Homo Economicus’ Soul
Published 12/1/2008
Author: John R. Monterosso and Daniel D. Langleben
View this content
Executive Summary
Mazar, Amir, and Ariely report a set of experiments that provided opportunities for participants to cheat. They find that the incidence of cheating in a large sample of college students was high but lower than what would be predicted by the risk/reward ratios. They suggest that dishonesty is constrained by the unconscious tendency to preserve a favorable self-image. The logic of this “self-signaling” mechanism is as follows: (1) People value a particular conception of their own self, and they want to possess certain traits and qualities (some of which are “moral”); (2) people infer their own traits in much the same way they infer the traits of others; and thus (3) people’s behavior is in part shaped by wanting to provide evidence (to themselves) that they possess the desirable traits. The author of this commentary agree but suggest that neglect of this factor in economic models is due to difficulty distinguishing between interpersonal deception and self-deception; when someone behaves in a way that potentially carries negative diagnostic information (e.g., when they cheat), the cost may be reduced or avoided through diversion of attention and rationalization (self-deception). On the basis of the behavioral data Mazar, Amir, and Ariely present, it is not possible to know when participants were engaged in interpersonal deception and when they were engaged in self-deception.
Scientific progress will require disentangling self-deception from interpersonal deception, and cognitive neuroscience may play an important role in this. Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of deception used forced-choice protocols that produced motivated, intentional, and conscious deception. These studies produced a reproducible pattern of lateral prefrontal and parietal activation that has been hypothesized to be due to the cognitive effort involved in inhibiting the “prepotent” tendency toward veridical responding. The authors are not aware of published fMRI studies dedicated to self-deception, but repression (motivated exclusion of distressing material from attention) was studied with fMRI and was found to be associated with increased activation in the right ventral and lateral prefrontal cortex and decreased response in the limbic system. This pattern is similar to interpersonal deception, with the addition of activity in the limbic system. The authors speculate that brain activity associated with labeling self-signals as unwanted and keeping them from entering awareness may help distinguish self- from interpersonal deception. The mechanism through which a conflict between the existing self-image and an incoming self-signal is detected may be similar to the one involving the medial prefrontal and insular cortices and employed in error monitoring. Further research may reveal the interplay between self-deception and interpersonal deception.
Biography
John R. Monterosso is Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He is a cognitive neuroscientist investigating the neural substrates of self-control, especially in the context of recovery from addiction.
Daniel D. Langleben is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a practicing psychiatrist and clinical scientist, focusing on translational brain imaging research on addiction, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and advertising. Dr. Langleben pioneered the application of fMRI to the study and detection of deception.
J Marketing Research, Volume 45, Number 6, December 2008
View Table of Contents.