Are people more moral in the morning than in the afternoon? We propose that the normal, unremarkable experiences associated with everyday living can deplete one's capacity to resist moral temptations. In a series of four experiments, both undergraduate students and a sample of U.S. adults engaged in less unethical behavior (e.g., less lying and cheating) on tasks performed in the morning than on the same tasks performed in the afternoon. This morning morality effect was mediated by decreases in moral awareness and self-control in the afternoon. Furthermore, the effect of time of day on unethical behavior was found to be stronger for people with a lower propensity to morally disengage. These findings highlight a simple yet pervasive factor (i.e., the time of day) that has important implications for moral behavior.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 847. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 June 2023.
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#23,197
of 26,733,946 outputs
Outputs from Psychological Science
#46
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#104
of 228,088 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Psychological Science
#2
of 93 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,733,946 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,369 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 87.3. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 93 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
