts also entails income inequality.