Embodied Honesty in Real World and Digital Interactions

Project Information

eHONESTY

Grant agreement ID: 789058

DOI

10.3030/789058

Project closed

EC signature date 18 October 2018

Start date 1 November 2018

End date 31 July 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 497 188,00

EU contribution

€ 2 497 188,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA LA SAPIENZA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - eHONESTY (Embodied Honesty in Real World and Digital Interactions)

Reporting period: 2023-05-01 to 2024-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The eHONESTY project addressed how bodily awareness, particularly through interoceptive (internal) and exteroceptive (external) signals, affects moral decision-making. It aimed to uncover the connection between physical bodily signals and ethical behavior, investigating how body ownership, agency, and bodily signals influence (dis)honesty, particularly in situations where reputation is at risk. The project explored individual and group moral behavior in both real-world and digital interactions, utilizing advanced technology, such as virtual reality (VR) and ingestible devices, to simulate and measure these effects across controlled environments and real-life scenarios.
The findings of the project contributed to the understanding of how bodily signals and self awareness impact morality and can reshape our approach to fostering ethical behavior, potentially influencing fields such as education, leadership, and public policy. By exploring embodied morality, eHONESTY revealed new avenues for promoting ethical behavior through bodily awareness, enhancing our understanding of honesty in personal, organizational, and societal contexts. Furthermore, the project's applications in VR for leadership training and ingestible technology for health monitoring promise broader implications, from improving corporate integrity to enhancing physical and mental well-being in humans and animals, aligning with European health and environmental policy initiatives.
The achieved objectives of eHONESTY are:
Having established a scientific basis for embodied morality by linking bodily awareness with moral decision-making.
Having developed innovative methodologies for studying (dis)honesty in digital and real-world contexts, using VR and mobile apps that simulate controlled interactions.
Having contributed to the advancement of technology transfer by applying eHONESTY’s findings in real-world settings, such as corporate leadership training and veterinary medicine.
Having used new tools for investigating bodily signals such as ingestible devices that monitor GI functions and their influence on cognition and emotion, opening up applications in health and behavior management.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The eHONESTY project has successfully completed all planned research activities, achieving the project’s objective of understanding how bodily awareness and self-consciousness impact moral decision-making. Through various experiments, the project systematically tested its hypothesis that modulations in body ownership, agency, and interoceptive awareness influence honesty and ethical behavior.
Over the project’s duration, eHONESTY carried out numerous self-report and behavioral experiments as well as clinical studies across diverse participant groups, including individuals with body integrity disorder and Parkinson’s disease. Notably, behavioral experiments on body ownership and agency manipulation were designed and executed, as well as EEG, thermal imaging, SCR and HR studies exploring the neural and autonomous system physiological correlates of moral decision-making. The team also investigated shared agency and ownership in multi-user scenarios, advancing our understanding of how collective and individual senses of agency affect ethical choices.
The “Roll and Tell” mobile app and VR extensions were fully developed and deployed to collect data in immersive settings, leveraging mobile and VR interfaces to assess real-time decisions and responses linked to body and agency manipulations. The VR adaptation allowed for a nuanced exploration of shared agency and ownership, deepening insights into embodied morality. Similarly, studies on interoceptive awareness in relation to moral judgement were completed, analyzing how heightened bodily self-consciousness can influence ethical decision-making. These findings have been disseminated in high-impact academic journals, contributing significantly to interdisciplinary research in psychology, neuroscience, and ethics.
The project's outcomes have been shared at numerous national and international scientific conferences, as well as at science outreach and educational events designed for non-specialist audiences.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The eHONESTY project made significant progress beyond the state of the art by advancing our understanding of the relationship between bodily self-consciousness and moral decision-making. This project explored new dimensions of ethical behavior by systematically manipulating senses of body ownership and agency. It also investigated how variations in interoceptive awareness influence moral choices, thus revealing novel bidirectional connections between bodily self-awareness and ethical decision-making.
Key advancements included the development of methodologies to assess bodily self-consciousness through innovative behavioral and self-report experiments, both in clinical and non-clinical populations, as well as through the use of EEG and physiological measurements of different body districts. The integration of mobile and VR applications, such as the Roll and Tell App, enabled the project to examine moral decision-making in both individual and interactive contexts. This technology also facilitated real-time, ecologically valid data collection, helping to bridge the gap between laboratory and real-world conditions.
These tools and methods allowed the project to examine the previously underexplored influence of shared agency/ownership on morality, illuminating how multi-user environments might affect ethical behavior. This line of inquiry is particularly novel, expanding existing knowledge in neuroscience and psychology by incorporating social and technological elements in studying moral decision-making. The project’s findings, disseminated in high-impact journals, offer potential applications in clinical psychology, virtual reality training, and ethics-oriented technology design.
By the project's end, eHONESTY established a comprehensive framework for studying the connections between self-consciousness, and morality. This foundation supports future research and applications in clinical contexts and emerging technologies, setting a new standard for ethically aligned design and intervention strategies.

Achieved evidence and future perspectives of the eHONESTY project