What do teachers need to know about honesty?
If you want to develop strong relationships, honesty is fundamental. I answered questions about this topic for as a :
Let鈥檚 start with the basics. Why is honesty so important?
For thousands of years, honesty has been held up as a really important character trait by different philosophical traditions, religious traditions, across multiple cultures. A second, more practical, reason for caring about honesty is that if we want to get things done in the world, we need to form trusting relationships. People need to be able to take what we say at face value. And that has implications for forming good partnerships and marriages and being an active and successful participant in social life. So there are real consequences to being honest or dishonest.
A third reason is that we desire honesty. My colleagues and I asked people in a a few years ago, what are the characteristics of someone you respect, someone you like? The number one pick is honesty. A lot of other traits are important, like being compassionate and being fair. But honesty comes out on top.
If everyone thinks honesty is important, why is it so hard?
It鈥檚 interesting, right? What鈥檚 most distinctive about honesty is that, in some cases, people lie because there鈥檚 tension with another action that also seems moral. For example, when you鈥檙e giving feedback to your child or a student, you want to be honest because otherwise, they aren鈥檛 going to learn. But you also want to be mindful of their self-esteem, so you have the motivation to be kind and compassionate. You want to find a balance between benevolence and honesty.
There鈥檚 also the famous philosophical case of the 鈥淣azi at the door.鈥� Imagine this scenario: You鈥檙e hiding people, and Nazi soldiers knock on your door and ask, 鈥淎re you hiding people?鈥� What do you do? The moral thing to do is to lie, but then you鈥檙e lying. So how do you resolve that paradox? You have these situations where being honest may not be the right thing to do. Thankfully, many of us don鈥檛 have to deal with these sorts of moral dilemmas often.
What do you think researchers know about honesty that most people get wrong?
We all see these high-profile instances of people cheating or lying that make the news. A classic example is Bernie Madoff, who ran a Ponzi scheme and defrauded people. Or Tiger Woods, with his history of marital infidelity. When people read news stories like these, they assume that because these famous figures are lying, you can鈥檛 trust people. And that belief can be corrosive. If you go around the world thinking that most people will not be truthful with you, you鈥檙e going to be distrustful. It鈥檚 going to prevent you from fostering human connection, real human bonds. But in our research, we鈥檙e finding that most people are honest in their everyday life.
A skeptic might say that people will tell researchers they鈥檙e honest just to make themselves look good.
In our recent research, we鈥檝e been using experience-sampling methods鈥攚e can send people messages and ask them how honest they are being right now. And there are certain contexts where people are more willing to say they鈥檝e been dishonest. I think that鈥檚 really cool because it shows that people are actually willing to acknowledge that, sometimes, they engage in behavior that could be considered immoral.
For example, if you ask people, 鈥淚n the last hour or so, were you in a situation where you had to deliver unpleasant news or where you were motivated to avoid something you didn鈥檛 want to do?鈥� When you ask people whether they were in a specific situation like that, some people are happy to say, 鈥淵es, I was in that situation, and no, I didn鈥檛 tell the truth.鈥� But research is finding that, for the most part, we鈥檙e honest with our partners. We鈥檙e honest with our friends.
