Honesty

Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and denotes positive, virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness along with the absence of lying, cheating, or theft.

Discourse

In discourse a statement can be strictly true and still be dishonest if the intention of the statement is to deceive its audience. Similarly, a falsehood can be spoken honestly if the speaker actually believes it to be true, assuming the speaker doesn't unfairly reject or suppress evidence. Conversely, dishonesty can be defined simply as behavior that is performed with intent to deceive or to manipulate the truth.

Brutal honesty should also be considered. The speaker can be honest but if they are to say exactly what is on their mind, it might be taken as brutally honest, depending on how harsh the words are.

Morality

While there are a great many moral systems, generally speaking, honesty is considered moral and dishonesty is considered immoral. There are several exceptions, such as egoistic hedonism, which values honesty only insofar as it improves ones own sense of pleasure, and moral nihilism, which denies the existence of objective morality outright. Honesty may also be challenged in various social systems with ideological stakes in self-preservation (many religious and national formations might be so characterized, but so too might be many family structures, and other small social collectives). In these cases honesty is frequently encouraged publicly, but may be retroactively forbidden and punished in an ex post facto manner if those invested in preserving the system perceive it as a threat. Depending on the social system, these breaches might be characterized as heresy, treason, or impoliteness. So ultimately, there are a great number of opinions about honesty. Even in moral systems which approve in general of honesty over dishonesty, some people think there are situations in which dishonesty may be preferable. Others would not define preferable behaviors as dishonest by reasoning that they are not intended to deceive others for personal gain, but the intent is more noble in character, for example sparing people of opinions that will upset them. Rather than dishonesty, that behavior is often viewed as self sacrifice - giving up one's voice for the happiness of others. But it can hardly be a universal approach to either determining honesty or morality. In many circumstances, withholding one's opinions can legitimately be viewed as cowardice, and a betrayal of those who will be hurt, discriminated against, or unfairly judged due to false beliefs left unchallenged. For this reason, many people insist that an objective approach to the truth, rather than an ideological or idealistic approach, is a necessary component of honesty.

Psychology

Two theories of honesty exist. First, the ‘‘Will’’ hypothesis in which honesty comes from the active resistance of temptation and links to the controlled cognitive processes that enable delay in regard to reward. Second, the ‘‘Grace’’ hypothesis in which honesty comes from the absence of temptation and links to research upon the presence or absence of automatic processes in determining behavior. Most people tend to favor the Will hypothesis. However, functional imaging and reaction time research supports the latter hypothesis since individuals who are honest in a situation in which they can lie showed no sign of engaging additional controlled cognitive processes.

References

Category:Deception