Achieving successful and long-lasting behavior change via nudging comes with challenges. This is particularly true when choice architects attempt to change behavior that is collectively harmful but individually beneficial, such as dishonesty. Here, …
We examine dishonest behavior in the face of potential uncertain gains and losses in three pre-studies (N = 150, N = 225, N = 188) and a main study (N = 240). Ample research has shown that people cheat when presented with the opportunity. We use a …
We report two experimental studies testing how a cognitive feeling of similarity affects dishonesty in individual and collaborative tasks when cheating hurts others. By employing a novel die-in-the-box paradigm with a total of 1080 subjects, we find …
Is self-serving lying intuitive? Or does honesty come naturally? Many experiments have manipulated reliance on intuition in behavioral-dishonesty tasks, with mixed results. We present two meta-analyses (with evidential value) testing whether an …
Lying typically requires greater mental effort than telling the truth. Imposing cognitive load may improve lie detection by limiting the cognitive resources needed to lie effectively, thereby increasing the difference in speed between truths and …
People are rather dishonest when working on collaborative tasks. We experimentally study whether this is driven by the collaborative situation or by mere exposure to dishonest norms. In the collaborative treatment, two participants in a pair receive …
When people can profit financially by lying, they do so to the extent to which they can justify their lies. One type of justification is the observation and production of desirable counterfactual information. Here, we disentangle observing and …
Are people honest about the extent to which they engage in unethical behaviors? We report an experiment examining the relation between self-reported risky unethical tendencies and actual dishonest behavior. Participants' self-reported risk taking …
People not only seek to avoid losses or secure gains; they also attempt to create opportunities for obtaining positive outcomes. When distributing money between gambles with equal probabilities, people often invest in turning negative gambles into …