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Researchers have identified a surprisingly simple way to encourage people to admit to socially sensitive or morally questionable behaviours in surveys by reminding them of their good deeds first.

Deviant behaviours such as digital piracy, tax cheating or excessive drinking are routinely underreported in surveys, posing a real problem for policymakers, academics and businesses who rely on this evidence.

In a , published in Deviant Behaviour, the authors test an intervention designed to overcome this problem. The study revealed that ‘moral licensing’ can be used to increase truthful responses.

Moral licensing theory suggests that when people recall virtuous actions, such as giving to charity or making environmentally friendly choices, they feel they have built up a form of moral credit. This moral buffer affords them later behaviour that might otherwise threaten their moral self-image. In everyday life, it is the familiar logic of “I went to the gym, so I’ve earned that bottle of wine.”

The researchers applied this logic to survey design. Across two experiments involving questions about digital piracy, participants were first asked about positive but common activities, such as owning a streaming subscription or attending the cinema, that support the creative industries. When later asked about digital piracy, respondents who had been primed to recall their good actions were significantly more likely to admit to illegal downloading.

The intervention worked where it was most needed. Individuals who were particularly motivated to present themselves in a favourable light are typically the most reluctant to admit to deviant behaviour.

In this study, these participants exhibited the greatest increase in honest reporting after the moral licensing prime. Since women in the sample showed higher social desirability bias, the effect was particularly strong among female respondents.

“Women were more likely to underreport piracy, as is common for morally sensitive or unethical behaviours in survey research,” explained Dr Kate Whitman,  ethical consumption researcher at the University of 1024�˹���. “By giving respondents an opportunity to reflect on their positive actions first, we reduced the psychological cost of admitting wrongdoing, especially for those most concerned with appearing moral.”

The findings have important implications for social science, marketing, and policy evaluation, where surveys are often the primary source of behavioural data. Many areas, such as health practices, illicit consumption, workplace misconduct, and political transgressions, suffer from systematic underreporting.

A brief prompt encouraging respondents to recall a positive action represents a low-cost, easily implemented intervention that can improve data accuracy and reduce gender disparities in disclosure.

“Our results show that providing participants with the opportunity to reflect on morally virtuous behaviours before answering sensitive questions significantly increases willingness to disclose deviant behaviour,” said Dr Zahra Murad, Associate Professor in Behavioural Economics at the University of 1024�˹���’s School of Accounting, Economics and Finance. “This simple technique can strengthen the reliability of survey data and help researchers obtain more complete insights into behaviours that are otherwise hidden.”

The study offers a new way to improve accuracy of surveys and demonstrates that moral licensing can be used not only to understand unethical behaviour, but to reveal it.