What keeps us honest? And, if we understand the neural mechanisms behind it, can we make people more honest? Those were the questions posed by a team from the University of Zurich who wanted to see if the desire to cheat was linked to the brain.
By stimulating an area of the brain responsible for the regulation of thoughts and actions, the team found that in those already experiencing moral quandaries, cheating decreased by more than half. While regular, seemingly habitual cheaters, were unaffected.
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To test this theory, the team separated 145 university students into groups of 10 for a die-rolling game. Some received non-invasive transcranial direct current stimulation over their right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC), a form of stimulation that makes brain cells more active, while others received fake stimulation. The electrodes were specifically placed over regions of the brain already identified through fMRI studies as being active during honesty reporting.
Each participant was tasked with rolling a die ten times, out of view of everyone else. Some numbers resulted in a monetary pay-off, others none, but the participants self-reported what number they rolled. In another form, the experiment allowed participants to win money for other people.
The researchers, led by Michel Maréchal, UZH Professor for Experimental Economics, found that "most people seem to weigh motives of self-interest against honesty on a case-by-case basis." This means they cheat a little but not on every possible occasion. A little over 8.5 per cent of all participants cheated whenever they could when the results were in their favour, however, and it was this group that was largely unaffected by the brain stimulation.
For this reason, the authors suggest interventions in honesty can only be made to the brain’s balancing of the rewards of honesty versus self-interest. Those who cheated some of the time could have that moral decision-making exaggerated with brain stimulation. Those who had already decided it makes more sense to lie and make a financial gain, were unaffected as there was no quandary to exaggerate through stimulation.
As a result of a series of complementary experiments, the researchers found that associated aspects such as risk-taking and delayed rewards were not impacted – only the conflict of honesty versus self-interest. When the reward went to another person, stimulation did not have any impact either.
"These brain processes could lie at the heart of individual differences and possibly pathologies of honest behaviour", Maréchal’s colleague Christian Ruff said, with Maréchal going as far as suggesting the results could mean people are not responsible for their actions because of certain biological predispositions. "If breaches of honesty indeed represent an organic condition, our results question to what extent people can be made fully liable for their wrongdoings."
It proves, they write in the journal PNAS, that “the human brain implements specialised processes that enable us to remain honest when faced with opportunities to cheat for personal material gain”.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
