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  • Title: Cheating to benefit others? On the relation between Honesty-Humility and prosocial lies.
    Author: Thielmann I, Hilbig BE, Klein SA, Seidl A, Heck DW.
    Journal: J Pers; 2024 Jun; 92(3):870-882. PubMed ID: 36938760.
    Abstract:
    OBJECTIVE: Among basic personality traits, Honesty-Humility yields the most consistent, negative link with dishonest behavior. The theoretical conceptualization of Honesty-Humility, however, suggests a potential boundary condition of this relation, namely, when lying is prosocial. We therefore tested the hypothesis that the association between Honesty-Humility and dishonesty weakens once lying benefits someone else, particularly so if this other is needy. METHODS: In two online studies (Study 1: N = 775 in Germany; Study 2: N = 737 in the UK, preregistered), we measured self-reported Honesty-Humility and dishonest behavior in incentivized cheating paradigms in which the beneficiary of participants' dishonesty was either the participants themselves, a "non-needy" other (e.g., another participant), or a "needy" other (e.g., a charity). RESULTS: We found support for the robustness of the negative association between Honesty-Humility and dishonesty, even if lying was prosocial. CONCLUSION: Individuals high in Honesty-Humility largely prioritize honesty, even if there is a strong moral imperative to lie; those low in Honesty-Humility, by contrast, tend to lie habitually and thus even if they themselves do not directly profit monetarily. This suggests that (un)truthfulness may be an absolute rather than a relative aspect of Honesty-Humility, although further systematic tests of this proposition are needed.
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