Situational and dispositional determinants of intentional deceiving

Abstract

Does opportunity make the thief or are people dispositionally prone to deceive? The interaction between personality and the circumstances surrounding deception is crucial to understand what promotes dishonesty in our society. Due to its inherent spontaneity and sociality, deceptive behaviour may be hardly reproducible in experimental settings. We developed a novel paradigm in the form of an interactive game where participants can choose whether to lie to another person in situations of loss vs. gain, and of no-reputation-risk vs. reputation-risk linked to the disclosure of their deceptive behaviour to others. Thus, our ecological paradigm allowed subjects to spontaneously decide when to lie and face the challenge of deceiving others. In the case of loss, participants lied to reverse the outcome in their favour. Deception was lower in the reputation-risk condition where personality traits concerning social interactions also played an important role. The results suggest that deception is definitely promoted by unfavourable events, and that maintaining one's own reputation encourages honesty, particularly in socially inclined individuals.

Figure 1. Number of lies.

Self-gain and altruistic lies (mean ± standard error) produced by the two subject groups (No-Presence Group, grey bars; Presence Group, black bars) in the two possible opponent (OP) choice outcomes (favourable/unfavourable) in the two conditions (Reputation Risk/No-Reputation Risk) are reported. The number of Self-Gain lies is significantly reduced in the Reputation Risk Condition (p = .01).

Figure 2. Correlations between personality traits and the impact of reputation on deception (RoD).

A) the panel shows the RoD index for each subject. Black dots indicate subjects in whom deceptive behaviour was influenced by reputation risk. White dots indicate subjects in whom deceptive behaviour was not affected by reputation risk. The left part of the figure shows the negative correlations. B) indicates the TCI reward dependence scale is an independent predictor of RoD index. C) shows the significant negative correlation between RoD and Social Desirability Responding [Impression Management + Self-deceptive enhancement (BIDR)]. The right part of the panel show the positive correlations between RoD and Manipulativeness (MACH IV) (D) and Moral Disengagement (MD 2) (E). The higher impact of reputation (lower RoD), the higher the reward dependence and social desirable traits; the lower impact (higher RoD), the higher manipulativeness and moral disengagement traits.