Could our tendency to lie be changed by metacognitive activity prior to making decisions in moral dilemmas?

Moral judgments of hypothetical real-life moral dilemmas provide scientists valuable insight into the foundational psychological processes that underlie human moral cognition. Moral identity is a construct at the intersection of moral development and identity formation. It is thought to be a source of moral motivation linking moral reasoning (our judgments about whether certain actions are right or wrong) to behavior (Hardy & Carlo, 2011). Metacognitive regulation describes how people monitor and control their cognitive processes. For instance, when we realize that the strategy we use to solve a math problem is not working, we try another approach (Nelson & Narens, 1990). In this study, three different dimensions that have been studied very little before are brought together and we sought an answer to the question of how metacognitive activity affects our decisions in moral dilemma scenarios. The study aims to measure the effect of metacognitive activity on morally-right decision-making in moral dilemmas. The first hypothesis of this study is "If participants engage in moral metacognition before encountering moral dilemmas, their orientation towards truth increases”. A second hypothesis, in conjunction with the first one, is "When people are faced with moral dilemmas, it is assumed that there is a negative relationship between the tendency of people with high and low moral identity scores to lie.” 34 individuals from Yeditepe University participated in the study. The data of the study were collected through Google forms and PsychoPy v2023.1.1. The experimental group was first asked to fill in the moral identity questionnaire, and then they were expected to fill out the moral metacognition questionnaire. After completing the questionnaire-filling process, the participants were subjected to 4 different moral dilemma scenarios while the control group answered the moral dilemma scenarios without completing the moral metacognition questionnaire. Statistical analyzes were made using JASP 0.17.0. According to the results, there are no significant differences between Moral Metacognition Activity and the tendency to tell the truth based on One-Way ANOVA. All three dimensions have a positive correlation, but the correlation between the Moral Metacognition score and the moral identity score is significant. Also, the correlation between Moral Metacognition and Total True Answer is significant too. When we analyzed the truth and lie tendency given to the scenarios, it has been shown that the interests of the individuals are more in the scenarios that concern and affect their own lives. Our results suggest that people are willing to lie for their own benefit.