The brain adapts to dishonesty
Open accessAbstract
Dishonesty is an integral part of our social world, influencing domains ranging from finance and politics to personal relationships. Anecdotally, digressions from a moral code are often described as a series of small breaches that grow over time. Here we provide empirical evidence for a gradual escalation of self-serving dishonesty and reveal a neural mechanism supporting it. Behaviorally, we show that the extent to which participants engage in self-serving dishonesty increases with repetition. Using functional MRI, we show that signal reduction in the amygdala is sensitive to the history of dishonest behavior, consistent with adaptation. Critically, the extent of reduced amygdala sensitivity to dishonesty on a present decision relative to the previous one predicts the magnitude of escalation of self-serving dishonesty on the next decision. The findings uncover a biological mechanism that supports a 'slippery slope': what begins as small acts of dishonesty can escalate into larger transgressions.
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This result is consistent with studies in both nonhuman primates and in human neuroimaging studies suggesting that the amygdala represents how undesirable an outcome is.
“This result is consistent with studies in both nonhuman primates 7 and in human neuroimaging studies 16 suggesting that the amygdala represents how undesirable an outcome is.”
From Oxytocin modulates social value representations in the amygdala (2019) · cites this paper as [16]
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- Authors
- Garrett, N., Lazzaro, S. C., Ariely, D., & Sharot, T.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- Duke University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Garrett, Neil
- Sharot, Tali
- Venue
- Nature Neuroscience
- Published
- 2016-10-24
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1727-1732
- ISSN
- 1097-6256 (ISSN-L)
- 1546-1726
- PMC
- PMC5238933
- OpenAlex
- W2538748553
- Cited by
- 180
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 23 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 4
- FWCI
- 29.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- UEA Digital Repository (University of East Anglia) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust (093807)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Deception detection and forensic psychology
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Academic integrity and plagiarism
- Keywords
- amygdala, neural adaptation, moral transgression, slippery slope, ethical decision-making
- MeSH terms
- Adaptation, Biological, Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Behavior, Brain, Decision Making, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Morals, Young Adult
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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