Fatalists Doomed to Cheat?

I came across something fascinating today, as I so often do, from my daily checking of the Integral Options Cafe. Namely, research on belief in fate versus free will and its effect on morality. Researchers Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia found that groups of people who were psychologically primed — that is, manipulated — to think fatalistically (strange job, being a psychological researcher!) were more likely to cheat in mathematical tests, both “passively” by taking advantage of opportunities, and “actively” cheating, actually paying themselves for doing so, so effectively stealing as well.

So those who have a strong belief in their own power and influence over events are less likely to cheat, lie and steal than those whose belief in this has been weakened, those who have been told for instance that “Science has proved that free will is an illusion”.

One problem is that science, or at least the media coverage of it which I read, tends to discover genetic components for more and more aspects of our health and behaviour. Could this be leading people to take less responsibility for their behaviour? Another issue which springs to mind is depression, which is often characterised by a feeling of isolation and helplessness, that nothing you do has any real effect. This is not to imply that people suffering from depression are dishonest.

It seems to me rather that conscious choice and the exercising of responsibility are simply good for us, physically, psychologically, and, it seems according to this research, morally. As usual religion can be used on both sides of the free-will/determinism argument. But it seems that a fatalistic view of life does not allow our full potential to flourish, cuts us off, in fact, from the interrelation of things, and that it might be an idea, even if we do believe that ultimately everything is somehow determined, to act “as if” we were free agents, with influence on the world that we can use for good. This also seems to me to be at the heart of what therapy is about.