The effects of self-deception and egoistic-altruistic motivations on deceptive behavior

Although researchers have suggested that self-deception may facilitate unethical behavior, it remains unclear whether self-deception promotes deceptive behavior. Moreover, self-deceiving individuals may engage in deceptive behavior not only out of self-interest, but sometimes also to help others; little is known about whether egoistic-altruistic motivations modulate the effect of self-deception on deceptive behavior. This study adopted the Spot-The-Difference task to investigate the impact of self-deception on deceptive behavior (Experiment 1) and to further explore the effects of self-deception and egoistic-altruistic motivations on deceptive behavior (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 showed that the group primed for self-deception exhibited more deceptive behavior than the control group. Experiment 2 also showed that the group primed for self-deception exhibited more deceptive behavior than the control group. Moreover, participants exhibited more deceptive behavior under egoistic motivation than under altruistic motivation. Furthermore, a crucial interaction between self-deception and egoistic-altruistic motivations was observed. Under egoistic motivation, deceptive behavior did not differ significantly between the self-deception group and the control group; however, under altruistic motivation, the self-deception group engaged in significantly more deceptive behavior than the control group. These findings suggested that self-deception promoted deceptive behavior. In addition, egoistic-altruistic motivations modulated the effect of self-deception on deceptive behavior.