Oof. Based on examining the publically-available code[1], I have one major concern with the methology and conclusions of this study. The problem is that the “

Oof. Based on examining the publically-available code[1], I have one major concern with the methology and conclusions of this study. The problem is that the “tell us about yourself” questionnaire that determines whether the study classifies someone as being “low in moral character” happens after the experiment in which cheating would or would not have happened[2]. This means that the results of the questionnaire are going to be affected by cognitive dissonance as people are rationalising why they made the choices they did during the “actually cheating or not” portion of the experiment. For example, it seems intuitively likely that people who have just cheated on a task are going to be much more likely to answer affirmatively to sympathetic prompts like “Cheating is appropriate behavior because no one gets hurt.” (an actual statement from late in the questionnaire to which the participant is asked to indicate their level of agreement). By my interpretation, the study isn’t telling us that people who think that cheating is okay are more likely to maneuver into situations where cheating is possible; it’s telling us that people who have gone into situations where cheating is possible are more likely to tell us that cheating is okay. Which might not necessarily be the same thing. I’d have liked these results a whole lot more if they’d asked people to fill in the questionnaire before giving them the opportunity to cheat, rather than after, to exclude the confounding effects of rationalising on the results. [1]: https://github.com/bahniks/Experiment-cheating https://github.com/bahniks/Experiment-cheating [2]: https://github.com/bahniks/Experiment-cheating/blob/master/Stuff/intros.py https://github.com/bahniks/Experiment-cheating/blob/master/S...