As was observed in prior studies participants used benefitting another person as justification to cheat by assisting the confederate. While over half of the participants who cheated lied when asked if there had been any collaboration, the active commitment of swearing to tell the truth nearly eliminated further dishonest behavior. In other words, nearly all of the participants who swore to tell the truth did so, regardless of whether they were guilty or innocent of cheating.
In the prior study, all participants were tempted to cheat and then self-selected whether or not to engage in another moral transgression—lying. In the proposed studies, participants will be randomly assigned to a control or cheating induction condition. Additionally, the prior study used legal language for the oath, and observed almost no lying in participants who swore to tell the truth. However, it is unclear whether the patterns in truthful disclosure were due to an active commitment to engage in honest behavior, the gravity of the situation as conveyed by the language, the morality reminder alone, or some combination therein. This is the focus of the proposed project as well as examining the role of low or high motivation to be perceived as innocent. 
	While Joseph et al. laid the foundation for research into the effects of swearing to tell the truth on adult witness testimony, the singular study merely began the inquisition as to how and why the oath increases truthful disclosure. This project seeks to investigate the role of self-concept maintenance, moral disengagement, and ethical dissonance in participants’ decisions of whether or not to engage in dishonest behavior by measuring these key variables both before and after being questioned about previous transgressive behavior. Specifically, participants will be accused of cheating in direct violation of instructions and will then choose whether to transgress further by lying or telling the truth about their behavior. Further, this project strengthens the methods of Joseph et al. by using a fully-crossed experimental design and examines motivation to be perceived as innocent as a potential moderator of truthful disclosure. In doing so, this project expands self-concept maintenance, moral disengagement, and ethical dissonance theories discussed in the example of Robin above while increasing the generalizability of the results to a broader range of scenarios of clear relevance to the legal system. 

	The first study examines whether the language of an oath taken prior to giving a statement influences the truthfulness of witness testimony, and investigates the roles of self-concept maintenance, moral disengagement, and ethical dissonance as possible mediating variables. 
Federal Rule 603 states: “Before testifying, a witness must give an oath or affirmation to testify truthfully. It must be in a form designed to impress that duty on the witness’s conscience”. In instances of personal beliefs conflicting with the divine invocation present in an oath, an affirmation—public declaration and guarantee of truthfulness made in public under the penalty of perjury—can be made. As stated above, the difference between an oath and an affirmation is the invocation of a divine authority in an oath but not an affirmation. However, the language of the main body of both the oath and affirmation—in essence, solemnly swearing that the testimony is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—are essentially identical. Though an oath and affirmation are equivalent in the eyes of the law, slight differences in language may affect truthful disclosure.  
