Fool yourself: People unknowingly cheat on tasks to feel smarter, healthier

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Fool me once, shame on you. Fool myself, and I may end up feeling smarter, according to a new study led by Sara Dommer, assistant professor of marketing at Penn State.

Dommer wondered why people cheat on tasks like completing crossword puzzles or Wordle and counting calories when the rewards are purely intrinsic, like feeling smarter or healthier. She found that when cheating offers the opportunity to improve self-perception, individuals engage in diagnostic self-deception — that is, they cheat yet deceive themselves by attributing their heightened performance to their innate ability instead of the cheating. She published her findings in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

“I found that people do cheat when there are no extrinsic incentives like money or prizes but intrinsic rewards, like feeling better about yourself,” Dommer said. “For this to work, it has to happen via diagnostic self-deception, meaning that I have to convince myself that I am actually not cheating. Doing so allows me to feel smarter, more accomplished or healthier.”

Dommer conducted four studies to determine if people will cheat when rewards are solely intrinsic and what drives the feeling of accomplishment despite the cheating. In the first study, 288 undergraduate students received menu information about three days’ worth of meals — like three pancakes with butter — and were tasked with entering calorie information into a food-tracking app. The students were divided into two groups, with one group receiving additional calorie counts accompanying the meal descriptions.

The app listed five potential calorie options for each food entered. For example, the calorie counts for three pancakes with butter ranged from 300 to 560 calories. The group without specific calorie information could have averaged the five options to compensate for the missing information and get a better idea of the true caloric value of each meal, according to Dommer. Instead, participants in this group tended to enter fewer calories than the group that received specific calorie information, suggesting that people will cheat for intrinsic benefits, in this case feeling healthier.

The second study included 195 participants recruited on Amazon Mechanical Turk. These participants were divided into two groups — a control group and a cheat group — and asked to complete a 10-question, multiple choice IQ test. Those assigned to the cheat group were told that correct answers would be highlighted so they could keep track of their progress. After the exam, participants in the cheat group were asked to enter the number of questions they got correct, while the control group had to estimate their scores. Then the program graded both groups’ tests, and participants were asked to predict their score on an additional 10-question IQ test, this time one that did not allow for the possibility to cheat.

Dommer found that participants in the cheat group reported higher scores than those in the control group and, based on their self-reporting, overestimated their performance on the second IQ test. The results, she said, suggested that participants in the cheat group engaged in diagnostic self-deception, believing that their performance was due to their intelligence and not cheating, though their scores on the second test suggest otherwise.

The third study mirrored the second study, except this time 195 participants had to unscramble letters to find a word, like deciphering “utmost” from “motuts.” Individuals assigned to the control group had to enter their answers in an answer box, while those in the cheat group were shown the correct answer after 3 minutes and asked to self-report their scores. Then participants rated on a scale from one to seven, with one being “not at all” and seven being “very much so,” how much their intelligence and the task’s difficulty contributed to their performance. They used a similar scale to answer the question, “To what extent do you agree that unscrambling words is an accurate test of intelligence?”

Again, Dommer found that those in the cheat group reported successfully unscrambling more words than those in the control group. Compared to the control group, this group was more likely to attribute their performance to their intelligence and more likely to consider the task a legitimate test of intelligence.

“Participants in the cheat group engaged in diagnostic self-deception and attributed their performance to themselves,” Dommer said. “The thinking goes, ‘I’m performing well because I’m smart, not because the task allowed me to cheat.’”

The final study asked 231 participants to take a financial literacy test. Participants were divided into control and cheat groups, except this time the researcher had about half of each group read a statement about how most American adults cannot pass a basic financial literacy test. Dommer thought that introducing uncertainty about their own financial literacy may make individuals value accuracy over performance and reduce cheating. After taking the test, participants used a scale from one to seven to rate themselves on 15 traits related to financial literacy.

Dommer found that introducing the uncertainty statement decreased cheating as individuals sought more accurate measures of their financial literacy.

“How do we stop people from engaging in diagnostic self-deception and get a more accurate representation of who they are? One way is to draw their attention to uncertainty around the trait itself. This seems to mitigate the effect,” Dommer said.

Our society tends to think of “cheating” as a strategic, intentional act, Dommer said. This work, she explained, suggests that at times cheating happens beyond conscious awareness.

“I don’t think there’s a good cheating or a bad cheating,” she said. “I just think it’s interesting that not all cheating has to be conscious, explicit and intentional. That said, these illusory self-beliefs can still be harmful, especially when assessing your financial or physical health. When a person engages in diagnostic self-deception, they may underuse products and services designed to help them. This is why it’s important to be aware of illusory beliefs and strive to seek accurate self-assessments.”