Moral in the Morning and Dishonest in the Evening: Cheating Increases in the Afternoon

You may want to conduct your business in the morning rather than in the evening. It turns out that our ability to exhibit self-control to avoid cheating or lying is significantly reduced over the course of a day, making us more likely to be dishonest in the afternoon than in the morning.

"As ethics researchers, we had been running experiments examining various unethical behaviors, such as lying, stealing and cheating," explained Maryam Kouchaki and Isaac Smith, both researchers, in a news release. "We noticed that experiments conducted in the morning seemed to systematically result in lower instances of unethical behavior."

In order to investigate this phenomenon a bit further, the scientists conducted two experiments. College-age participants were shown various patterns of dots on a computer. For each pattern, they were asked to identify whether more dots were displayed on the left or the right side of the screen. The volunteers were then given money based on which side of the screen they determined had more dots; they were paid 10 times the amount for selecting the right over the left. This meant that they had a financial incentive to select the right, even if there were unmistakably more dots on the left, which would be a case of clear cheating.

It turned out that participants were more likely to cheat during the afternoon. Those tested between 8:00 am and 12:00 pm were less likely to cheat than those tested between 12:00 pm and 6:00 pm. This newly discovered phenomenon was dubbed the "morning morality effect."

That's not the only experiment the researchers conducted, though. They also tested participants' moral awareness in both the morning and afternoon. After being presented with word fragments, the morning volunteers were more likely to form the words "moral" and "ethical." The afternoon participants tended to form the words "coral" and "effects."

"Unfortunately, the most honest people, such as those less likely to morally disengage, may be the most susceptible to the negative consequences associated with the morning morality effect," write the researchers in a news release. "Our findings suggest that mere time of day can lead to a systematic failure of good people to act morally."

The findings reveal a little bit more about this particular phenomenon. In fact, the research could have implications for organizations and businesses that are trying to reduce unethical behavior. That said, future research is needed to understand why this occurs among individuals.

The findings are published in the journal Psychological Science.