Cheater's hide and seek: Strategic cognitive network activation during ethical decision making.

ETHICAL decision making; SOCIAL networks; SOCIAL support; DECISION making

• Examines interplay between cognitive social network activation and ethical decision making. • In anticipation of ethical decision making, individuals activate lower dense social network. • After ethical decision making, individual activate higher density social network. • Strategic use of cognitive social networks to aid in decision making process. We consider the dynamic process by which people cognitively activate their social networks during ethical decision making. We compare actors' goals during anticipatory and ex-post phases of ethical decision making, and propose that they trigger hide-and-seek patterns of network activation. Experiment 1 links cognitively activated network structures with self-report ethical behavior. Consistent with "hiding goals," actors randomly assigned to anticipate behaving unethically (versus honestly or in the control condition), activated sparser networks that could better hide unethicality (Experiment 2). Consistent with "seeking" goals, participants randomly assigned to unethical (versus honest) conditions mentally activated dense networks, seeking out social support to uphold their sense of self (Experiment 3a). This network activation process is mitigated when participants affirm themselves (Experiment 3b). Experiment 4 replicates these hide and seek patterns of social network activation in a single study that captures both the anticipatory and ex-post phases of ethical decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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