Intuition or Deliberation? The Effects of Decision-Making Modes on Adolescents’ Honest Behaviors: The Moderating Roles of Honesty Tendencies and Victim Situations

TL;DR

This study explores how decision-making styles and situations influence honesty in adolescents, revealing that honesty depends on both personal traits and context.

Contribution

The study introduces a dynamic model of how decision-making modes interact with honesty tendencies and situational factors to shape adolescent honesty.

Findings

In victimless situations, intuitive decisions increased honesty in high-honesty adolescents, while deliberate decisions did so in low-honesty ones.

In victim situations, decision-making modes had similar effects on honesty regardless of honesty tendencies.

Adolescents with high and low honesty tendencies showed more honesty under intuitive decision-making.

Abstract

An ongoing controversy exists regarding whether honest behaviors are driven by intuition or deliberation. To reconcile opposing research viewpoints, this study, grounded in the social heuristic hypothesis, focuses on two key factors that influence honest behaviors: decision-making situations and personal traits. It explores the effects of intuitive and deliberate decision-making modes on adolescents’ honest behaviors and the moderating effect of honesty tendencies and victim situations. A mixed three-factor experimental design was employed, using a “spot-the-difference” task to assess adolescents’ honest behaviors. The results revealed that, in victimless situations, promoting intuitive and deliberate decision-making was more conducive to the honest behaviors of adolescents with high- and low-honesty tendencies, respectively, while in victim situations the effect of decision-making modes on honest behaviors tended to be consistent between individuals with high and low honesty tendencies. Adolescents with high and low honesty tendencies demonstrated more honest behaviors in the intuitive decision-making mode. These findings indicate that the effect of decision-making modes on honest behaviors is a dynamic process of individual–situation co-shaping, emphasizing the significant situational heterogeneity of—and providing a new perspective to improve—adolescents’ honest behaviors.

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