People behave immorally when situations are ‘favourable’

TORONTO - Many people say they wouldn’t cheat in a test, lie on a job application or refuse to help a person in need. But if conditions are tweaked a bit, it doesn’t take too long for them to change their minds, experts say.

In two studies that tested participants’ willingness to behave immorally, University of Toronto researchers discovered that people will behave badly if doing it is easy, reports the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

“People are more likely to cheat and make immoral decisions when their transgressions don’t involve an explicit action,” says Rimma Teper, doctoral student, who led the study.

“If they can lie by omission, cheat without doing much legwork, or bypass a person’s request for help without expressly denying them, they are much more likely to do so,” he said.

In one study, participants took a maths test on a computer after being warned there were glitches in the system. One group was told if they pressed the space bar, the answer to the question would appear on the screen.

The second group was told if they didn’t press the enter key within five seconds of seeing a question, the answer would appear.

“People in the second group - those who didn’t have to physically press a button to get the answers - were much more likely to cheat,” says associate professor of psychology Michael Inzlicht, study co-author.

In another study, the team asked participants whether they would volunteer to help a student with a learning disability.

One group of participants had only the option of checking a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ box that popped up on the computer. The second group could follow a link at the bottom of the page to volunteer their help or simply press ‘continue’ to move on to the next page of their test.

Participants were five times more likely to volunteer when they had to expressly pick either ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

“Forcing people to make an active, moral decision - a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to donating, for example - is going to be much more effective than allowing them to passively skip over a request,” says Teper.