Ethical Manoeuvring: Why People Avoid Both Major and Minor Lies
通过匿名掷骰实验发现，人们为最大化物质收益同时最小化心理成本，会避免大谎和小谎，但会为显著高于放弃值的收益而夸大中等结果，表明说谎有心理成本。
This research examines whether and why people manoeuvre their unethical behaviour so as to maximize material gains at a minimal psychological cost. Employing an anonymous die‐under‐cup paradigm, we asked people to report the outcome of a private die roll and gain money as a function of their reports. Supporting self‐concept maintenance theory, results showed that people avoid both major lies (i.e. over‐reporting the highest possible outcome) and minor lies (yielding little material gain), but did over‐report intermediate outcomes when this implied a substantial increase compared to a walk‐away value. Results suggest that lying is psychologically costly. We propose that organizations allowing freedom of choice while narrowing the available ways to unethically boost personal profit should see a decrease in unethical behaviour among their employees.