H2020 ERC - Advanced Grant 2019-2024
ERC grant(s)
Ehonesty
EMBODIED HONESTY IN REAL WORLD AND DIGITAL INTERACTIONS
Abstract: Bodily Self-consciousness, i.e. the fundamental experience of owning a body (ownership) and being the author of an action (agency), may influence peoples' dishonest tendencies, by changing their perception of themselves during interactions with both virtual avatars and with real people. The eHONESTY project will assess dishonesty using interactive scenarios in which people are tempted to lie to obtain a monetary payoff at the cost of others. Rea life, virtual reality and web-based interactions will be tested. Behavioural (e.g., subjective reports, kinematics), autonomic (e.g., heartbeat, thermal imaging) and brain (e.g., EEG, TMS, lesion analyses) measures of dishonesty will be recorded in healthy and clinical populations. We aim to manipulate bodily self-consciousness by changing an avatar used by an individual to communicate online, or giving them the feeling of being no longer just an individual but part of a wider group. Such manipulations may lead people to change how they respond in a given situation. The ultimate goal of the project is to provide information to policy makers involved in promoting education to honesty and civic virtues. In this sense, the potential importance for society of the project is very high. Discovering physiological and neural primitives that influence (dis)honest behavior at individual level and that are inherently linked to biology and interact with societal influences. The expected results may inspire new strategies for combating dishonesty and other unethical behavior and foster a person-based approach that will complement existing cross-cultural, large-scale, societal investigations.