I Cheated, But Only A Little Summary

In the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology article, “I Cheated, but Only a Little”: Partial Confessions to Unethical Behavior, Eyal Peer, Alessandro Acquisti, and Shaul Shalvi study the “occurrence, antecedents, consequences, and everyday prevalence of partial confessions.” Human beings primarily confess to escape the guilt they may have from committing whatever wrongful deed. Partial confessions, intermediate between omission and full confession, might seem attractive as they are more believeable than complete omission, but at the same time do not reveal every little detail of the behavior. This article documents whether partial confessions actually help people feel better emotionally.

To study partial confessions, the investigators conducted five studies. In the first study, participants were given an opportunity to cheat and benefit financially in a coin-tossing prediction task. They had the ability to lie about their guesses to earn more money for “correct” guesses. They were later given the opportunity to admit to their cheating. Their partial confessions were assessed. It

The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology article The Cheater’s High: The Unexpected Affective Benefits of Unethical Behavior challenges this consensus and demonstrates that unethical behavior stimulates positive affect, termed “cheater’s high.” Cheating is associated with self-satisfaction, and the “high” one receives from cheating only increases with self-deception about the unethical behavior.

Study 1 gauged affective predictions following unethical behavior. In Study 1a, participants were asked to predict whether they’d predict to feel positive effects after cheating on a hypothetical test that would earn them more money the more they answer correctly. Participants generally responded negative, implying that there is no predicted “cheater’s