Doing wrong and feeling moral: Do self-justifications pave the way to cheating?

The self-maintenance theory (Mazar et al., 2008) states that people only lie to the extent that they can justify lying, that way allowing to retain a positive moral self-image. For instance, people lie more when they can observe counterfactuals than when they cannot (Shalvi et al., 2011), presumably because it enables people to justify their lie. We administered an online variant of the die-rolling game by Shalvi et al. (2011), where people rolled either just once (no counterfactuals; N = 167) or multiple times (providing for counterfactuals; N = 88) always with the first role determining pay. We also administered scales of self-justification, reputational concerns, and social norms. This allowed us to test (1) whether justifications indeed allow maintaining a moral self-concept and (2) alternative mechanisms such as reputational concerns (i.e., that people cheat less when there are justifications available because they are less concerned about their reputation) and norms (i.e., that people cheat less when they believe others also do not cheat.). There was more cheating in the justification condition. We did not find evidence for moral self-image scores being different between condition and thus no support role in the mechanism. Thus, we do not find evidence to support the self-concept maintenance theory. Based on our data reputation and norms seem to have an impact and could explain increased cheating in the justification condition.