Ethical Manoeuvring: Why People Avoid Both Major and Minor Lies

This research examines whether and why people manoeuvre their unethical behaviour so as to maximize material gains at a minimal psychological cost. Employing an anonymous die‐under‐cup paradigm, we asked people to report the outcome of a private die roll and gain money as a function of their reports. Supporting self‐concept maintenance theory, results showed that people avoid both major lies (i.e. over‐reporting the highest possible outcome) and minor lies (yielding little material gain), but did over‐report intermediate outcomes when this implied a substantial increase compared to a walk‐away value. Results suggest that lying is psychologically costly. We propose that organizations allowing freedom of choice while narrowing the available ways to unethically boost personal profit should see a decrease in unethical behaviour among their employees.