Cheating at the End to Avoid Regret.

What happens when people have repeated opportunities to cheat? Across 5 studies, we gave 2,585 people over 25,000 opportunities to cheat. We observed a consistent pattern: Cheating increased at the end of a series of ethical choices. Cheating took two forms: Participants could repeatedly lie about the outcome of a private coin flip to get a payoff that they would otherwise not receive (Studies 1-3), or they could repeatedly overbill us for work (Study 5). In both cases, the cheat-at-the-end effect depended on the number of cheating opportunities that remained rather than the number of opportunities they had already faced, making it difficult for depleted self-control or the gradual erosion of moral standards to explain the results. Mediation analysis suggested that anticipated regret about foregoing a last opportunity to enrich oneself explained elevated cheating at the end (Study 4). These results shed light on the psychological and behavioral dynamics of repeated ethical choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]