Study Says People Who Cheat Once Are Probably Going To Cheat Again

A recent study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that dishonesty isn’t just the result of a slip-up; it’s a pillar of a person’s personality that never goes away.

Led by researcher Isabel Thielmann, the study followed nearly 2,000 participants over three years, running them through a series of games that measured dishonesty. In one game, participants had to write down a number between one and eight. They were then shown a random number between one and eight on a screen.

All they had to do was reply yes or no if the number they wrote down corresponded with the number on the screen. They got two euros if they said yes and nothing if they said no.

You’ve probably already noticed the loophole in the game. The earning of those two euros was entirely predicated on the answer the participant provided and not on empirical evidence of whether they were being honest about it.

The researchers further enticed the cheaters among them by letting the participants know that they would not fact-check the answers. They could lie all they wanted to and rake in as many euros as the researchers would allow.

Study Says People Who Cheat Once Are Probably Always Cheating

With this game, along with some others, the researchers were able to determine that people who cheated once were way more likely to cheat again, no matter the stakes or context. If someone is willing to skip the line at the grocery store, they would be absolutely willing to scale up the cheating to, say, insider trading.

The researchers pinpointed two big predictors of chronic dishonesty, both of which sound like they belong on their own D&D alignment chart: low scores in something called “Honesty-Humility” and high scores in the “Dark Factor,” which is a mix of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.

Their final determination is that if someone lies easily and often, it’s not a momentary lapse in judgment. It might just be who they are.

This runs counter to the long-held psychological belief that situations, not personalities, drive behavior. None of this is definitive, of course. Circumstances could drive people to be dishonest in a way they rarely, if ever, are otherwise.

But for some, lying, cheating, and stealing are a way of life, and they don’t know any other way to live.