Department of Psychology (III), University of Würzburg, Röntgenring 11, 97070, Würzburg, Germany.
Psychol Res. 2023 Apr;87(3):826-844. doi: 10.1007/s00426-022-01686-8. Epub 2022 Jun 1.
In three experiments, we examined the cognitive underpinnings of self-serving dishonesty by manipulating cognitive load under different incentive structures. Participants could increase a financial bonus by misreporting outcomes of private die rolls without any risk of detection. At the same time, they had to remember letter strings of varying length. If honesty is the automatic response tendency and dishonesty is cognitively demanding, lying behavior should be less evident under high cognitive load. This hypothesis was supported by the outcome of two out of three experiments. We further manipulated whether all trials or only one random trial determined payoff to modulate reward adaptation over time (Experiment 2) and whether payoff was framed as a financial gain or loss (Experiment 3). The payoff scheme of one random or all trials did not affect lying behavior and, discordant to earlier research, facing losses instead of gains did not increase lying behavior. Finally, cognitive load and incentive frame interacted significantly, but contrary to our assumption gains increased lying under low cognitive load. While the impact of cognitive load on dishonesty appears to be comparably robust, motivational influences seem to be more elusive than commonly assumed in current theorizing.
在三项实验中，我们通过在不同激励结构下操纵认知负荷来研究自利性不诚实的认知基础。参与者可以通过虚报私人掷骰子的结果来增加财务奖金，而不会有任何被发现的风险。同时，他们还必须记住不同长度的字母串。如果诚实是自动反应倾向，而不诚实则需要认知努力，那么在高认知负荷下，说谎行为应该不太明显。这个假设得到了三个实验中的两个实验结果的支持。我们进一步操纵了所有试验还是只有一个随机试验决定收益，以调节随时间的奖励适应（实验 2），以及收益是否被框定为财务收益还是损失（实验 3）。一个随机试验或所有试验的收益方案都没有影响说谎行为，而且与早期研究不一致的是，面对损失而不是收益并没有增加说谎行为。最后，认知负荷和激励框架显著相互作用，但与我们的假设相反，在低认知负荷下，收益会增加说谎行为。虽然认知负荷对不诚实的影响似乎相当稳健，但激励的影响似乎比当前理论假设中更难以捉摸。
