Has the thought of whether people are more moral in the morning but less in the evening ever crossed your mind? The Morning Morality Effect – is a phenomenon where people are less likely to lie or cheat in the morning than in the afternoon. Furthermore, this effect was mediated by the decrease in self- awareness and morality in the afternoon. For example, it is easier to avoid cheating on your diet in the morning than later in the night. This effect proves that the impact of time of day on dishonest conduct was observed to be more grounded for individuals with a lower propensity to ethically separate.
This effect questions human behaviour as a whole. For example, why do ‘good’ people do ‘bad’ things? Good people everywhere who, despite having selfish desires, wish to behave as well as be viewed as moral upstanding human beings. But even though they could be interested in doing the right thing, the thought of cheating, stealing, lying or doing anything bad that results in personal gain could still come through and thus, failure to control these train of thoughts. The reasons for a decrease in people’s ability to exert self-control might be because of time pressure (Shalvi, Eldar & Bereby-Meyer, 2012), sleep deprivation or even participating in particular tasks that would require using self-regulatory resources (Gino, Schweitzer, Mead, & Ariely, 2011), which results in people being unethical in situations where temptation is involved.
The extent to which people behave unethical and don’t feel any sort of guilt or distress is known as Moral Disengagement, and thus shows how strong the morning morality effect actually is. Through various studies, researchers have discovered that there are two types of people, those who behave unethically with having no guilt for their actions and then those that are known to be ethical and are affected due to their actions. Those people that have a higher propensity to morally disengage are more likely to cheat in the morning and evening too. But the people that have a lower propensity to morally disengage were honest in the morning and less so in the afternoon.
References:
Shania's Blog 