Intuitive or Deliberative Dishonesty: The effect of abstract versus concrete victim

Abstract There is much debate on the question about whether people are intuitively honest or intuitively dishonest. A recent social harm account was proposed to address this debate: dishonesty is intuitive when cheating inflicts harm on an abstract other while honesty is intuitive when cheating inflicts harm on a concrete other. This pre-registered and well-powered study (n = 764) aims to directly test this account by using a time pressure manipulation. Specifically, we examined whether time pressure (vs. self-paced) leads to more cheating when there is an abstract victim, but not when there is a concrete victim. Results showed no effect of time pressure and/or harm type on cheating. Given the seemingly low replication rate in this field of study and the use of contested experimental manipulations our research calls for preregistered research to directly test the effects of time pressure and social harm on the intuitive nature of (dis-)honest behavior.