The effect of acute stress on dishonesty: the moderating role of moral default

Abstract

Life abounds with situations in which we must decide whether to act unethically for personal gain or to be prosocial, thus maintaining a positive image of ourselves as being a ‘good person’. Evidence suggests that acute stress may influence moral decisions and prosocial behavior. However, it is currently unclear whether stress increases or decreases immoral behavior. Here, we hypothesize that stress, through its effects on cognitive control, has different effects on moral decision making for different individuals, depending on their moral default. We test this hypothesis by combining a task which allows for inconspicuously measuring spontaneous cheating with a well-established stress induction task. Our findings confirm our hypothesis, revealing that effects of stress on dishonesty are not uniform, but instead depend on the individual: for those who are relatively dishonest, stress increases dishonesty, whereas for participants who are relatively honest stress does not increase dishonesty and perhaps makes them even slightly more honest. These findings go a long way in resolving the conflicting findings in the literature on the effects of stress on prosocial behavior, suggesting that stress affects prosocial behavior differently for different individuals, depending on their moral default.

No effects of acute stress on monetary delay discounting: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis

“… Schulreich et al, 2022 ). Thus, an exciting avenue for future work would be to determine whether acute stress exacerbates existing differences in impulsivity and impatience in delay discounting tasks ( Speer et al, 2022 ).…”

Acute stress reduces effortful prosocial behaviour

“…However, it is not yet clear when acute stress accentuates or supresses existing prosocial tendencies. For example, Schulreich et al (2022) found that increases in cortisol were associated with reductions in donations in participants scoring high on mentalising, whereas Azulay et al (2022) found that that increases in cortisol predicted enhanced donations in participants with high trait empathy (see also 32). Given the heterogeneity in behaviour in economic games under stress (7), future studies may benefit from manipulating the effort involved in helping, or other non-financial costs, to help us understand how the social behaviour of different individuals is affected by acute stress.…”

“…Similarly, Speer et al (32) showed that acute stress can accentuate existing differences in dishonesty (cf. 33,34).…”

Acute stress reduces effortful prosocial behaviour

“…Similarly, Speer et al (Speer et al, 2022) showed that acute stress can accentuate existing differences in dishonesty (cf. Schulreich et al, 2022;Ying et al, 2022).…”

“…However, it is not yet clear when acute stress accentuates or supresses existing prosocial tendencies. For example, Schulreich et al (2022) found that increases in cortisol were associated with reductions in donations in participants scoring high on mentalising, whereas Azulay et al (2022) found that increases in cortisol predicted enhanced donations in participants with high trait empathy (see also Speer et al, 2022). Given the heterogeneity in behaviour in economic games under stress (Nitschke, Forbes, et al, 2022), future studies may benefit from manipulating the effort involved in helping, or other nonfinancial costs, to help us understand how the social behaviour of different individuals is affected by acute stress.…”