Management Papers
Document Type
Technical Report
Date of this Version
5-2009
Publication Source
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Volume
45
Issue
3
Start Page
594
Last Page
597
DOI
10.1016/j.jesp.2009.02.004
Abstract
The opportunity to profit from dishonesty evokes a motivational conflict between the temptation to cheat for selfish gain and the desire to act in a socially appropriate manner. Honesty may depend on self-control given that self-control is the capacity that enables people to override antisocial selfish responses in favor of socially desirable responses. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that dishonesty would increase when people's self-control resources were depleted by an initial act of self-control. Depleted participants misrepresented their performance for monetary gain to a greater extent than did non-depleted participants (Experiment 1). Perhaps more troubling, depleted participants were more likely than non-depleted participants to expose themselves to the temptation to cheat, thereby aggravating the effects of depletion on cheating (Experiment 2). Results indicate that dishonesty increases when people's capacity to exert self-control is impaired, and that people may be particularly vulnerable to this effect because they do not predict it.
Copyright/Permission Statement
© 2009 Elsevier. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Keywords
dishonesty, self-control, motivation, prosocial behavior
Recommended Citation
Mead, N. L., Baumeister, R. F., Gino, F., Schweitzer, M. E., & Ariely, D. (2009). Too Tired to Tell the Truth: Self-Control Resource Depletion and Dishonesty. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45 (3), 594-597. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.02.004
Included in
Cognition and Perception Commons, Cognitive Psychology Commons, Experimental Analysis of Behavior Commons, Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods Commons, Personality and Social Contexts Commons, Social Psychology Commons
Date Posted: 25 October 2018
This document has been peer reviewed.