The Ergonomics of Dishonesty

Abstract

Research in environmental sciences has found that the ergonomic design of human-made environments influences thought, feeling, and action. In the research reported here, we examined the impact of physical environments on dishonest behavior. In four studies, we tested whether certain bodily configurations-or postures-incidentally imposed by the environment led to increases in dishonest behavior. The first three experiments showed that individuals who assumed expansive postures (either consciously or inadvertently) were more likely to steal money, cheat on a test, and commit traffic violations in a driving simulation. Results suggested that participants' self-reported sense of power mediated the link between postural expansiveness and dishonesty. Study 4 revealed that automobiles with more expansive driver's seats were more likely to be illegally parked on New York City streets. Taken together, the results suggest that, first, environments that expand the body can inadvertently lead people to feel more powerful, and second, these feelings of power can cause dishonest behavior.

How Relevant are Incidental Power Poses for HCI?

“…In 2015, a large-scale replication project [20] re-opened the files on 100 published experiments and found that a considerable number of reported effects did not replicate, leading to the so-called "replication crisis" in Psychology. Neither the study by Carney et al [14] nor the one by Yap et al [65] was among the replicated studies, but multiple high powered and pre-registered studies have since then failed to establish a link between power poses and various behavioral measures [53,30,43,55,1,8,38,47,44]. While a Bayesian meta-analysis of six pre-registered studies [34] provides credible evidence for a small effect of power poses on self-reported felt power (d ≈ 0.2), the practical relevance of this small effect remains unclear [41].…”

“…Yap et al reported that driving in expansive car seats leads to riskier driving in a driving simulation [65]. Some professions require decision making under risk on a regular basis, such as air traffic controllers, power plant operators, or financial brokers.…”

“…Further, Yap and colleagues reported that expansiveness of postures can also affect people's honesty [65]. In contrast to Carney et al, the latter explicitly studied incidental postures, that is, postures imposed by the environment such as a small versus a large workspace or a narrow versus a spacious car seat.…”

“…Yap et al later identified a set of behaviors such as increased risk-taking or cheating which they showed could be induced through incidental power poses, that is, expansive postures imposed by the design of the environment [65]. Interface and interaction design can also lead to expansive postures of users.…”

“…Most relevant to HCI are, however, the experiments by Yap et al [65] on incidental power poses which so far appear to have not been replicated or refuted. Thus it remains unclear whether these effects replicate in an HCI context, and we offer the following contributions with this article:…”