title: Justifications shape ethical blind spots.
abstract: To some extent, unethical behavior results from people's limited attention to ethical considerations, which results in an ethical blind spot. Here, we focus on the role of ambiguity in shaping people's ethical blind spots, which in turn lead to their ethical failures. We suggest that in ambiguous settings, individuals' attention shifts toward tempting information, which determines the magnitude of their lies. Employing a novel ambiguous-dice paradigm, we asked participants to report the outcome of the die roll appearing closest to the location of a previously presented fixation cross on a computer screen; this outcome would determine their pay. We varied the value of the die second closest to the fixation cross to be either higher (i.e., tempting) or lower (i.e., not tempting) than the die closest to the fixation cross. Results of two experiments revealed that in ambiguous settings, people's incorrect responses were self-serving. Tracking participants' eye movements demonstrated that people's ethical blind spots are shaped by increased attention toward tempting information.
authors: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
authors: Andrea
authors: A
authors: Pittarello
authors: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
authors: Margarita
authors: M
authors: Leib
authors: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
authors: Tom
authors: T
authors: Gordon-Hecker
authors: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev andreap@post.bgu.ac.il sshalvi@bgu.ac.il.
authors: Shaul
authors: S
authors: Shalvi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D008192:Deception; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D009014:Morals; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: ambiguity; attention allocation; dishonesty; ethical decision making; eye movements; morality; open data; open materials; preregistered; self-deception