We probably all know the feeling: something bad happens at work, and there are a few choices for dealing with it. You can go “by the book” and potentially suffer some unpleasant consequences, or you can bend the rules just a bit to make the whole thing go away. For example, suppose you miss a deadline by a few hours. You can choose to tell your manager or, because your manager happens to be in a long meeting, finish the job late and slip it under some paperwork on their desk, claiming that it has been there all day.

You know what you should do, but you also know that the sneakier alternative is probably the path of least resistance. What would you do?

Your answer to this question would probably depend, at least in part, on why you missed the deadline in the first place. If you missed the deadline because you procrastinated all week and took an extended lunch break on the day the work was due, you might feel some guilt over lying to your manager. Attribution theory suggests that this is because you are attributing the missed deadline to an internal and unstable/

controllable factor: insufficient effort. This guilt might, depending on other factors, such as your values and the consequences if your manager learns of the missed deadline, reduce your willingness to lie about finishing the work on time.

Your response might be different if you believe that you missed the deadline because the amount of time your manager gave you to complete the work was unreasonably short. If you worked late and skipped lunch all week but still needed a couple of extra hours to get the work done, you are much less likely to blame yourself. Instead, you will probably attribute the missed deadline to an external and relatively stable factor: your manager. Such attributions are associated with anger, which is a strong motivator of deviant behavior. This attribution-driven anger might help you feel justified in sneaking the work onto your manager’s desk. After all, why should you get in trouble if the request was unreasonable?