What lies beneath: How the distance between truth and lie drives dishonesty

Based on the assumption that dishonesty poses a threat to one's self view, recent research has put forward the notion that people avoid major lies. However, existing empirical work has not tested this notion conclusively, given that studies have associated larger degrees of dishonesty with larger payoffs. It thus remains unclear whether people actually do avoid major lies or rather shy away from large (unjustified) payoffs, e.g. since the latter are generally more likely to trigger suspicion. Thus, we critically tested the hypothesis that the probability of dishonesty is a decreasing function of the distance between the actual truth and the lie that is necessary to increase ones gains. In a modified dice-game paradigm, a highly specific behavioral pattern was predicted by this hypothesis and results from a large (N=765), incentivized and fully anonymous study confirmed the latter, thus corroborating that people indeed avoid major lies. ► Theories propose that people avoid major lies to retain a positive self-view. ► Despite much recent research, a critical test of this notion is lacking. ► We designed a new paradigm and conducted a large scale empirical test. ► Results corroborate that dishonesty indeed depends on distance between truth and lie.