Abstract
The present study undertook to discover whether individuals would lie to help someone as a function of the size of the lie and the need or dependency of the person needing help. Subjects were confronted with an opportunity to help another person (a confederate of the researcher) by agreeing to his judgments of the distance which a point of light moved in an otherwise dark room. Although the light was stationary, the confederate made guesses ranging between 0 and 26 in. The results indicate that the size of the lie had little effect on whether the subject helped but the subject did not help when the confederate had nothing to lose. The subjects appeared willing to lie when it would help another person.
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