Effectively motivating social distancing—keeping a physical distance from others —has become a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country preregistered experiment (n=25,718 in 89 countries) tested hypotheses derived from self-determination theory concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of different motivational messages encouraging social distancing. Participants were randomly assigned to three conditions: an autonomy-supportive message promoting reflective choices, a controlling message that was restrictive and shaming, or no message. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses: the controlling message increased defiance relative to the autonomy-supportive message and increased controlled motivation (which itself correlated with more defiance and less long-term behavioural intentions to engage in social distancing) relative to no message, but messages did not influence behavioural intentions. Despite small experimental effects on defiance and motivation (rs= .07 and .10), this work highlights the potential harm of controlling public health messages and potential benefits of autonomy-supportive ones.
When an opportunity to cheat is present, having a justification increases the chance that people will take it. We report a study where people made choices whether to cheat for their own or the charity’s benefit, without a cost to the other party or at its expense. Social and situational justifications were manipulated by varying the beneficiary of cheating and ambiguity of cheating to make it easier for people to cheat. We found that people cheated less in the trials where cheating for one beneficiary was at the expense of the other party. Using mouse-tracking data, we examined whether cheating was relatively deliberate or automatic. People hesitated more on trials where they were tempted to cheat, but there was no change in the initial direction of mouse movement on such trials. Our results suggest that cheating is not an automatic process, that justifications have a similar impact on cheating for oneself and others, and that people might be wary of cheating for one party at the expense of another.
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