The effect of acute stress on dishonesty: the moderating role of moral default

Life abounds with situations in which we must decide whether to act unethically for personal gain or to be prosocial, thus maintaining a positive image of ourselves as being a ‘good person’. Evidence suggests that acute stress may influence moral decisions and prosocial behavior. However, it is currently unclear whether stress increases or decreases immoral behavior. Here, we hypothesize that stress, through its effects on cognitive control, has different effects on moral decision making for different individuals, depending on their moral default. We test this hypothesis by combining a task which allows for inconspicuously measuring spontaneous cheating with a well-established stress induction task. Our findings confirm our hypothesis, revealing that effects of stress on dishonesty are not uniform, but instead depend on the individual: for those who are relatively dishonest, stress increases dishonesty, whereas for participants who are relatively honest stress does not increase dishonesty and perhaps makes them even slightly more honest. These findings go a long way in resolving the conflicting findings in the literature on the effects of stress on prosocial behavior, suggesting that stress affects prosocial behavior differently for different individuals, depending on their moral default.