Do cynics lie to avoid exploitation, to exploit others, or not at all? A registered report on the relationship between cynicism and dishonesty

Cynicism—the belief that humans are primarily driven by self-interest—leads people to assume that others will act dishonestly to achieve their goals. Yet, little is known about cynics’ own tendency to engage in dishonesty. The present research examined the relationship between cynicism and dishonesty and tested the relative strength of two underlying motives: the motivation to avoid exploitation and the motivation to exploit others. In Study 1, participants responded to hypothetical ethical dilemmas where they could lie to avoid being exploited or to exploit someone else. In Study 2, participants engaged in an incentivized behavioral task, where they could lie to protect their own endowment from another person, or to take away another person’s endowment. In both studies, participants completed a cynicism measure. Results showed that cynicism predicted dishonesty in both the hypothetical scenarios and the behavioral task. However, the effect of cynicism on dishonesty in the behavioral task was smaller and disappeared when controlling for additional personality traits (Honesty-Humility and the Dark Factor). Further, there were no consistent differences in the cynicism-dishonesty relationship between situations where lying served to avoid exploitation or to exploit others, indicating that both motives were relevant drivers of cynics’ dishonesty.