The Effect Of Prosocial Lying On The Subsequent Self-directed Lying Behavior

Prosocial lie is defined as false statements made with the intention of misleading and benefitting a target.In terms of moral principle,it violates the rule of honest.But focusing on the specific circumstance,we can see this action comes from people's good will.Prosocial lie and self-directed lie are quite different in many aspect such as brain activation,motivation,the repercussions that may bring and so on.Many have studied how past moral(immoral)behavior affects future moral(immoral)behavior,but no one has studied whether and how prosocial lie,an unethical unselfish behavior,affects future moral(immoral)behavior.This study aims to explore the possible effect of prosocial lying behavior has on the upcoming self-directed lie and how.Experiment 1,using visual perception task,finds that when people made prosocial lie,they prefer reaction that brings less gain.Information searching lying task was adopted in Experiment 2 to further distinguish prosocial lying behavior from prosocial behavior.Still,people lied less for themselves after lying to benefit charity.To uncover the moderator of this effect,hypothetical situation was used to manipulate prosocial lying behavior.As a result,moral self-image partially moderates the effect:Imaging doing a prosocial behavior lowers the individual's moral self-image which then reduce the self-directed lying behavior.The proposed two step moderators of construal level and moral self-image was refused.This study is the first to explores how prosocial lie,a typical unethical unselfish behavior,affect the sequential self-directed lying behavior and then identify the moderator of this effect.