Cognitive control promotes either honesty or dishonesty, depending on one’s moral default - EEG - JoN

Cognitive control is crucially involved in making (dis)honest decisions. However, the precise nature of this role has been hotly debated. Is honesty an intuitive response or is willpower needed to override an intuitive inclination to cheat? A reconciliation of these conflicting views proposes that cognitive control enables dishonest participants to be honest, whereas it allows cheating for those who are generally honest. Thus, cognitive control does not promote (dis)honesty per se; it depends on one’s moral default. In the present study, we tested this proposal using EEG in humans (males & females) in combination with an external localizer task to mitigate the problem of reverse inference. Our analysis revealed that the neural signature evoked by cognitive control demands in the Stroop task can be used to estimate (dis)honest choices in an independent cheating task, providing converging evidence that cognitive control can indeed help honest participants to cheat, whereas it facilitates honesty for cheaters.In this repository you can find the data and scripts used in the study. For detailed information please consult the README file.

认知控制（cognitive control）在个体做出诚实与不诚实决策的过程中发挥着至关重要的作用。然而，该作用的确切本质一直是学界热议的议题。诚实究竟是一种直觉性反应，还是需要借助意志力来压制本能的作弊倾向？有学者针对这些相悖观点提出了一项整合性调和理论，该理论主张：认知控制能够帮助不诚实的被试做出诚实选择，同时也能让惯于诚实的被试实施作弊行为。由此可见，认知控制本身并不会直接促进诚实或不诚实行为，其作用效果取决于个体的道德默认倾向。本研究借助脑电图（EEG）技术，结合外部定位任务对人类被试（包含男性与女性）开展实验，以检验该理论主张并缓解反向推论的研究局限。分析结果显示，斯特鲁普（Stroop）任务中由认知控制需求所诱发的神经特征，可用于预测独立作弊任务中的诚实与不诚实选择，这为"认知控制确实能够帮助诚实个体实施作弊，同时助力作弊者保持诚实"的论断提供了汇聚性证据。本仓库包含本研究中使用的实验数据与脚本代码，详细信息请参阅README文件。