Motivation to lie: appearing honest

  • Description:

    Although people try to appear honest, they report being dishonest in their daily life. There are different motivations to lie, i.e. to avoid hurting a friend, when he asks about his new haircut, to gain more monetary benefits... Choshen-Hillel, Shaw, & Caruso (2020) suggest a new motivation to lie: to appear honest. In different studies they manipulated the outcomes of participants, so that they were highly favorable for them. The participants underreported their outcomes and even renounced monetary gains to appear honest. The goal of the project is to further investigate these findings in different settings.

    Level: Bachelor

    Language: English or German

    Skills required:

    • Interest in the topic
    • Basic statistics skills (i.e. ttest, ANOVA in SPSS/R)

    Goals:

    The student will

    • do a detailed literature search
    • learn how to conduct an experimental study (planning, (programming), data collection, data analysis)
    • learn how to write a thesis according to scientific standards

    References:

    Choshen-Hillel, S., Shaw, A., & Caruso, E. M. (2020). Lying to appear honest. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.