The heritability of moral standards for everyday dishonesty

•Genetic variation explains variation in assessments of dishonest actions.•Common environment does not explain variation in assessments of dishonest actions.•Risk and fairness preferences matter for assessments of dishonest actions. Previous research on the acceptability of dishonest actions has focused on the role of social norms and internal reward mechanisms. Using a sample of over 2000 Swedish adult twins, this manuscript examines whether there exists another source that is driving differences in perceptions of the acceptability of dishonest actions: genetic variation. We find that much of the variation in perceptions of the acceptability of dishonest actions is attributable to genetic variation between individuals.