Abstract
Recent work suggests that dishonesty results from ethical blind spots: people’s lack of attention to ethical information. In two experiments (one pre-registered) we used eye tracking to investigate when ethical blind spots emerge, and whether they can be reduced through a simple, non-invasive intervention. Participants reported a Target Digit indicated by a jittery cue that was slightly biased in the direction of another digit (the Second-Cued Digit), which could be either higher or lower than the Target Digit. Participants were paid more for reporting higher digits, and were not penalized for making mistakes, thus providing an incentive to cheat. Results showed that participants frequently made self-serving (and rarely self-hurting) mistakes by reporting the Second-Cued Digit when it was more valuable than the target. Importantly, they rapidly gazed at the digit that they would later report, regardless of whether this report was correct or a self-serving mistake. Finally, we were able to reduce or increase the number of self-serving mistakes by respectively increasing or reducing the visual saliency of the Target Digit. We suggest that increasing the visual saliency of morally desirable options is a promising cost-effective tool to curb dishonesty.
Highlights
People think of themselves as honest – more honest than others even (Bazerman & Tenbrunsel, 2011) – most people occasionally cheat
Recent work has used eye tracking to show that blind spots emerge more often in tempting and ambiguous situations, where ambiguity serves as a justification to do wrong; this is in line with the notion of self-concept maintenance as well as bounded ethicality
We found a main effect of Cue ambiguity, B=-.98, SE=.07, Z=-14.13, p
Summary
People think of themselves as honest – more honest than others even (Bazerman & Tenbrunsel, 2011) – most people occasionally cheat. The authors found that when participants cheated, they tended to look immediately at the highly rewarded half, rather than the half that contained more dots This finding is important and provides initial support for the rapid emergence of blind spots. In this experiment, the rewarded side was kept constant throughout blocks of many trials; the results cannot tell us whether the eye movements toward the highly rewarded side reflected a fast tendency to cheat, or rather a strategy that built up over time. According to this model, providing subtle cues that increase the saliency of ethical criteria can decrease dishonesty in tempting and ambiguous situations To be effective, these cues should be timely, which means that they should be presented right before people have the opportunity to cheat. The digit stimuli were large enough to be discriminated in peripheral vision; participants could
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