Revenge is not blind: Testing the ability of retribution to justify dishonesty
In two studies, we tested the power of revenge as a justification mechanism that enables people to cheat with a clear conscience. Specifically, we explored the effects of prior dishonesty and unfairness towards participants on their subsequent moral behavior, as well as the physiological arousal ass...
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| Autores principales: | , , , , |
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| Formato: | article |
| Lenguaje: | EN |
| Publicado: |
Society for Judgment and Decision Making
2021
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/6011f08a60824ab88ec721aa55d8279b |
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| Sumario: | In two studies, we
tested the power of revenge as a justification mechanism that enables people to
cheat with a clear conscience. Specifically, we explored the effects of prior
dishonesty and unfairness towards participants on their subsequent moral
behavior, as well as the physiological arousal associated with it. To this end,
we employed a two-phase procedure. In the first phase, participants played one
round of a bargaining game (the Ultimatum game in Study 1 and the Dictator game
in Study 2) in which we manipulated whether the players had been treated
(un)fairly and (dis)honestly by their opponent. In the second phase, they did a
perceptual task that allowed them to cheat for monetary gain at the expense of
their opponent from the first phase. In Study 1, participants also took a lie
detector test to assess whether their dishonesty in the second phase could be
detected. The behavioral results in both studies indicated that the opponent's
dishonesty was a stronger driver than the opponent's unfairness for cheating as
a form of retaliation. However, the physiological arousal results suggest that
feeling mistreated in general (and not just cheated) allowed the participants
to get revenge by cheating the offender while dismissing their associated guilt
feelings. |
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