Honesty as truthfulness: New trait and state measures of truthfulness to advance research and theorizing on when and why people are honest

Abstract

Honesty is a highly valued social trait, but research into it is impeded because current measures of trait honesty both differ in their content coverage and neglect non-behavioral aspects of traits such as cognitions and motivations. Building on recent conceptual and empirical developments highlighting truthfulness as an important and perhaps central element of honesty, we developed and validated trait and state measures of truthful communication (six studies, total N = 2797). Applying these measures to a series of assessments of everyday honesty experiences indicated that state manifestations of truthfulness showed notable variability at both person and situation levels, correlated with trait levels of truthfulness, and systematically varied as a function of the goals people were pursuing in situations (consistent with predictions from Whole Trait Theory, a dynamic personality theory). This work provides conceptually grounded, psychometrically sound tools for researchers to precisely probe truthfulness as a feature of both persons and day-to-day experiences and highlights the functional nature of moral traits such as truthfulness.

Plain Language Summary

People value honesty. However, research on this topic has been hampered by large differences in the content assessed by measures of trait honesty, as well as the exclusion of non-behavioral aspects of traits such as cognitions and motivations in these assessments. We build on recent conceptual and empirical developments highlighting truthfulness as a central element of honesty and develop trait and state measures of truthful communication (six studies, total N = 2797). Consistent with Whole Trait Theory, a dynamic theoretical model of personality, moment-to-moment truthfulness varied notably both between people (i.e., some people were more truthful than others) and within people (i.e., a given person was more truthful at some times than others). Moreover, momentary ratings of truthfulness were sensibly related to self-ratings of one’s own truthfulness, as well as being sensitive to the situational goals people were pursuing (e.g., trying to avoid avoiding disapproval was related to being less truthful). In summary, we provide a conceptually grounded and psychometrically sound set of tools for researchers to study a core characteristic of honesty.