Trait honesty, dishonest behavior, and the justifiability of lying

honesty-dishonesty-and-justifiability-of-lying

• Thielmann, Isabel Email PuRE ORCID GND-ID Principal Investigator Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law
• Smillie, Luke Email Co-Principal Investigator University of Melbourne

The major goal of this study is to investigate whether the relation between trait honesty and (dis)honest behavior is moderated by the justifiability of lying. Specifically, we hypothesize to find an interaction between measures of dispositional honesty and justifiability of lying on dishonest behavior, whereby these measures predict dishonest behavior more strongly (negatively) when lying is more easily justifiable. Stated differently, those high in trait honesty should tend not to lie (irrespective of the justifiability of lying) whereas those low in trait honesty should be more willing to lie when lying is more (rather than less) easily justifiable.
As an aside, we also test the predictive power of different measures of trait honesty for dishonest behavior and we also consider rule compliance as a covariate.