Dhaka, Oct. 22 -- The notion that one bad apple can spoil the barrel has received scientific backing, with new research finding that witnessing flagrant rule-breaking can push people well beyond the violations they observe -- and potentially send an entire group into a spiral.

Researchers recruited 750 US participants, roughly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, for an online experiment in which they were incentivised to bend the rules of a task for greater financial reward, The Guardian reports.

Participants were then shown whether others had followed or broken the rules, the degree of any violation, and the political affiliation of those others.

The results showed that while seeing minor infractions slightly increased rul...