The Weaken Promise:A Study Of Dishonest In Interpersonal Interaction

Promise is an ancient,human-specific behavior that promotes cooperation and trust.In daily life people often through the fulfillment of promises to maintain and enhance self-image.But usually this promise is unconstrained,in the interests of the temptation of people will choose to breach of promise to obtain more economic benefits,that is,the implementation of dishonesty.This study attempts to use a new experimental design to examine the fulfillment of unconstrained promises in the context of getting help from others.This paper is divided into three studies.In study 1 we focuses on examining the new experimental design-the feasibility of the card guessing task on the study of dishonesty.The subjects are required to complete a card guessing task in the context of getting help from the parnter(guess one of the eight cards,and assign reward when choice correctly).The parnter knows the correct card position and give the correct hint(100%correct rate),but the program may randomly generate errors of the interference hint(50%correct rate).Before the guess phase subjects need to give the partner a promise with "promsie always return" or "promise mostly return".In the reward distribution phase,the subjects can choose "you have 10 yuan,he was 0 yuan"(dishonest)or "you have 5 yuan,he was 5 yuan"(honest).The study also explores the non-solvable task(cheating task),as well as Machiavelli's personality traits and justice sensitivity,and other factors to predict the behavior of the dishonesty in the task.The results show that:(1)the task can effectively group the subjects into honest group and dishonest group;(2)suggest that the validity of the hint have a significant impact on dishonesty,on the misconduct situation subject more likely conduct dishonesty;(3)relative to the honest group,the dishonest group is more inclined to choose“promise mostly return";(4)Beneficiary score in justice sensitivity scale and promise level can make a certain degree of explanation and prediction of the act of dishonesty under the condition of misconduct.These results show that the card guessing task can effectively measure the act of dishonesty in interpersonal interaction.When the validity of the hint is reduced,the subjects are more likely to make a dishonesty,possibly because the subjects are easy to rationalize their act of dishonesty under misconduct condition,thus maintaining the integrity of the self-concept.On the basis of this,the author explores the impact of the promise proposal conditions on the behavior of dishonesty in Study 2.We find that the main effect and interaction of the validity of hint(100%'vs.50%)and the conditions of promise(non-promise condition,self-promise condition and partner-requirement condition)on the act of dishonesty are significant.In non-promise conditions,the result suggests that the degree of validity does not affect the act of dishonesty,subjects are inclined to choose to swallow the reward.(50%correct rate),the subjects are more inclined to fail(choose to be swallowed)under the conditions of their promise and the other's request for promise.The other side of the requirements of the conditions of promise,the subjects of trustworthy behavior(select the split bonus)the most.Study 3.We try to activate the collectivist thinking or individualistic thinking by initiating independent/interdependent self-construal in order to explore whether the initiation of collectivism can reduce the act of dishonesty in interpersonal interaction.The results show that there is no difference in the act of dishonesty initiated by collectivism/individualism.,Research three also refined the level of promise to this condition,respectively,"promise always return","promise mostly return","promise sometimes return." The results found that the trustworthy group is more inclined to choose "promise always returm",while the other two levels of promise to the two groups of the selection rate and no significant difference.Regression analysis found that the three sub-dimensions of justice sensitivity(beneficiary sensitivity,perpetrator sensitivity)can predict subjects' choice rate of "promise mostly retun".This result shows that the promise stage hasa certain individual difference in the choice of promise level,and these individual differences can further explain the behavior of dishonesty.Based on the above research results,we can see that the promise to honest behavior is weaken.Firstly,promise requirement from partner can more effectively promote the trustworthy behavior than promise from theirself;secondly,when people have the opportunity to rationalize their own dishonesty,people are more inclined to choose to breach the promise;thirdly,vague promises are more likely to lead to dishonesty;finally,individual differences(beneficiary sensitivity of justice sensitivity)can partly predict people's promise levels and dishonesty.