The role of Bodily Self Consciousness in Morality and (dis)honest behaviors

Bodily self-consciousness (BSC) mainly consists of the sense of owning one’s own body, i.e., the Sense of Ownership (OW), and of being in control of one’s own actions, i.e., the Sense of Agency (AG). The way in which BSC signals can influence morality and the tendency to deceive is still unclear, with studies suggesting that attention towards body signals can make us more sensitive to our needs and thus dishonest, and others suggesting that BSC signals would make us feel more in control of our actions and then more honest. Here, we tested (in 658 participants) whether self-report measures of BSC differently relate to Moral Identity (measured by a questionnaire) and Moral Behavior (measured as participants’ tendency to cheat in a task where they could gain more money by lying). Our results show that the relationship between OW and internalized morality is moderated by sensitivity to Monetary Reward with less sensitive participants showing higher internalized morality; higher AG seems to increase Internalized Morality by boosting the effect of Sense of Power and diminishing that of Moral Disengagement. Interestingly, analysis of Moral Behavior shows that the effect of OW on dishonesty is higher in those who are not very sensitive to Monetary Reward. Our data show an interesting dissociation between Moral Identity and Behavior: when high OW is associated to low sensitivity to Monetary Reward, people feel more moral but behave less honestly. This suggests that being aware of the fact that we are not tempted by rewards enhances our moral self-image but impairs Moral Behavior. This is in line with moral credit models which posit that we use moral behavior to balance our moral self: when moral identity is high, we allow ourselves to misbehave (moral self-licensing) and when low, we enhance honest behaviors (moral cleansing). To further investigate the impact of Body Ownership over (dis)honesty in social situations, we used Virtual Reality (VR) to modulate participants’ OW of a virtual body while interacting with another person and having the opportunity to lie for a monetary reward. Our preliminary results (N = 28) suggest that people behave less honestly when their virtual hand appears disconnected from the virtual body, but this effect does not seem to be modulated by reward.