TY - JOUR

T1 - Dishonesty as a signal of trustworthiness

T2 - Honesty-Humility and trustworthy dishonesty

AU - Ścigała, Karolina A.

AU - Schild, Christoph

AU - Zettler, Ingo

PY - 2020/10/1

Y1 - 2020/10/1

N2 - Trustworthiness is a foundation of well-functioning relationships and societies, and thus often perceived as a socially normative behaviour. Correspondingly, a broad array of research found that people tend to act in a trustworthy way and signal their trustworthiness to others, and that trustworthiness is rewarded. Herein, we explore whether this motivation to behave trustworthily can have socially undesirable effects in terms of leading to dishonesty targeted at fulfilling the trustor's expectations (i.e. trustworthy dishonesty). Furthermore, we examine how the basic trait of Honesty-Humility, which has consistently been found to be linked to both higher honesty and trustworthiness, relates to trustworthy dishonesty, where honesty and trustworthiness are at odds. Specifically, we conducted three pre-registered studies (N = 7080), introducing a novel behavioural game, the lying-trust game, where participants had a chance to lie to act trustworthily. In two studies, we found that, when offered 'full trust', participants high in Honesty-Humility (i.e. the top 10%) engaged in trustworthy dishonesty, i.e. lied in order to avoid maximizing their own incentive at the cost of minimizing the incentive of their trustor. This pattern was not present when the trustor offered minimal trust only, as well as among participants low in Honesty-Humility (i.e. the bottom 10%).

AB - Trustworthiness is a foundation of well-functioning relationships and societies, and thus often perceived as a socially normative behaviour. Correspondingly, a broad array of research found that people tend to act in a trustworthy way and signal their trustworthiness to others, and that trustworthiness is rewarded. Herein, we explore whether this motivation to behave trustworthily can have socially undesirable effects in terms of leading to dishonesty targeted at fulfilling the trustor's expectations (i.e. trustworthy dishonesty). Furthermore, we examine how the basic trait of Honesty-Humility, which has consistently been found to be linked to both higher honesty and trustworthiness, relates to trustworthy dishonesty, where honesty and trustworthiness are at odds. Specifically, we conducted three pre-registered studies (N = 7080), introducing a novel behavioural game, the lying-trust game, where participants had a chance to lie to act trustworthily. In two studies, we found that, when offered 'full trust', participants high in Honesty-Humility (i.e. the top 10%) engaged in trustworthy dishonesty, i.e. lied in order to avoid maximizing their own incentive at the cost of minimizing the incentive of their trustor. This pattern was not present when the trustor offered minimal trust only, as well as among participants low in Honesty-Humility (i.e. the bottom 10%).

KW - dishonesty

KW - HEXACO

KW - Honesty-Humility

KW - trust

KW - trustworthiness

KW - trustworthy dishonesty

U2 - 10.1098/rsos.200685

DO - 10.1098/rsos.200685

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 33204452

AN - SCOPUS:85096326810

VL - 7

JO - Royal Society Open Science

JF - Royal Society Open Science

SN - 2054-5703

IS - 10

M1 - 200685

ER -