New research reveals that individuals are willing to cheat, even when there are no external rewards, to boost their self-perception of intelligence and health. They engage in diagnostic self-deception, attributing their improved performance to their innate abilities rather than the cheating itself.
When given the opportunity, individuals will cheat to feel smarter or healthier, engaging in diagnostic self-deception to convince themselves that their performance is due to their ability and not the cheating, according to new research.
Dommer conducted four studies to determine if people will cheat when rewards are solely intrinsic and what drives the feeling of accomplishment despite the cheating. In the first study, 288 undergraduate students received menu information about three days' worth of meals -- like three pancakes with butter -- and were tasked with entering calorie information into a food-tracking app.
Dommer found that participants in the cheat group reported higher scores than those in the control group and, based on their self-reporting, overestimated their performance on the second IQ test. The results, she said, suggested that participants in the cheat group engaged in diagnostic self-deception, believing that their performance was due to their intelligence and not cheating, though their scores on the second test suggest otherwise.
"Participants in the cheat group engaged in diagnostic self-deception and attributed their performance to themselves," Dommer said."The thinking goes, 'I'm performing well because I'm smart, not because the task allowed me to cheat.'" "How do we stop people from engaging in diagnostic self-deception and get a more accurate representation of who they are? One way is to draw their attention to uncertainty around the trait itself. This seems to mitigate the effect," Dommer said.
CHEATING SELF-DECEPTION INTELLIGENCE HEALTH MOTIVATION
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