Department of Management, Aarhus University.
Questrom School of Business, Boston University.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2024 Mar;30(1):48-61. doi: 10.1037/xap0000476. Epub 2023 May 8.
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. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
心理学家、经济学家和哲学家长期以来一直认为，在欺骗成为规范的环境中，道德行为会受到损害。在本文中，我们表明，在最小程度的欺骗环境中做出决策的个体并不比在非欺骗环境中表现得更不诚实。我们通过实验室和机构审查委员会等既定机构内的实验性欺骗示例证明了后者。我们通过实验来操纵参与者是否收到有关其欺骗的信息。通过三项有力的研究，我们从经验上证明，最小程度的欺骗环境不会影响下游的不诚实行为。只有当参与者处于最小程度的欺骗环境中并意识到被观察到时，他们的不诚实行为才会减少。我们的研究结果表明，欺骗与不诚实之间的关系可能比之前的解释所表明的更为复杂，并扩展了对欺骗如何影响（不）道德行为的理解。我们讨论了可能的限制和未来的方向，以及这些发现的应用性质。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2024 APA，保留所有权利）。
