Morality in Deceptive Environments: The puzzling effects of deceptive culture on moral behavior

Abstract Psychologists, economists, and philosophers as well as lay people have long argued and intuited that in environments where deception is normative, moral behavior is harmed. After we confirmed this folk intuition, we challenge it and show that individuals making decisions within deceptive environments do not behave more dishonestly than in nondeceptive environments. We demonstrate the latter utilizing an example of experimental deception within established institutions, such as laboratories and institutional review boards. Specifically, we first find correlational evidence showing that experiencing deception at the laboratory level yields lower dishonesty. Then, across three studies, we empirically demonstrate that deceptive environments do not affect downstream honest behavior but that when participants were in a deceptive environment and aware of being observed, their dishonest behavior decreased. Our results show that the relationship between deception and dishonesty is more complicated than previous interpretations have suggested and expand the understanding of deception and moral behavior.