Illusory Diligence: Feeling Good About Doing Bad

People typically value honesty and have strong beliefs in their own morality, yet recent world events suggest that profitable mistakes are common. We suggest that one explanation for the high rate of profitable mistakes centers on the impact of irrelevant data in settings where a motive to apprehend and accurately describe the world conflicts with a motive for personal financial gain. We propose that settings that provide access to data of varying relevance afford people opportunities to endorse profitable but erroneous views while still feeling like they are honoring objectivity. Using a process-tracing platform, we demonstrate that the probability of making an error increases as people amass more evidence, but only when the mistake results in financial gain (i.e., where a conflict of interest exists; COI). Importantly, even amassed evidence with no diagnostic value licensed this impropriety. Evidence of diligence—even illusory evidence—licenses an in increase in lucrative error making.