Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Sci Rep. 2023 Mar 9;13(1):3984. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-31056-2.
In daily life we regularly must decide whether to act dishonestly for personal gain or to be honest and maintain a positive image of ourselves. While evidence suggests that acute stress influences moral decisions, it is unclear whether stress increases or decreases immoral behavior. Here, we hypothesize that stress, through its effects on cognitive control, has different effects on moral decision making for different individuals, depending on their moral default. We test this hypothesis by combining a task which allows for inconspicuously measuring spontaneous cheating with a well-established stress induction task. Our findings confirm our hypothesis, revealing that effects of stress on dishonesty are not uniform, but instead depend on the individual: for those who are relatively dishonest, stress increases dishonesty, whereas for participants who are relatively honest stress makes them more honest. These findings go a long way in resolving the conflicting findings in the literature on the effects of stress on moral decisions, suggesting that stress affects dishonesty differently for different individuals, depending on their moral default.
在日常生活中，我们经常必须决定是否为了个人利益而不诚实地行事，或者是否诚实并保持自己的正面形象。虽然有证据表明急性压力会影响道德决策，但目前尚不清楚压力是会增加还是减少不道德行为。在这里，我们假设压力通过对认知控制的影响，根据不同个体的道德默认值，对道德决策产生不同的影响。我们通过将一个可以不显眼地衡量自发作弊的任务与一个成熟的压力诱发任务相结合来检验这个假设。我们的发现证实了我们的假设，表明压力对不诚实的影响不是统一的，而是取决于个体：对于那些相对不诚实的人来说，压力会增加不诚实行为，而对于那些相对诚实的人来说，压力会使他们更加诚实。这些发现为解决文献中关于压力对道德决策影响的相互矛盾的发现迈出了重要一步，表明压力对不同个体的不诚实行为的影响不同，这取决于他们的道德默认值。
