HONEST people don鈥檛 have to work at not cheating. They鈥檙e not even tempted.
When studying honesty, neuroscientists usually ask people to either tell the truth or lie while undergoing a brain scan. This is unsatisfactory, because even the 鈥渓颈补谤蝉鈥� are doing as they are told, so and Joseph Paxton at Harvard University came up with an alternative.
They asked volunteers to bet money on the flip of a coin. Sometimes the players had to record their predictions before the flip, and sometimes they said whether they had guessed correctly after the flip, giving them the opportunity to cheat. Some 鈥� but not all 鈥� did so, as evidenced by an abnormally high 鈥渟uccess鈥� rate.
Advertisement
In each round, fMRI was used to record brain activity in regions associated with decision-making and behavioural control. Honest players showed no increase in brain activity when they had a chance to cheat, suggesting that they didn鈥檛 have to make a conscious effort to be honest. In contrast, dishonest players showed increased brain activity whenever they had a chance to cheat 鈥� even when they reported (presumably truthfully) that they had lost (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ).