Does time of day affect dishonest behavior? Evidence from correlational analyses, experiments, and meta-analysis

Will dishonest behavior change as the day progresses? Kouchaki and Smith (2014) found that people engaged in less unethical behavior in the morning than in the afternoon. The following studies have tried to replicate the morning morality effect but found mixed results. To comprehensively quantify the effect of time of day on dishonesty, we conducted three studies. Study 1 performed correlational analyses in a large sample (N = 1720) and found no significant correlation between time of day and dishonest behaviors (r = −0.031). Study 2 conducted randomized experiments among college students (N = 429) and inmates (N = 559). We found no significant difference (Hedges’s g = 0.03, BF01 = 8.865) in dishonesty between morning and afternoon in students while even a reverse pattern (Hedges’s g = −0.18, BF01 = 2.040) in inmates. Study 3 undertook both frequentist and Bayesian meta-analyses of 32 samples (N = 7161) and found a negligible and non-significant morning morality effect (Hedges’s g = 0.04, 95% CI [−0.04, 0.11], BF01 = 27.167). Taken together, these findings provide comprehensive evidence for the absence rather than the presence of time of day on dishonesty.