But then he tried another variation: Before doing the test, he asked one group of subjects to name 10 books they had read in high school. He asked another group to name as many of the Ten Commandments as they could remember. The group that listed the books followed the same pattern as the earlier test – they all cheated a little. But the group that named the commandments was different: Nobody cheated at all!
"Just the act of contemplating morality eliminated cheating," Ariely explains.
This conclusion seems like one someone wanted to make, not one that makes sense.
Couldn't it just be that people know the ten commandments are easily checked, so it's silly to try to make some up?
And I don't understand how they know people cheated on the books question. How can you possibly find out what books someone read while in high school? Unless they mean specifically which ones were assigned (which still seems hard to verify).
And if people listed some titles they hadn't read it doesn't imply cheating: they could simply be remembering incorrectly.