“Fool me once, shame on you; fool myself, and I might end up feeling more intelligent,” says a new study led by Sara Dommer, an assistant professor of marketing at Penn State. Dommer explored why individuals might cheat on tasks like completing crossword puzzles or using apps like Wordle and tracking calories, especially when the only rewards are intrinsic, such as feeling brighter or healthier. She discovered that when cheating provides a chance to enhance self-perception, individuals engage in what she terms ‘diagnostic self-deception’. This involves cheating while deceiving themselves into believing their improved performance is due to their abilities rather than the dishonest act. Her research has been published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

According to Dommer, “People do cheat when there are no extrinsic incentives like money or prizes. However, the intrinsic rewards, such as feeling better about oneself, drive this behaviour. For the self-deception to be effective, I must convince myself that I am not actually cheating, which in turn allows me to feel smarter, more accomplished, or healthier.”

Dommer’s investigation involved four studies to determine if people would cheat when the rewards are solely intrinsic and to understand what fuels the sense of achievement despite the cheating. In the first study, 288 undergraduate students were given menu details for three days’ worth of meals and tasked with entering calorie information into a food-tracking app. The students were divided into two groups: one received additional calorie details with their meal descriptions, while the other did not.

The app provided five potential calorie counts for each item entered, and the group without specific calorie details tended to enter lower calorie counts than those supplied with detailed information. This indicated that people might cheat to gain intrinsic benefits—feeling healthier.

In a second study, 195 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk were split into a control group and a cheat group and asked to complete a 10-question multiple-choice IQ test. The cheat group was informed that correct answers would be highlighted, allowing them to track their performance. They were then asked to enter their scores post-test while the control group estimated theirs. Despite the assistance, the cheating group not only reported higher scores but also overestimated their abilities on a subsequent test without the possibility of cheating, indicating a belief in their enhanced intelligence that wasn’t matched by their actual performance.

The third study replicated the second but used a task where participants unscrambled words. The correct answers were revealed after three minutes, and those in the cheating group reported more success in unscrambling the words than the control group. They were likelier to attribute this performance to their intelligence and consider the task a legitimate intelligence test.

The final study focused on financial literacy, where 231 participants took a test under controlled conditions, with some informed about the generally poor performance on financial literacy among American adults. Dommer found that introducing doubts about their abilities led participants to seek more accurate assessments, thus reducing cheating.

Dommer argues that our understanding of cheating needs to expand beyond the view of it as a deliberate, conscious act. She believes that cheating can occur without full awareness, driven by the desire to maintain positive self-illusions. While these illusions may offer temporary boosts to self-esteem, they can be harmful, particularly when assessing one’s financial or physical health, as they may lead to the underuse of helpful products and services. She stresses the importance of recognising these deceptive practices and striving for more accurate self-evaluations to prevent potential harm.

More information: Sara Loughran Dommer, Acting Immorally to Self-Enhance: The Role of Diagnostic Self-Deception, Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. DOI: 10.1086/732915

Journal information: Journal of the Association for Consumer Research Provided by Penn State