Robin Hood and the lie detector – justified dishonesty and its effect on physiological arousal

Recent studies in psychology and behavioral economics suggest that a variety of situational factors may affect the stringency of people's moral standards and the likelihood that they will decide to cheat to enhance their personal gain. In the first experiment participants from Tel Aviv University (N=72) were administered a perceptual task twice in which they could cheat to maximize their personal rewards. Between the two administrations the participants went through a procedure simulating a lie detector test. In fact, the feedback was random, such that half were told that they were liars and half were told that they had told the truth. The results showed that participants who were honest on the first task, continued to refrain from cheating on the second task, regardless of their feedback. However, participants who cheated on the first task were highly sensitive to the feedback. That is, a lower level of cheating was observed among participants who received "liar" feedback, whereas participants who were told they passed the lie detector test continued to cheat. In the second experiment, a different pool of participants form Tel Aviv University (N=100) were administered the same task but this time they were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a third were told in advance that all the money they would win on the task would be given to them personally, a third were told that the money would be divided equally between themselves and favored association, and the final third were told that all the money they would win would be donated to a favored association. Standard lie detector test which is based on the level of physiological arousal , revealed positive correlation between the amount of cheating and the suspicion level indicated by the device only among participants in the personal gain condition. However, in the two other condition where cheating also increased donations, the opposite effect was found - and the device suspicion level dropped as "justified" cheating increased . We discuss the theoretical and practical ramifications of these findings as regards the way people set their moral standards, and the usefulness of physiological arousal device to detect varieties of cheating types.