ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 21 November 2018 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02268 Edited by: Xunbing Shen, Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, China Reviewed by: Fang Cui, Shenzhen University, China Xiaochu Zhang, University of Science and Technology of China, China *Correspondence: Song Su sus@bnu.edu.cn Chao Liu liuchao@bnu.edu.cn Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cognitive Science, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Received: 25 September 2018 Accepted: 31 October 2018 Published: 21 November 2018 Citation: Tang H, Wang S, Liang Z, Sinnott-Armstrong W, Su S and Liu C (2018) Are Proselfs More Deceptive and Hypocritical? Social Image Concerns in Appearing Fair. Front. Psychol. 9:2268. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02268 Are Proselfs More Deceptive and Hypocritical? Social Image Concerns in Appearing Fair Honghong Tang 1,2 , Shun Wang 2,3 , Zilu Liang 2,3 , Walter Sinnott-Armstrong 4 , Song Su 1 * and Chao Liu 2,3,5 * 1 Business School, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, 2 State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, 3 Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain Imaging and Connectomics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, 4 Philosophy Department and Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States, 5 Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China Deception varies across individuals and social contexts. The present research explored how individual difference measured by social value orientations, and situations, affect deception in moral hypocrisy. In two experiments, participants made allocations between themselves and recipients with an opportunity to deceive recipients where recipients cannot reject their allocations. Experiment 1 demonstrated that proselfs were more deceptive and hypocritical than prosocials by lying to be apparently fair, especially when deception was unrevealed. Experiment 2 showed that proselfs were more concerned about social image in deception in moral hypocrisy than prosocials were. They decreased apparent fairness when deception was revealed and evaluated by a third-party reviewer and increased it when deception was evaluated but unrevealed. These results show that prosocials and proselfs differed in pursuing deception and moral hypocrisy social goals and provide implications for decreasing deception and moral hypocrisy. Keywords: social value orientations, social image concerns, deception, moral hypocrisy, hypocritical fairness, social evaluation INTRODUCTION Although deception is common in daily life, it varies across individuals and social contexts. For example, about 30% people preferred to tell the truth rather than lying, when their lies only benefited themselves but did not affect others’ payoffs (López-Pérez and Spiegelman, 2013). When lies benefit liars but cost others, about 19% people never lie and 10% people lie in more than 60% trials (Tang et al., 2016, 2018). The percentage of liars ranged from 17% to 52% when the benefits decreases and the cost increases (Gneezy, 2005). Specifically, those who were more concerned about social goals were less likely to lie (Cappelen et al., 2013). These variances have attracted significant attention but few studies have been conducted to directly test individual difference in deception and whether and how it is associated with social preference. Additionally, people not only lie for material benefits, but also lie for non-material goals. They lie to be wiser in achievements or knowledge, to be more attractive in online dating profiles (DePaulo et al., 1996; Toma et al., 2008), and to appear fairer to avoid cost of being truly fair (C Daniel Batson et al., 1999).Specifically, the phenomenon that appearing moral rather than being truly so has been defined as moral hypocrisy, in which people pursue self-interest by masking unfair Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 November 2018 | Volume 9 | Article 2268