The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves

Hicks, Hannah M.

doi:10.1080/10999922.2015.1064693

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…Keywords: deception, social norms, morality, dishonesty, experimental deception Dishonesty, in the forms of fraud, bribing, and cheating, has been found to seriously harm the economy (Cebula & Feige, 2012;Gee & Button, 2019;Warren & Schweitzer, 2021); decrease societal trust (Banerjee, 2016;Butler et al, 2016;Kirchler et al, 2008); escalate corruption (Olsen et al, 2019) with shocking results (Ambraseys & Bilham, 2011); spread further unethical behaviors (Robert & Arnab, 2013); and damage cultural, organizational, and social norms (Gächter & Schulz, 2016). People regularly have opportunities to behave dishonestly (Ariely, 2012). However, these decisions are not made in a vacuum.…”

Section: Public Significance Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morality in minimally deceptive environments.

Mitkidis¹,

Perkovic²,

Nichols³

et al. 2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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Psychologists, economists, and philosophers have long argued that in environments where deception is normative, moral behavior is harmed. In this article, we show that individuals making decisions within minimally deceptive environments do not behave more dishonestly than in nondeceptive environments. We demonstrate the latter using an example of experimental deception within established institutions, such as laboratories and institutional review boards. We experimentally manipulated whether participants received information about their deception. Across three well-powered studies, we empirically demonstrate that minimally deceptive environments do not affect downstream dishonest behavior. Only when participants were in a minimally deceptive environment and aware of being observed, their dishonest behavior decreased. Our results show that the relationship between deception and dishonesty might be more complicated than previous interpretations have suggested and expand the understanding of how deception might affect (im)moral behavior. We discuss possible limitations and future directions as well as the applied nature of these findings.

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Section: Public Significance Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morality in minimally deceptive environments.

Mitkidis¹,

Perkovic²,

Nichols³

et al. 2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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show abstract

“…Individuals may point to challenges, enticements, or uncontrollable circumstances as a means of justifying infidelity and assuaging discomfort (Foster & Misra, 2013). In other decisions involving impulsive behaviors where standards are broken, such as in addiction or aggression, small justifications precede larger ones (Ariely, 2013).…”

Section: Review Of Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Justifying by degrees: A grounded theory of men's decision‐making process in infidelity

Perez,

Fife,

Eggleston

et al. 2023

J Marital Family Therapy

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Infidelity is a common reason couples seek therapeutic help as betrayed partners are often hurt and dismayed by their partners' decision to engage in an extradyadic relationship. Despite its common occurrence, there are very few empirical studies of the decision‐making process behind infidelity. To address this gap, the current study used grounded theory, a qualitative approach commonly used to develop theories from participants' experiences, to explore men's processes in deciding to engage in infidelity. Analysis of interviews with participants (n = 13) resulted in a grounded theory of decision‐making by cisgender men who participated in infidelity while in a committed, heterosexual relationship. The results suggest that the decision involves a continuous process of justification and rationalization. Major categories of the theory include the preaffair context, snowballing, motivated reasoning, and postaffair decisions. Clinical implications are also included.

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“…The researchers set up the task so that participants believe they can cheat without being detected, for instance because they can shred their worksheets and self-report how many matrices they solved on a task. This work has found, for instance, that participants cheat less after being given "moral reminders" (e.g., reciting the Ten Commandments or signing a pledge) and cheat more after witnessing an in-group member cheat (see, e.g., Ariely, 2012;Gerlach et al, 2019;Hertwig & Mazar, 2022;Shu et al, 2012).…”

Section: Variability In Action Selection Across Situationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Canary Alive: What Cheating Reveals about Morality and Its Development

Dahl,

Waltzer

2023

Human Development

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Reports of academic cheating trigger fears of moral decay. This inference, that cheating is a dying canary in the coal mine of morality, assumes that youth who cheat lack genuine, moral concerns with honesty and integrity. This article proposes an alternative perspective on cheating and dishonesty. We propose that cheating and other forms of dishonesty result from (1) misperceptions of what constitutes cheating, (2) evaluations that cheating or lying is okay under exceptional circumstances, and (3) prioritization of non-integrity actions during conflict. Each of these three steps—perceptions, evaluations, and action-selections—show both situational and developmental variability. From this perspective, research on cheating reveals moral engagement, not moral disengagement: Developmental and psychological research shows that, far from being a dying canary, cheating reveals the pervasive role of morality in decision-making.

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The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves

Cited by 13 publications

References 0 publications

Morality in minimally deceptive environments.

Morality in minimally deceptive environments.

Justifying by degrees: A grounded theory of men's decision‐making process in infidelity

A Canary Alive: What Cheating Reveals about Morality and Its Development

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