Acting Immorally to Self-Enhance: The Role of Diagnostic Self-Deception

Consumers often behave immorally toward companies for free products and services. But will they engage in immoral behaviors, such as cheating, when the rewards are purely intrinsic (e.g., feeling smarter, healthier)? This research proposes that consumers naturally cheat for such intrinsic rewards as this allows them to deceive themselves about some positive aspect of their self-concept. That is, people falsely believe their enhanced performance is not the result of cheating but instead attributable to their inherent ability. Across four studies using a variety of cheating tasks, the results demonstrate that when the opportunity to cheat offers the intrinsic incentive of positively affecting a self-aspect, individuals perform better (i.e., cheat), engage in diagnostic self-deception, and subsequently enhance their self-perceptions.