Temporal Decay, Reinstatement, and Debiasing of Self-Deception

Research on the individual psychology of ethical decision making tends to take a “one-shot” approach by examining the effect of one or more specific variables on one subsequent unethical act, or a global approach assessing general beliefs such the tendency to view oneself in a positive light (e.g., Alicke, 1985; Chambers & Windschitl, 2004; Moore & Kim, 2003; Taylor & Brown, 1988). Along these lines, Chance et al. (2011) documented how a single act of cheating can lead to self-deception in the short term. The current investigation explores ethics over a longer time course, examining how an initial unethical behavior changes people’s beliefs in the longer term – and how those beliefs are impacted by both receiving more information about one’s abilities over time (Study 1) and being provided with subsequent opportunities to engage in further unethical behavior (Study 2). People misbehave: They lie, they cheat, they steal, they betray. Yet most view themselves as good and moral individuals (Aquino & Reed, 2002). One means of resolving this apparent inconsistency between bad behavior and a positive self-image is through self-deception (Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004): distorting negative behavior to reflect positively on the self– for example, by cheating on tests and attributing improved performance to ability. Given the costs of self-deception to both individuals and organizations, we explore two means by which self-deception can be decreased: natural decay and an attentional intervention. We show that self-deception diminishes over time when self-deceivers are repeatedly confronted with evidence of their true ability (Study 1); importantly, however, this “learning” fails to make them less susceptible to future self-deception (Study 2). Given the ease with which self-deception recurs, we test a mechanism for debiasing self-deception: asking participants to reflect on the fact that they may have cheated, thereby drawing their attention to the true cause of their high performance (Study 3). Taken together, these studies offer insight into when and how self-deception can be attenuated.