Eric Schwitzgebel has done studies on whether moral philosophers behave more ethically (e.g., here). Some of the measures from that research seem to match reasonably well with law-abidingness (e.g., returning library books, paying conference registration fees, survey response honesty) and could be used in studies of mathematicians.
Survey response honesty seems to me like a really great way. There’s a way to measure it that’s about where you ask two questions:
1) How many days per week do you on average do X?
2) Did you do X yesterday?
I think it would be great to have such a question pair in the various censi that we have. I think Schwitzgebel had examples such as eating meat in his questions.
Eric Schwitzgebel has done studies on whether moral philosophers behave more ethically (e.g., here). Some of the measures from that research seem to match reasonably well with law-abidingness (e.g., returning library books, paying conference registration fees, survey response honesty) and could be used in studies of mathematicians.
Survey response honesty seems to me like a really great way. There’s a way to measure it that’s about where you ask two questions:
1) How many days per week do you on average do X?
2) Did you do X yesterday?
I think it would be great to have such a question pair in the various censi that we have. I think Schwitzgebel had examples such as eating meat in his questions.