ArticleScientific reports2025
Dishonest behavior can transition to continuous ethical transgressions.
Article in Scientific reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Inhibition and cognitive workload during deception about planned behavior: Investigating LPC, MFN, and PRP components.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Neural mechanisms promoting righteousness in conflicts of interest.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Academic Integrity and Cheating in Dental Education: Prevalence, Drivers, and Career Implications.Dentistry journal · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Ethical decision-making research often focuses on singular events. However, in our daily lives we are regularly tempted to behave dishonestly, and little is known about whether and how repeated ethical deviations can worsen over time. Building upon research on dishonesty and moral disengagement, we test the effect of repeated transgressions on dishonesty. Across six experiments we provide evidence that repeated transgressions can lead to a transition to continuous dishonesty. Individual dishonest acts are thus not independent events, but rather can compound and perpetuate pervasive unethical behavior. We find that making one's self-interested actions more salient hinders the transition to continuous cheating, while unfair financial deprivation, self-serving rewards, and gradual change -- factors that previous research has shown to facilitate moral disengagement - all facilitate the transition to continuous cheating. Moreover, we show that moral disengagement mediates the effect of gradual change on the transition to continuous dishonesty.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.