To some extent, unethical behavior results from people’s limited attention to ethical considerations, which results in an ethical blind spot. Here, we focus on the role of ambiguity in shaping people’s ethical blind spots, which in turn lead to their ethical failures. We suggest that in ambiguous settings, individuals’ attention shifts toward tempting information, which determines the magnitude of their lies. Employing a novel ambiguous-dice paradigm, we asked participants to report the outcome of the die roll appearing closest to the location of a previously presented fixation cross on a computer screen; this outcome would determine their pay. We varied the value of the die second closest to the fixation cross to be either higher (i.e., tempting) or lower (i.e., not tempting) than the die closest to the fixation cross. Results of two experiments revealed that in ambiguous settings, people’s incorrect responses were self-serving. Tracking participants’ eye movements demonstrated that people’s ethical blind spots are shaped by increased attention toward tempting information.

In ambiguous settings, people are tempted to make self-serving mistakes. Here, we assess whether people make more self-serving mistakes to minimize losses compared with maximize gains. Results reveal that participants are twice as likely to make self-serving mistakes to reduce losses compared to increase gains. We further trace participants' eye movements to gain insight into the process underlying self-serving mistakes in losses and gains. We find that tempting, self-serving information does not capture more attention in loss, compared to gain framing. Rather, in loss framing, people are more likely to report the tempting, self-serving information they observed. The results imply that rather than diverting attention away from tempting information, reducing people's motivation to make self-serving mistakes, and framing goals as gains rather than losses are promising ways to decrease the occurrence of self-serving mistakes. In turn, this fosters environments with more accuracy and fewer motivated mistakes.

Promotion deals and price reductions are common strategies retailers use to attract consumers. We investigate which of two common types of deals better captures consumers' attention. By tracing eye movements, we examine participants' attention allocation when deciding between “buy-one-get-one free” (BOGO) deals versus deals that offer an equivalent price reduction. Results show that people prefer BOGO deals, and they tend to choose them over price reductions even when the deals are equal in terms of net value. The preference is amplified when the discount is relatively high: In these cases, BOGO deals attract more attention than percentage deals. Overall, our findings can help retailers develop promotional strategies to capture potential consumers' attention in online commerce. At the same time, our results warn consumers to better evaluate their options and not be lured by the first BOGO deal that captures their attention, as it might not be the best deal available.

When allocating resources, equity and efficiency may conflict. When resources are scarce and cannot be distributed equally, one may choose to destroy resources and reduce societal welfare to maintain equity among its members. We examined whether people are averse to inequitable outcomes per se or to being responsible for deciding how inequity should be implemented. Three scenario-based experiments and one incentivized experiment revealed that participants are inequity responsibility averse: when asked to decide which of the 2 equally deserving individuals should receive a reward, they rather discarded the reward than choosing who will get it. This tendency diminished significantly when participants had the possibility to use a random device to allocate the reward. The finding suggests that it is more difficult to be responsible for the way inequity is implemented than to create inequity per se.