To Gneezy, the fact that the knowledge of the personal benefits only influenced the participants’ decision in the first scenario suggests that their self-deception was unconscious; it changed the way they were calculating the benefits and risks without them being aware of the bias, so that they could feel that they were still acting in the clients’ interest. In the second scenario, it would have required a complete change of mind, which would have been harder to justify to themselves. “They just couldn’t convince themselves that they would be acting ethically,” he says.
