Does Honesty Require Time? Two Preregistered Direct Replications of Experiment 2 of Shalvi, Eldar, and Bereby-Meyer (2012).

Shalvi, Eldar, and Bereby-Meyer (2012) found across two studies ( = 72 for each) that time pressure increased cheating. These findings suggest that dishonesty comes naturally, whereas honesty requires overcoming the initial tendency to cheat. Although the study's results were statistically significant, a Bayesian reanalysis indicates that they had low evidential strength. In a direct replication attempt of Shalvi et al.'s Experiment 2, we found that time pressure did not increase cheating, = 428, point biserial correlation () = .05, Bayes factor (BF) = 16.06. One important deviation from the original procedure, however, was the use of mass testing. In a second direct replication with small groups of participants, we found that time pressure also did not increase cheating, = 297, = .03, BF = 9.59. These findings indicate that the original study may have overestimated the true effect of time pressure on cheating and the generality of the effect beyond the original context.