The effects of ritual and self-control resources depletion on deceptive behavior: Evidence from behavioral and ERPs studies.

Although researchers have indicated that individuals with depleted self-control resources have lower self-control behavior and exhibit more deceptive behaviors, recent psychological studies have shown that ritual can improve self-control and increase the likelihood that the individual makes prosocial decisions. However, little is known about whether ritual can regulate an individual's engagement in deceptive behavior when their self-control resources are depleted. This study adopted the spot-the-difference task to investigate the influences of ritual and self-control resources depletion on simple self-control behavior and deceptive behavior (Experiment 1 and Experiment 2); furthermore, relevant neural processes were explored using event-related potentials (Experiment 3). Experiment 1 showed that individuals with depleted self-control resources had lower self-control behavior and individuals performing a ritual had higher self-control behavior. Experiment 2 showed that individuals with depleted self-control resources exhibited more deceptive behaviors and individuals performing a ritual exhibited fewer deceptive behaviors; furthermore, ritual reduced deceptive behaviors in individuals with depleted self-control resources. Experiment 3 found that individuals with depleted self-control resources had larger P2 amplitudes after performing a ritual. Moreover, individuals with depleted self-control resources had larger LPP amplitudes over parietal sites after performing a ritual. These findings suggested that performing ritual may be an effective measure of inhibiting individuals with depleted self-control resources from engaging in deceptive behavior. Our findings verify the ego-depletion model and provide a new perspective for reducing deceptive behaviors in individuals with depleted self-control resources. We provide evidence that rituals could modulate deceptive behaviors in individuals with depleted self-control resources. This reveals that performing rituals may be an effective measure for inhibiting individuals with depleted self-control resources from engaging in deceptive behavior.

Self-Deception Reduces Cognitive Load: The Role of Involuntary Conscious Memory Impairment.

People often hear classic allusions such as plugging one's ears while stealing a bell, drawing cakes to satisfy one's hunger, and the emperor's new clothes. These allusions reflect a principle that people believe in nonexistent phenomena to satisfy their desires, also called self-deception. The current research used three experiments to examine the impact of social status and cognitive load on self-deception, and further to explore the inner connection about cognitive load and self-deception. The results found that deceiving individuals of high social status can play a role through the intrinsic mechanism of involuntary conscious memory (ICM). The higher the cognitive load of the deceiver, the greater the possibility of deception. The study demonstrated that involuntary conscious memory is the internal mechanism of self-deception, further explore the origin of self-deception, and enrich the self-deception theory.