Ximena Garcia-Rada, Heather Mann, Lars Hornuf, Matthias Sohn, Juan Tafurt, Edwin Severin Iversen, and Dan Ariely, “The Adaptive Liar: An Interactionist Approach of Multiple Dishonesty Domains.” CESifo Working Paper No. 7215, 2018.
- Is “honesty” a stable trait of individuals that is displayed evenhandedly at work, in relationships, and in other life domains?
- The authors posit that honesty is domain-specific, that a person who tends to behave honestly in a work setting might nevertheless behave dishonestly in relationships. Dishonesty is about bad barrels, not bad apples.
- Previous research has shown that individual characteristics influence honesty, as do seemingly minor environmental factors: better lighting, for instance, might reduce cheating.
- One theory: there is a trade-off between personal gains from dishonesty and the maintenance of a positive self-image. (See also here, and then here.)
- Positive interpersonal feedback could arise from dishonest behavior; for instance, honesty is some settings might conflict with a social norm.
- Garcia-Rada et al. propose (as mentioned above) that life domains affect dishonesty – but the influence of domains is nation-specific.
- A survey was given to ten participant groups in each of five countries: China, Colombia, Germany, Portugal, and the US. The overall sample size for the survey was a bit over 1000. Questions concerned honesty in eight "domains": work, government, business, relationships, friends, religion, strangers, and academics.
- The results are that indeed, honesty varies among countries and domains. "Results revealed an interaction effect between country and domain as well as intraindividual variation by domains [p. 21]."
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