Abstract
Different ways of description can easily influence people's evaluation and behaviors. A previous study suggested that subtle linguistic differences in ethical reminder instructions can cause differences in preventing readers' unethical behavior. The present study aims to replicate the previous finding by Bryan and his colleagues (2013) in the Japanese context, additionally exploring the influence of unfamiliar instructions that capture participants' attention. In two experiments, which are planned to be conducted online, participants are asked to make 10 coin-tosses and report the number of "heads," indicating the amount of money that could be earned. We will manipulate instructions ("Don't cheat" vs. "Don't be a cheater" vs. no instruction as a control) for each participant group including nearly 270 participants (Experiment 1). Next, we will conduct an extended experiment with an additional task in which more attention is directed toward the text (Experiment 2). Through these registered experiments, we examine the credibility of the previous finding that type of instruction affects the occurrence of unethical behaviors.
Highlights
When people behave dishonestly, they usually downplay the seriousness of the dishonest act (e.g., Monin & Jordan, 2009; Steele, 1988), weakening the link between the dishonesty and one’s self-identity (e.g., Bandura, 1999) to avoid the correspondent inference (Jones & Nisbett, 1972; Ross, 1977) that he or she is the kind of person who behaves dishonestly
We conjecture that the anticipated difference in the results between the “cheating” and “cheater” conditions in Experiment 1 may partly occur due to differences in attention paid to the instruction, instead of the preservation of a positive self-image proposed by the previous study (Bryan et al, 2013)
This means that part of the effect of the “cheater” condition is due to the unfamiliar expression, which attracts people’s attention plays a role in preventing them from conducting unethical behavior
Summary
2. Sergio Cervera-Torres , Leibniz-Institute für Wissensmedien (IWM), Tübingen, Germany. This article is included in the Preclinical Reproducibility and Robustness gateway. Any reports and responses or comments on the article can be found at the end of the article
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