Summary

Dr. Cooper’s Research Presentation Summary (Honesty and Difficult Conversations in the Workplace)

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Academy of Management Annals
HONEST BEHAVIOR: TRUTH-SEEKING, BELIEF-SPEAKING, AND FOSTERING
UNDERSTANDING OF THE TRUTH IN OTHERS
Binyamin Cooper, PhD is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper
School of Business. His email address is bcoop@cmu.edu.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1780-748X
Mailing address: Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh,
PA 15206, USA.
Taya R. Cohen, PhD is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Business Ethics at
Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business. Her email address is tcohen@cmu.edu.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7325-793X
Mailing address: Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh,
PA 15206, USA.
Elizabeth Huppert, PhD is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Dispute Resolution Research Center (DRRC) at
Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management. Her email address is
elizabeth.huppert@kellogg.northwestern.edu.
Mailing Address: Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2211 Campus Drive,
Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
Emma E. Levine, PhD is an Associate Professor of Behavioral Science and the Charles E. Merrill
Faculty Scholar at University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. Her email address is
Emma.Levine@chicagobooth.edu.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7631-4231
Mailing address: The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, 5807 Woodlawn Avenue, Office
453, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
William Fleeson, PhD is the Hultquist Family Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest University,
Department of Psychology. His email address is FleesonW@wfu.edu.
Mailing Address: Wake Forest University, Department of Psychology, Winston-Salem, NC 27109, USA.
AUTHOR NOTE
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. This work was supported by grant #61842: The
Honesty Project from the John Templeton Foundation. The views and opinions of the authors expressed
herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the sponsor. Coding assistance was provided by the
Center for Behavioral and Decision Research at Carnegie Mellon University, and by Benjamin Hardin,
Adam Paul, Ilse Smilo-Morgan, and Solomon Lister. We thank them, along with Elizabeth Morrison,
Carrie Leana, Richard Shell, Christian Miller, the members of the Collaboration and Conflict Research
Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, and attendees of the Honesty Project conference at Wake Forest
University for insightful questions and valuable feedback on this work. Earlier versions of this paper were
presented by the lead author at the 2021 meeting of the Academy of Management, the 2021 meeting of
the International Association for Conflict Management, and the 2022 meeting of the Society for Business
Ethics. Supplemental materials are provided on the Open Science Framework:
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/PCG7M
Please address correspondence to: Binyamin Cooper, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon
University, 4765 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. Email: bcoop@cmu.edu
Cooper, B., Cohen, T. R., Huppert, E., Levine, E. E., & Fleeson, W. (2023). Honest behavior: Truth-seeking,
belief-speaking, and fostering understanding of the truth in others. The Academy of Management Annals.
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HONEST BEHAVIOR: TRUTH-SEEKING, BELIEF-SPEAKING, AND FOSTERING
UNDERSTANDING OF THE TRUTH IN OTHERS
ABSTRACT
While people across the world value honesty, it is undeniable that it can sometimes pay
to be dishonest. This tension leads people to engage in complex behaviors that stretch the
boundaries of honesty. Such behaviors include strategically avoiding information,
dodging questions, omitting information, and making true but misleading statements.
Though not lies per se, these are nonetheless deviations from honesty that have serious
interpersonal, organizational, and societal costs. Based on a systematic review of 169
empirical research articles in the fields of management, organizational behavior, applied
psychology, and business ethics, we develop a new multidimensional framework of
honesty that highlights how honesty encompasses more than the absence of lies—it has
relational elements (e.g., fostering an accurate understanding in others through what we
disclose and how we communicate) and intellectual elements (e.g., evaluating
information for accuracy, searching for accurate information, and updating our beliefs
accordingly). By acknowledging that honesty is not limited to the moment when a person
utters a clear lie or a full truth, and that there are multiple stages to enacting honesty, we
emphasize the shared responsibility that all parties involved in communication have for
seeking out and communicating truthful information.
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INTRODUCTION
People across the world value honesty. They hold honesty in high esteem both in
themselves and others (Abeler, Nosenzo, & Raymond, 2019; Brambilla, Sacchi, Rusconi, &
Goodwin, 2021; Hartley et al., 2016; Miller, 2021). Similarly, organizations espouse honesty as
an aspiration and an obligation, emphasizing it in their mission statements, corporate
philosophies, and business codes (Blodgett, Dumas, & Zanzi, 2011; Gaumnitz & Lere, 2002;
Kaptein, 2004; Wang, 2009). However, honesty can be costly. For example, honestly reporting
low earnings can harm a company’s valuation. A leader who honestly reports their failures might
have a lower likelihood of re-election. In difficult conversations, such as those involving
negative feedback or the delivery of bad news, honesty may have social costs (Fulham, Krueger,
& Cohen, 2022; Gentile, 2012; Lavelle, Folger, & Manegold, 2016; Levine, Roberts, & Cohen,
2020; Scott, 2019; Shell, 2021; Stone, Patton, & Heen, 2010). In these situations, dishonesty may
allow companies, leaders, and employees to improve their reputations (at least in the short-term),
and avoid conflict and hurt feelings (Keep, 2009).
To deal with this tension between the competing desires to be honest and to benefit from
dishonesty, people employ a variety of interesting and complex communication strategies, some
of which are dishonest and some of which are honest. Such behaviors include controlling the
amount of information one discloses (e.g., Fu, Wu, & Zhang, 2019; Minson, VanEpps, Yip, &
Schweitzer, 2018; Steinel, Utz, & Koning, 2010), burying contradictory information in legal
disclaimers (DeJeu, 2022), making statements that are technically true but nonetheless create a
misleading impression (i.e., paltering; Rogers, Zeckhauser, Gino, Norton, & Schweitzer, 2017),
dodging or deflecting direct questions (Bitterly & Schweitzer, 2020; Rogers & Norton, 2011),
adding humor to alter the significance of confessions (e.g., Bitterly & Schweitzer, 2019), and
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modifying the tone (e.g., Fu et al., 2019) or complexity (e.g., Yuthas, Rogers, & Dillard, 2002)
of one’s message to emphasize or obscure the truth. Additionally, individuals strategically
monitor their search for information to control the knowledge they have to share with others
(e.g., Pennycook, Bear, Collins, & Rand, 2020) or to dismiss threatening evidence (e.g., Shani,
Igou, & Zeelenberg, 2009). These strategies may not involve outright lying, but they do
introduce greater complexity to the definitions of honesty and dishonesty. While these and other
communication strategies have been investigated under the rubrics of honesty and dishonesty,
they have been investigated in siloes. They have yet to be united by a common framework, and
as a result, our understanding of honesty is incomplete.
To bring together these disparate research streams and enhance our understanding of
honesty, we introduce a new conceptual model of honesty and synthesize insights from the fields
of management, organizational behavior, applied psychology, and business ethics. Honesty
involves an obligation to not misrepresent information, as well as obligations to responsibly
gather information and to disclose gathered information in a way that fosters an accurate
understanding in others (Gaumnitz & Lere, 2002). As such, it contains relational elements, as
well as intellectual elements (e.g., evaluating information for accuracy, searching for accurate
information, and updating our beliefs accordingly). By recognizing that honesty is not limited to
the moment when a person utters a clear lie or a full truth, and that there are multiple stages to
enacting honesty, we emphasize the shared responsibility that all parties involved in
communication have for seeking out and communicating truthful information.
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF HONESTY
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Inspired by corporate scandals and unethical behavior in organizations, research in the
field of behavioral ethics and behavioral business ethics has often focused on the causes of
dishonesty (Bazerman & Gino, 2012; De Cremer & Moore, 2020; Moore & Gino, 2015). Much
of this work employs stylized, incentivized games to assess dishonesty, with a focus on senderreceiver deception games (Gneezy, 2005), coin-flip tasks (Bucciol & Piovesan, 2011), die-roll
tasks (Fischbacher & Föllmi-Heusi, 2013), and matrix problem-solving tasks (Mazar et al.,
2008). More than 500 experiments have investigated lying and cheating using these tasks
(Gerlach, Teodorescu, & Hertwig, 2019). As a result, researchers have established a large body
of work regarding the prevalence and magnitude of dishonesty in these paradigms and
documented a pervasive aversion to lying. However, these approaches carry an unstated
assumption: Individuals have two primary behaviors available to them when making ethical
decisions—they can lie or they can tell the truth. We suggest instead that honesty is a complex
phenomenon that is more than a single behavior; it is a communication act, and one that is not
devoid of context (Fritz, 2020; LaFollette & Graham, 1986; White, 2022). Therefore, research
using incentivized ecnomics games should be complemented by other approaches to fully
understand the conditions and processes that give rise to honesty.
Honest communication occurs within relationships and social situations, and thus cannot
be fully represented by simple decisions to lie versus tell the truth. For example, LaFollette and
Graham (1986) characterized honesty as expressing one’s truthful thoughts and feelings and
ensuring these truths are effectively communicated. They noted that honesty is complex because
it is an “attempted-achievement” (p. 14); honest communication must be directed toward an
individual, but to have its intended effect, that individual must be capable of accurately
constructing an understanding of the communication. As such, it is important to consider the
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broader context in which honest communications take place to understand how honest
communications are received by targets (Bitterly & Schweitzer, 2019, 2020; Fu et al., 2019;
Rogers & Norton, 2011), as well as the direct implications for targets’ subsequent personal and
professional well-being (Allan, 2015; VanEpps & Hart, 2022).
We propose that honesty is a dyadic process that starts before the communication act with
the development and validation of the beliefs the communicator intends to share or withhold.
Following belief formation, individuals must decide, not only how truthfully to communicate,
but also how much information to disclose and how to deliver this information to the target. We
deviate from other conceptualizations of honesty in that we argue that a completely honest
communication act requires the accurate statement of one’s beliefs and the tailoring of one’s
statements to the intended target to foster understanding of the truth. The honesty process
continues after the initial communication with elaboration, verification, and correction of the
recipient’s understanding of the message. Therefore, to understand honesty, researchers must
consider all stages of this dyadic process, from belief formation to recipient understanding.
A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF HONESTY RESEARCH
We completed an integrative systematic review of empirical research on honesty in the
fields of management, organizational behavior, applied psychology, and business ethics. To
arrive at a comprehensive collection of peer-reviewed empirical articles to review, we followed a
multi-stage process consisting of: (1) article selection, (2) quality assessment (i.e.,
inclusion/exclusion of articles based on specific criteria), (3) data extraction (i.e., coding), (4)
synthesis, (5) supplementary review, and (6) integration. A detailed description of the process is
provided in the Appendix in the online supplemental materials (additional information is
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provided on the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/PCG7M). We
built our sample by retrieving articles published in the last two decades (2000 to 2021) using
keyword searches of social science and business databases using the search terms honest* OR
truth* OR dishonest* OR lie*, such that “*” indicates a term that matches the stem before the
asterisk (e.g., truthfulness will be identified as a match to the stem of truth*). We restricted the
search to the archives of major journals in the fields of management, organizational behavior,
applied psychology, and business ethics represented in the Financial Times’ list of peer-reviewed
journals (“FT50”), supplemented with several related journals known for publishing similar
empirical research. This process led to the identification of 169 empirical articles in 15 journals.
Figure 1 visualizes the distribution of articles over the search period, depicting an overall
increasing trend of articles examining honest behavior, with a notable spike in 20181.
1 The spike in the number of articles in 2018 is largely attributed to more papers about honesty published in the
Journal of Business Ethics that year. Examination of these and the other articles published in 2018 did not reveal
any obvious triggering events or commonalities among these papers.
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FIGURE 1
Empirical Publications Investigating Honest Behavior from 2000-2021
Notes. The figure shows the frequency of empirical articles published each year from 2000-2021
about honesty, truth, dishonesty, and/or lies in management, organizational behavior, applied
psychology, and business ethics journals. We identified 169 empirical articles in 15 journals
(Academy of Management Journal; Administrative Science Quarterly; Business Ethics
Quarterly; Human Relations; Human Resource Management; Journal of Applied Psychology;
Journal of Business Ethics; Journal of Management; Journal of Management Studies; Journal of
Organizational Behavior; Management Science; Organization Studies; Organizational Behavior
and Human Decision Processes; Organization Science; Personnel Psychology).
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In the synthesis stage of our review, we read and discussed each of the 169 articles,
identifying similarities and distinctions among them. Several guiding insights emerged, which
were useful in the subsequent structure of our literature review and development of an integrative
framework for honest behavior. We believe that the study of honest behavior can be classified
according to four facets, as shown in Figure 2: (1) the accuracy of the content a communicator
shares (honest content), (2) the amount and depth of disclosure by the communicator (honest
disclosure), (3) the manner in which a communicator shares or discloses (honest delivery), and
(4) the way a communicator develops, validates, and updates their beliefs (intellectual honesty).
Table 1 shows the number of articles we coded in each facet. In the sections that follow we
discuss the findings, insights, and conclusions that emerged from our systematic review of the
honesty literature. To ensure our review was comprehensive, for each facet of honest behavior,
we conducted a broader supplementary search to discern additional insights from other
literatures, which we elaborate on in the Discussion section.
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FIGURE 2
A Multidimensional Framework of Honest Behavior
BELIEF-SPEAKING
Honest
Content
Honest
Disclosure
Honest
Delivery
TRUTH-SEEKING
FOSTERING
UNDERSTANDING OF
THE TRUTH IN
OTHERS
Intellectual
Honesty
Figure note. Honest content refers to the accuracy of the content a communicator shares. Honest disclosure refers to the amount and
depth of disclosure by the communicator. Honest delivery refers to the manner in which the communicator shares or discloses
information. Intellectual honesty refers to the process by which a communicator develops, validates, and updates their beliefs.
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TABLE 1
Empirical Publications Investigating Honest Behavior from 2000-2021
Honest
Disclosure
Honest
Delivery
Categories
Accurate
reporting of
results,
performance,
or behaviors vs.
false reporting,
lying, cheating,
or theft
Instructions,
incentives, or
pledges to
provide truthful
and/or
complete
information, or
penalties for
providing false
or incomplete
information
Honest
disclosure or
truthful
information
sharing vs.
withholding or
omission of
truthful
information
Delivering
information in
a way that
enables
receivers to
develop an
accurate
understanding
of the
information
Evaluating
information for
accuracy vs.
inaccuracy
Searching for
accurate
information
Incorporating
accurate
information
into one’s
beliefs
Count (% out
of 169 total
articles)
111 (66%)
18 (11%)
26 (15%)
21 (12%)
5 (3%)
6 (4%)
3 (2%)
Facet
Honest Content
Intellectual Honesty
Note. We identified 169 empirical articles about honesty, truth, dishonesty, and/or lies in 15 journals that cover the fields of
management, organizational behavior, applied psychology, and business ethics. Percentages are the number in each category out of
169 articles. Categories are not mutually exclusive.
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A MULTIDIMENSIONAL FRAMEWORK OF HONEST BEHAVIOR
Our systematic review supports our contention that honest behavior encompasses more
than truth-telling. Though the majority of articles we reviewed operationalized honesty as
accurate versus inaccurate reporting, focusing on the truthfulness of the information a
communicator shares, this was not the case for all of the articles. Indeed, as shown in Table 1,
each of the other facets of honesty in our framework emerged in our search as well. We were
able to assign each of the 169 articles to at least one of the four facets, with only a few articles
(13.61%) assigned to more than one category.
The diversity of approaches to the study of honesty across the articles we reviewed
confirms that honesty is a complex phenomenon encompassing a wide array of intrapersonal and
interpersonal behaviors. Simply refraining from making false statements or distorting facts is
insufficient. Rather, for behavior to be fully honest, we contend that the communicator (i.e., a
person, group, or an organization) must seek the truth, speak the truth, and foster understanding
of the truth in others. Truth-seeking involves evaluating information for accuracy, searching for
accurate information, and incorporating accurate information into one’s beliefs. The truthseeking component of honesty connects most directly to the intellectual honesty code in our
systematic review. Truth-seeking is the only component of honest behavior that we deem
primarily intrapersonal rather than interpersonal. As shown in Table 1, this category of honest
behavior was the least represented in our review. Belief-speaking involves accurately reporting
and truthfully disclosing information in verbal or in written statements. The belief-speaking
component of honesty connects most directly to the honest content and honest disclosure codes
used in our review. The majority of publications about honesty focus on acts of belief-speaking.
Finally, fostering understanding of the truth in others involves communicating information in a
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way that enables receivers to develop an accurate understanding of the information. The
fostering understanding component of honesty connects most directly to the honest disclosure
and honest delivery codes in our systematic review. What a person chooses to share and how
they choose to share it jointly influence whether their counterpart will develop true beliefs.
Notably, a communicator can deviate from honesty by knowingly or unknowingly failing
to behave honestly in any of these areas, and the papers contained in our review describe many
such deviations. For example, several of the articles that cut across multiple facets of our honesty
framework focused on impression management techniques used by job applicants (e.g.,
Bourdage, Roulin, & Tarraf, 2018; Bourdage, Wiltshire, & Lee, 2015; Gino, Sezer, & Huang,
2020; Hogue, Levashina, & Hang, 2013; Roulin, Bangerter, & Levashina, 2015). Job applicants
seeking to make a positive impression can deviate from honesty through lying (content),
withholding relevant information (disclosure), and by communicating in an evasive manner that
gives rise to misimpressions (delivery). For example, consider a job applicant who truthfully
shares certain skills, abilities, qualifications, and common interests with an interviewer, while
simultaneously directing the conversation away from any topic that might suggest a lack of fit
and using an overly confident tone to obscure a lack of relevant work experience (Bourdage et
al., 2018, 2015). In such cases, the way in which the job applicant communicates (delivery) and
the information that the job seeker withholds (disclosure) could foster false beliefs in the
interviewer even though the job seeker never made a false statement (content). Similarly,
consider a CEO motivated to avoid a drop in stock prices. The CEO might truthfully
communicate the firm’s earnings to shareholders (content) but do so with an overly optimistic
tone (delivery) that results in shareholders’ misimpressions of the actual financial health of the
company (Fu et al., 2019).
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Traditional approaches to the study of honesty would characterize the job applicant’s
behavior and the CEO’s behavior as honest because they satisfied the truth-telling requirement of
the honest content category. We reject that view because neither the job applicant’s
communication nor the CEO’s communication are honest in their delivery and/or disclosure.
These examples highlight why the overwhelming focus on the accuracy of the content a
communicator shares in the current literature on honesty is problematic. Our model frames
honesty as a joint action involving communicators and recipients of the communication (Clark,
1996; Greco, 2020; White, 2022), emphasizing how the perspective of the recipients of the
communication must be considered alongside the perspective of the communicators.
Incorporating the recipients’ understanding of the truth into the conceptualization of
honesty raises interesting questions about honest intentions versus outcomes. For example, how
honest is an individual who intends to communicate truthfully but, because of poor
communication skills, consistently fails to instill true beliefs in communication recipients?
Although the majority of research in moral psychology suggests that people primarily focus on
others’ intentions when judging honesty (Levine & Schweitzer, 2014), and moral behavior more
generally (Cushman, Young, & Hauser, 2006; Levine, Mikhail, & Leslie, 2018), our view is that
outcomes matter. We suggest that to evaluate a communicator’s honesty, we must consider both
the communicator’s intentions (e.g., do they intend to mislead or foster an accurate
understanding) and their ability to enact their intentions (i.e., does the communication result in a
misunderstanding or an accurate one). Accordingly, we would evaluate a communicator who
intends to be honest, but frequently fails to foster an understanding of the truth in others as less
honest than a communicator who intends to be honest and effectively fosters an understanding of
the truth in others.
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In the sections that follow, we define each of the four facets of honest behavior and
describe how they have been studied in the publications we reviewed. We then summarize key
insights into the antecedents and consequences of honest behavior.
Honest Content
The most common conceptualization of honesty that appeared in our review was as a
behavior primarily concerned with truth-telling as opposed to lying. We label this category
honest content and define the category as the accuracy of the content a communicator shares.
We used two separate codes to summarize the work on honest content: (1) accurate reporting of
results, performance, or behaviors versus false reporting, lying, cheating, or theft; and (2)
instructions, incentives, or pledges to provide truthful and/or complete information, or penalties
for providing false or incomplete information. The latter code was assigned to articles that
experimentally manipulated the expression of honest content, as in, for example, studies of the
efficacy of honesty oaths (Beck, Bühren, Frank, & Khachatryan, 2020; Jacguemet, Luchini,
Rosaz, & Shogren, 2019), and studies with instructions to participants acting as job applicants to
answer interview or personality assessment questions honestly versus as an ideal job candidate
would answer them (Day & Carroll, 2008; Dunlop et al., 2020; Hauenstein, Bradley, O’Shea,
Shah, & Magill, 2017). Overall, 123 articles (73%) were assigned one of these codes (111
articles assigned the first code; 18 assigned the second code; 12 articles assigned both codes),
confirming our assumption that the bulk of empirical studies of honesty and dishonesty focus on
what we conceptualize as belief-speaking behaviors.
Most of the papers in the honest content category operationalized honesty as the opposite
of lying, in that participants faced a binary choice between lying and telling the truth. Many of
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these articles employed experimental games. Experimental games can “provide a coherent,
substantive model of many actual encounters” (Murnighan & Wang, 2016, p. 80) and have been
shown to predict consequential decisions outside of the laboratory (Cohn & Maréchal, 2018; Dai,
Galeotti, & Villeval, 2018; Olsen, Hjorth, Harmon, & Barfort, 2019; Potters & Stoop, 2016;
Schild, Lilleholt, & Zettler, 2021; Tobol, Siniver, & Yaniv, 2020). However, these paradigms
cannot represent the complex totality of interpersonal interactions involving honesty or
dishonesty.
Despite the pervasiveness of experimental games in the honesty literature, our search also
revealed many other methods for investigating the communication of honest content. Our review
identified, for example, studies of the communication of honest content in the contexts of
negotiation (e.g., Aquino & Becker, 2005; Bitterly & Schweitzer, 2019; Kim, Diekmann, &
Tenbrunsel, 2003; Olekalns, Kulik, & Chew, 2014; Pierce & Thompson, 2021; SimanTovNachlieli, Har-Vardi, & Moran, 2020), providing feedback (e.g., Ho & Yeung, 2014; Kim et al.,
2003; Oc, Bashshur, & Moore, 2015), completing job applications (e.g., Day & Carroll, 2008;
Hauenstein et al., 2017; Heggestad, Morrison, Reeve, & McCloy, 2006; Hogue et al., 2013;
Roulin & Krings, 2020; Shoss & Strube, 2011; Stark, Chernyshenko, Chan, Lee, & Drasgow,
2001), filing taxes (e.g., Berger, Guo, & King, 2020; Górecki & Letki, 2020; LaMothe & Bobek,
2020), and reporting firms’ earnings (e.g., Lapointe-Antunes, Veenstra, Brown, & Li, 2021;
Yuthas et al., 2002). Auditing and accounting ethics emerged as a research area that stood out for
the variety of methods employed to study honesty, with studies using: archival data (Chu, Du, &
Jiang, 2011; Vladu, Amat, & Cuzdriorean, 2017; Warren & Schweitzer, 2018), surveys
(Buchheit, Pasewark Jr, & Strawser, 2003; Guiral, Rodgers, Ruiz, & Gonzalo, 2010; Salter,
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Guffey, & McMillan, 2001), and controlled experiments (Blay, Gooden, Mellon, & Stevens,
2019; Kerler & Killough, 2009).
Honest Disclosure
The amount of information a communicator discloses and the degree to which
communicators candidly share their opinions can impact honesty, regardless of the accuracy of
one’s statements. We define this category of honesty, focused on the depth and amount of
information shared, as honest disclosure. We coded articles related to truthful information
sharing versus withholding or omission of truthful information as indicative of this category.
Although both honest content and disclosure relate to the information a communicator chooses to
share, the two are conceptually distinct and complementary. The honest content facet of our
framework captures lying (i.e., making a false statement) versus telling the truth, and thus, is a
binary choice. Disclosure, on the other hand, is considerably more complex due to the many
ways people can deviate from complete and transparent disclosure of information and opinions.
It is also more complex because some information withholding may be dishonest while other
information withholding can be completely honest and appropriate. For example, when
negotiating, it is generally inadvisable to share your best alternative to a negotiated agreement
(i.e., BATNA) or your “bottom line” (i.e., reservation price) with your negotiation counterparty
(Thompson, 2020). Whereas lying about this information (e.g., saying you have another offer
when you do not; saying your budget is less than what it actually is) is dishonest, withholding
information about your BATNA and reservation price (e.g., by indicating you are not willing or
able to disclose that information) is not dishonest. Research on disclosure, in particular, sheds
light on honesty as a social-relational process. Disclosure represents an aspect of honest
communication that exists at the intersection of belief-speaking (i.e., accurate reporting) and
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fostering understanding (i.e., communicating information in a way that enables recipients to
develop an accurate understanding of the information).
Honest disclosure has been studied in the contexts of both personal and professional
disclosures. Research on personal disclosure has focused on information that is central to the
communicator’s self or identity, be it disclosing one’s sexual orientation (Griffith & Hebl, 2002;
Van Laer, 2018), accurately disclosing one’s skills in interviews (Bourdage et al., 2018, 2015;
Hogue et al., 2013; Roulin & Krings, 2020), honestly disclosing concerns related to equity and
inclusion (Warren & Warren, 2021), or the expression of authentic emotions by service
employees in their interactions with customers (Yagil & Medler-Liraz, 2013). Work in this area
connects to research on authenticity by investigating how people navigate challenges related to
making positive impressions through catering to others’ preferences as opposed to honestly
disclosing personal information (Costas & Fleming, 2009; Gino et al., 2020; O’Brien & Linehan,
2019).
In contrast, research on professional disclosure has focused on strategic decision-making
related to information that is of a potentially sensitive nature to the organization or group in
which a communicator is embedded. Studies in this area have examined, for example,
disclosures to investors in conference calls (Fu et al., 2019) and in corporate annual reports
(Yuthas et al., 2002). Other studies have investigated truthful information sharing across
divisions of a firm, such as between the sales and operations divisions (Scheele, Thonemann, &
Slikker, 2018), within group decision-making (Steinel et al., 2010), during negotiations (Kim et
al., 2003; Minson et al., 2018), and when delivering bad news, such as when managers
communicate layoff decisions (Lavelle et al., 2016). A prevalent theme identified in research on
organizational codes of ethics is the obligation to make full disclosures (i.e., to include all
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information), complementary to the obligation to not misrepresent information (Gaumnitz &
Lere, 2002), supporting our conceptualization of disclosure as its own aspect of honesty
alongside honest content.
Honest Delivery
In our relational view of honesty, honest delivery is important because it explicitly
accounts for the existence of a recipient in the exchange of information. We define the category
of honest delivery as delivering information in a way that enables recipients to develop an
accurate understanding of the information. When communicators want their recipients to
develop an accurate understanding of the truth, they can adeptly facilitate understanding by
modifying their communication such that recipients can easily attend to, understand, and draw
accurate conclusions. At the same time, when communicators do not want their recipients to
develop an accurate understanding of the truth, they can likewise inhibit understanding by
modifying the way they communicate so that recipients are distracted, misunderstand, or draw
inaccurate conclusions. Much of the research we reviewed focused on ways communicators
inhibit, rather than facilitate, recipients’ understanding of the truth. This focus on obfuscation
suggests there is an opportunity for future work to consider how better communication delivery
techniques can make it easier for recipients to develop accurate beliefs. For example, how might
feedback-givers better structure their communication so that recipients can easily discern the
truth in the feedback they are given (Fulham et al., 2022)?
Collectively, the articles related to honest delivery demonstrate how communicators face
a wide array of choices in deciding how to communicate, beyond simply how much and what
they say. For example, communicators might modify the positivity or negativity of their tone (Fu
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et al., 2019), how much humor they use when communicating (Bitterly & Schweitzer, 2019), the
speed with which they speak or react to questions (Walczyk et al., 2005), or the amount of time
they spend communicating when delivering bad news (Lavelle et al., 2016). There are many
aspects of verbal and written communication delivery that can affect how comprehensible,
truthful, sincere, and legitimate communications are perceived to be (Yuthas et al., 2002), and
the articles we reviewed capture a variety of nuanced communication techniques people use to
ensure others do or do not develop an understanding of the truth. Research in this area reveals
how challenges related to communication delivery occur in a wide-array of conversations with
customers, stockholders, employees, supervisors, and coworkers (Bourdage et al., 2018, 2015;
Brunner & Ostermaier, 2019; Dunlop et al., 2020; Fu et al., 2019; Glozer, Caruana, & Hibbert,
2019; Hogue et al., 2013; Llewellyn & Harrison, 2006; Pitesa, Goh, & Thau, 2018; Roulin et al.,
2015; Strong, Ringer, & Taylor, 2001; Windscheid, Bowes-Sperry, Jonsen, & Morner, 2018;
Yuthas et al., 2002).
Intellectual Honesty
Thus far we have discussed the relational elements of honest communication involving
communication content, disclosure, and delivery with an underlying assumption that the
information a communicator intends to share is accurate to begin with. However, individuals
may fail to hold accurate beliefs for a variety of reasons, including both deliberate ignorance and
unintentional false beliefs. As such, we argue that another important element of honest behavior
is intrapersonal and concerns the role of the communicator in ensuring their beliefs are accurate.
We define the category of intellectual honesty via three elements, as the process in which
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communicators (1) evaluate information for accuracy, (2) search for accurate information, and
(3) incorporate accurate information into their beliefs.
Only eleven articles we identified through our search fit the intellectual honesty codes,
and none of the authors of these papers used the term intellectual honesty to describe their work
(Bitterly & Schweitzer, 2019; Bourdage et al., 2018, 2015; Dannals, Reit, & Miller, 2020; Issa &
Pick, 2010; Lefsrud & Meyer, 2012; Pennycook et al., 2020; Porter, Kuhn, & Nerlich, 2018;
Roulin et al., 2015; Shani et al., 2009; Warren & Warren, 2021). As a set, these papers reveal
how intellectual honesty is a multi-stage process involving information search, evaluation, and
updating of beliefs, when appropriate, and that a failure in any of these three steps can be
considered a deviation from complete honesty. Incorporating information search, evaluation, and
updating of beliefs into our multidimensional honesty framework helps to explain why selective
information exposure and strategic or deliberate ignorance compromise a person’s ability to
behave honestly. There is an assumption on the part of listeners that speakers have been
responsible in their acquisition of knowledge; being negligent or reckless in acquisition of
knowledge is dishonest. Accordingly, to deepen our understanding of intellectual honesty, future
work should aim to more thoroughly integrate insights from the literatures on motivated
reasoning (Cusimano & Lombrozo, 2021a; Flynn, Nyhan, & Reifler, 2017; Kahan, 2012; Kunda,
1990), willful ignorance (Dana, Weber, & Kuang, 2007; Dorison, Minson, & Rogers, 2019;
Levine & Munguia Gomez, 2021; Minson & Dorison, 2022; Woolley & Risen, 2018), and
intellectual humility (Porter et al., 2022; Warren & Warren, 2021).
Two articles we reviewed highlighted the role of intellectual honesty in the context of the
ongoing climate change debate. Lefsrud and Meyer’s (2012) work emphasized the importance of
building a communicator’s expertise by gathering true knowledge and evaluating unbiased
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research, which involves all three elements of intellectual honesty. Porter and colleagues (2018)
focused on how recipients perceive communicators that provide reliable information as authority
figures, and call attention to the importance of consistently exhibiting intellectual honesty to
build a reputation as an honest communicator. These articles show the importance of accurate
belief formation and truth-seeking for effectively contributing to conversations on contested
topics.
ANTECEDENTS OF HONEST BEHAVIOR
Now we turn our attention to the key insights that emerged about the antecedents of
honest behavior. The honesty process begins with forming accurate beliefs (intellectual honesty)
and sharing them truthfully (honest content) and ends with disclosing relevant information
(honest disclosure) in a way (honest delivery) that fosters an understanding of the truth in a
recipient. As such, we begin our discussion of antecedents by focusing on intellectual honesty.
Intellectual Honesty
Communicating honestly requires efforts to ensure one has accurate information. These
efforts may be time-consuming and require self-directed research (Warren & Warren, 2021), and
can even lead to unpleasant truths (Shani et al., 2009). Yet, being able to question one’s beliefs
and seek out new information is essential for communicators to gain accurate information and
understanding. In their EThIC model of virtue-based allyship development, Warren and Warren
(2021) referred to this idea as intellectual humility, which they defined as “the internal
recognition and externally expressed awareness of one’s intellectual limitations, and the internal
recognition and externally expressed appreciation for other people’s intellect” (p. 10). Emotions,
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social groups, and explicit labeling about information accuracy can all impact the extent to which
communicators are intellectually honest.
For example, research on emotions and intellectual honesty suggests that feeling
discomfort with “not knowing” can motivate the search for unpleasant truths to relieve the
distress of uncertainty (Shani et al., 2009). This work implies that the process of obtaining
accurate information in and of itself can be a positive affective experience. Even when the truth
is unpleasant, the search process of discovering accurate information can alleviate uncomfortable
feelings of uncertainty. In this way, people may be affectively motivated to engage in intellectual
honesty in some circumstances. However, when emotions are not prompting the search for
information, people may need external encouragement to question and update their beliefs.
Information seeking is also influenced by social structures. Status and group membership
can impact perceptions of honesty and information accuracy. For example, people view lowerranked team members as having more accurate social information than higher-ranked team
members (Dannals et al., 2020). These findings suggest that people may be more inclined to
accept information as accurate in some social circumstances, and conversely, more willing to
question information accuracy in others.
Explicitly telling people whether information has been verified can also affect intellectual
honesty. People assume veracity in information when it is not labeled as “disputed” or as false
(Pennycook et al., 2020). In other words, people may hold a default assumption of truth (Levine,
2022) but providing information about how content was previously evaluated (i.e., verified or
disputed, etc.) may help trigger more thorough evaluation of information, and potentially even
updating of beliefs.
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Honest Content
Once a person has developed accurate (or inaccurate) beliefs, they face a series of
complex social decisions about whether and how to share these beliefs honestly. The papers
included in our review primarily focus on how formal regulations, social norms, and individual
differences influence the propensity to communicate honest content.
Several papers demonstrate how organizations can influence the communication of
honest content through incentives and rules (Scheele et al., 2018; Wang & Murnighan, 2017).
For example, formal oaths can increase honest reporting (Beck et al., 2020; Jacguemet et al.,
2019), as can small bonuses for honesty (even if somewhat larger bonuses are tied to dishonesty;
Wang & Murnighan, 2017). Direct instructions mandating honesty are also successful, so much
so that many researchers use such instructions to increase honesty within their studies (e.g., Day
& Carroll, 2008; Dunlop et al., 2020; Hauenstein et al., 2017; Heggestad et al., 2006; McFarland
& Ryan, 2000; Pitesa et al., 2018; Shoss & Strube, 2011; van Hooft & Born, 2012; Van
Iddekinge, Raymark, & Roth, 2005). Indeed, it is noteworthy that people are more likely to
report accurate information when they are simply asked to do so.
Social norms also influence people’s propensity to communicate honest content, for
example, by moderating the effectiveness of honesty interventions. A field experiment by Ayal
and colleagues (2021) found that posters with watching eyes reduced fare evasion in train
stations in France, but only when the posters were coupled with descriptive social norm
messaging (e.g., “In this station, 90% of all individuals purchase and validate their ticket.”).
Likewise, Górecki and Letki (2020) found that an increasing tax rate lowered the probability of
tax evasion, so long as one viewed “most others” (i.e., descriptive norm) as honest taxpayers.
People can also infer norms based on the communication and behavior of others. When people
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engage in morally-oriented conversations, they may perceive ethical behavior to be a norm and
communicate more honestly as a result (Gunia, Wang, Huang, Wang, & Murnighan, 2012).
Conversely, when people engage in conversations about the benefits of deception, it can erode
moral norms and set the stage for dishonesty (Kocher, Schudy, & Spantig, 2018). Leaders play a
particularly important role in shaping honesty norms (Cialdini, Li, Samper, & Wellman, 2021).
A large body of research has also examined how the communication of honest content
hinges on people’s baseline differences in their honesty-related attitudes, beliefs, values, and
behaviors. Trait honesty, or honest character, can be conceptualized as individual’s tendency to
believe in the importance of being honest, to be motivated toward honesty, to behave in honest
ways, and to see oneself as an honest person. Trait honesty reliably explains substantial variance
in lying versus truth-telling (e.g., Bernardi et al., 2004; Dierdorff & Fisher, 2021; Gentina, Tang,
& Gu, 2017; Hershfield, Cohen, & Thompson, 2012; Marcus, Lee, & Ashton, 2007; Sosik,
Chun, Ete, Arenas, & Scherer, 2019). This conclusion is supported by research on “honestyhumility” (HH)—a broad personality trait from the HEXACO model that a number of papers in
our review examined2 (Bourdage et al., 2018, 2015; Dierdorff & Fisher, 2021; Hershfield et al.,
2012; Holtrop, Born, & de Vries, 2015; Marcus et al., 2007; Marcus & Roy, 2019; Sosik et al.,
2019; Sverko & Babarovic, 2016). Beyond HH, researchers have investigated other individual
differences that influence truth-telling, although none that we reviewed received as much
specific focus as HH. Nonetheless, because these other personality characteristics predict honest
behavior, they might also be conceived of as components of trait honesty (Fleeson &
2 Although this broad trait includes honesty in its name, it is broader than honesty in scope, encompassing four
distinct facets: fairness, greed avoidance, sincerity, and modesty (Ashton & Lee, 2007, 2008, 2020). In support of its
conceptualization as trait honesty, two separate meta-analyses have demonstrated consistent, robust relationships
between measures of HH and indicators of (dis)honesty (Heck, Thielmann, Moshagen, & Hilbig, 2018; Zettler,
Thielmann, Hilbig, & Moshagen, 2020). Recent work also indicates that HH predicts less dishonesty in romantic
relationships (Reinhardt & Reinhard, 2023).
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Jayawickreme, 2021). These characteristics include, for example, conscientiousness (Bourdage
et al., 2018; McFarland & Ryan, 2000), agreeableness (DeRue, Conlon, Moon, & Willaby,
2009), empathy (Cohen, 2010), guilt proneness (Cohen, 2010), ethical reasoning (Granitz &
Loewy, 2007), and low Machiavellianism (Castille, Buckner, & Thoroughgood, 2018; Dierdorff
& Fisher, 2021). People who feel greater connection between their present and future selves act
more honestly (Hershfield et al., 2012), as do people for whom morality is more central to their
identity (Johnson, Martin, Stikeleather, & Young, 2021; Mulder & Aquino, 2013; Xu & Ma,
2015). As with HH, each of these traits are indicative of moral character more broadly, and
associated with ethical behaviors that extend beyond honesty specifically (Cohen, Panter, Turan,
Morse, & Kim, 2014).
Notably, existing research on honest content also highlights how both truth-telling and
lying can stem from a variety of motives. Lying can result from prosocial, other-oriented motives
as well selfish ones (Castille et al., 2018; Erat & Gneezy, 2012; Levine & Schweitzer, 2015;
Lupoli, Levine, & Greenberg, 2018; Rixom & Mishra, 2014; Wiltermuth, 2011; Wiltermuth,
Bennett, & Pierce, 2013). As summarized by Keep (2009), key motivations for dishonesty
include: (1) avoiding confrontation or conflict; (2) ensuring quality in the delivery of a product
or service; (3) buying time for an organization’s strategy to play out; and (4) self-protection or
self-enhancement.
Even when people do not set out to communicate deceptively, they may choose to do so
if they do not have the requisite self-control to resist temptation (Gino, Schweitzer, Mead, &
Ariely, 2011), or communication skills to successfully navigate difficult conversations with their
integrity in tact (Keep, 2009; Levine et al., 2020; Walczyk et al., 2005; Whitson, Wang, Kim,
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Cao, & Scrimpshire, 2015). In general, people are less likely to communicate truthfully the more
difficult they expect honesty to be (Lee, Ong, Parmar, & Amit, 2019).
Honest Disclosure
Many of the antecedents that prompt honest content also prompt greater disclosure.
Incentives (Scheele et al., 2018), social norms (Brunner & Ostermaier, 2019; Górecki & Letki,
2020), and organizational cultures can influence the degree to which communicators honestly
disclose information. When managers feel that organizational processes are fair, they honestly
disclose more information to layoff victims, as opposed to refusing to explain decisions to them
(Lavelle et al., 2016). When employees feel that their organizations respect different identities
(e.g., non-heterosexual orientation; Griffith & Hebl, 2002), and promote a sense of autonomy
(Yagil & Medler-Liraz, 2013), they are more likely to disclose their identities and feelings to
peers and customers. Communicators’ disclosure decisions also influence the extent to which
their communication partners engage in disclosure, highlighting the important role of peer
influence on honest disclosure (Brunner & Ostermaier, 2019).
As with the sharing of honest content, individuals’ goals and motivations can also
influence disclosure. For example, a desire to avoid conflict can influence both whether
communicators share accurate versus inaccurate information and whether they choose to disclose
information at all (Keep, 2009). Individuals with a prosocial orientation honestly reveal
important and private information to group members more so than do individuals with a pro-self
orientation (Steinel et al., 2010).
One antecedent to honesty that has been uniquely studied in the context of disclosure is
question-asking. Asking negative assumption questions – questions that assume a problem exists
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– is particularly effective. Minson and coauthors (2018) illustrate this by showing that hiring
managers are more likely to honestly disclose past HR complaints when an interviewee asks
“how many major complaints has your HR received since that lawsuit from a couple years ago?”
(a negative assumption question) than “your HR hasn’t received any major complaints since that
lawsuit from a couple years ago, right?” (a positive assumption question). Attempts to verify
information and provide feedback to communicators may also prompt honest disclosures. Social
media users report a greater likelihood of sharing news stories when they learn that the stories
have been verified as truthful (Pennycook et al., 2020). Negotiators are more likely to honestly
disclose flaws in a product they are selling when they previously received negative feedback
about their ethicality (Kim et al., 2003).
Honest Delivery
There is still much to learn about antecedents of honest delivery. The studies we coded as
related to honest delivery were diverse in their focus and methods, encompassing traits, message
properties, and situational antecedents. Several papers we reviewed highlighted the
interconnectedness between content and delivery by showing that the nature of the information
communicators must share, for example, whether the information is surprising (Yuthas et al.,
2002) or unfair (Lavelle et al., 2016), can influence the clarity with which communicators deliver
that information. For example, firms that were anticipating surprising news – regardless of
whether the news was surprisingly bad or good – wrote annual reports with clearer, more
concrete, and more vivid language than did firms not anticipating surprising news (Yuthas et al.,
2002). Such practices increased the likelihood of stakeholders understanding the news.
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Conversely, managers having to deliver unfair and bad news have been shown to be less
thorough and clear in how they convey that information to victims (Lavelle et al., 2016).
Summary
Findings from our literature review suggest that there are many motivations, as well as
obstacles, to enacting honesty, beginning from the search for information and ending with
successful delivery of one’s beliefs in a way that fosters an understanding of the truth in others.
Having reviewed the antecedents of honest behavior, we now discuss the consequences.
CONSEQUENCES OF HONEST BEHAVIOR
Intellectual honesty
Despite the importance of intellectual honesty for developing and sharing honest
information, no papers identified in our systematic review explicitly examined the consequences
of intellectual honesty. We return to this issue in the Discussion section, where we describe
related research from our supplementary search. We consider how research on intellectual
humility and motivated reasoning could help us develop deeper insights about intellectual
honesty and the consequences thereof.
Honest Content
In contrast to intellectual honesty, many papers we reviewed examined the consequences
of lying and truth-telling. One broad theme of this work is that communicators generally want to
be honest and to think of themselves as honest, and therefore, their emotions and self-concept
often suffer when they lie. Lying, for example, can elicit anxiety (Gino et al., 2020; Kouchaki &
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Desai, 2015) and lead communicators to effortfully reaffirm their moral self-concept (Johnson et
al., 2021; Marcus & Roy, 2019). In order to avoid these psychological costs, communicators may
engage in a host of neutralization strategies (e.g., minimizing a lie, denigrating a target, and
denial; Aquino & Becker, 2005), and rationalization strategies (Berger et al., 2020; Chu et al.,
2011).
Lying also has social costs. Even when intended to benefit another person, lies are
typically seen as unethical and elicit negative affect among recipients of the lie (Chu, So, &
Chung, 2018; Lupoli et al., 2018). Although lies that are seen as beneficial by recipients might be
seen as ethical, they can still decrease integrity-based trust (Levine & Schweitzer, 2015). In other
words, when communicators report inaccurate information, recipients may not trust the
information they provide in future interactions. When dishonest reporting is revealed, this can
also lead to a spiral of dishonest behavior vis-a-vis peer influence (Brunner & Ostermaier, 2019;
Olekalns & Smith, 2007).
Whereas lying is often costly in the long-run, communicating truthfully is often
beneficial in the long-run. People and organizations are often rewarded when they share honest
content. For example, people who are perceived to be honest are less likely to face social
exclusion (Whitson et al., 2015) and are more likely to be trusted in negotiations (SimanTovNachlieli et al., 2020) and as leaders (Brown, Treviño, & Harrison, 2005; Offermann &
Malamut, 2002; Sosik et al., 2019; Stevens, 2013).
Honest Disclosure
The consequences of disclosure are complicated, and it is difficult to discern from the
current body of work whether honest disclosure gives rise, primarily, to positive or negative
consequences. On the one hand, like research on honest content, which typically emphasizes the
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problems associated with dishonesty, research on concealment highlights the emotional and
psychological costs of withholding information. For instance, when employees hide aspects of
their identity, such as their sexual orientation, they can experience heightened anxiety and lower
job satisfaction (Griffith & Hebl, 2002). Behaving authentically typically requires some level of
honest disclosure and failing to do so can harm performance because of the anxiety, emotional
dissonance, and self-alienation associated with hiding information about one’s self (Costas &
Fleming, 2009; Gino et al., 2020; O’Brien & Linehan, 2019). Failing to disclose relevant
information can also inhibit social learning. For example, if negotiation partners fail to disclose
feedback about their counterpart’s unethical behavior, their counterparts may act dishonestly in
future negotiations (Kim et al., 2003).
On the other hand, research on disclosure also highlights the challenges or costs
associated with honesty. When individuals disclose professional or personal weaknesses, they
can be penalized for it. For example, employees who honestly disclose service interruptions to
clients may face complaints (Yagil & Medler-Liraz, 2013). Job applicants who disclose their
lack of training may be seen as incompetent. However, adding humor to these disclosures can
mitigate some of the potential negative consequences of disclosing (Bitterly & Schweitzer,
2019).
Honest Delivery
Although few papers examined the antecedents of honest delivery, several papers
investigated consequences of this final facet of honesty. At the organizational level, stakeholders
of financial institutions (i.e., customers, stockholders, and employees) tend to be more satisfied
when the institutions deliver information in a complete and timely manner so that the
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stakeholders can accurately understand the information, and in a way that signals empathy and
concern for the equitable treatment of others (Strong et al., 2001). In job interviews, honest
impression management techniques in which interviewees draw attention to their strengths can
help interviewees make more positive impressions on interviewers (Roulin et al., 2015). Adding
humor to the delivery of negative information can minimize the impact of the negative
information, reducing the recipient’s belief in the veracity of the information while increasing the
recipient’s attributions of warmth and competence of the communicator (Bitterly & Schweitzer,
2019).
Other studies examined the impact of honest delivery on communicators themselves.
Pitesa and colleagues (2018) investigated honesty in product promotion contexts. Delivering
information to customers in a way that is less than honest (e.g., expressing more positivity than
communicators actually feel) can cause salespeople to perceive themselves as less honest, which
in turn is associated with perceiving others as less honest, and ultimately leads to a breakdown in
trust. Related work in other contexts has found that when communicators attempt to cater to
others’ interests and expectations to make a positive impression or achieve a positive outcome, it
can increase their anxiety and harm their performance as compared to when communicators
behave in a manner that feels true to themselves (Gino et al., 2020).
Summary
As reviewed, engaging in honest behavior has consequences for both communicators and
the recipients of communication acts, on both an individual and an organizational level. These
consequences can be positive, but unfortunately, not always. Sometimes the truth really does
hurt, though typically not as much as we expect (Levine & Cohen, 2018).
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DISCUSSION
Thus far, we have presented our synthesis of honesty as it is studied in the management,
organizational behavior, applied psychology, and business ethics research literatures, with
specific focus on empirical evidence for the multifaceted nature of honest behavior. The review
revealed disproportionate research attention on factors that affect whether communicators make
false versus true statements (i.e., honest content), as opposed to, for example, antecedents of
honest delivery or intellectual honesty. Table 2 highlights themes and sample findings from our
review and identifies opportunities for future research—areas in which there were few if any
empirical publications in the journals we searched.
The narrow focus on honest content, which largely reduces the study of honesty to lying
versus truth-telling, is problematic for several reasons. First, reducing the standard of honesty to
“not lying” allows communicators to feel they behaved ethically while still leaving the door open
to serious deception and the harms associated with it. Moreover, conceptualizing honesty as a
binary choice between making true versus false statements ignores interesting and prevalent
communication behaviors that satisfy some of the requirements of honesty but deviate from
others, such as paltering or omission.
Honesty researchers should broaden their focus by addressing questions about how
communicators arrive at their beliefs and how recipients of communication understand
information based on what communicators share and the ways in which they communicate. We
must consider not just what people do or do not say, but also how beliefs are formed, the extent
to which beliefs are updated, and whether recipients walk away from communication exchanges
with the same beliefs as communicators. It is only by understanding nuanced honesty-related
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behaviors holistically, and in relation to one another, that we can develop effective methods for
cultivating the virtue of honesty in people and organizations.
To further our understanding of relatively underexplored aspects of honesty and to
identify possible directions for future research, we conducted a supplementary literature search
to complement the findings from our systematic review. In the remaining sections, we discuss
ideas from other literatures that can inform our understanding of honest behavior and we provide
ideas for future research on honesty.
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12 Facet of Honest
13 Behavior
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Intellectual honesty
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TABLE 2
Sample Findings and Opportunities for Future Research
Antecedents of Honesty
Consequences of Honesty
Social &
Organizational
Other Contextual
Factors
(-) Negative emotions
(discomfort of not
knowing; Shani et al.,
2009)
(-) Hierarchical rank
(lower-ranking
individuals are seen
as having more
accurate
information;
Dannals et al.,
2020)
(+) Honesty-humility (e.g.,
Marcus et al., 2007)
(+) Conscientiousness
(Bourdage et al., 2018)
(+) Agreeableness (DeRue et
al., 2009)
(+) Empathy (Cohen, 2010)
(+) Guilt proneness (Cohen,
2010)
(+) Ethical reasoning (Granitz
& Loewy, 2007)
(-) Machiavellianism (e.g.,
Castille et al., 2018)
(+) Incentives (e.g.,
Wang &
Murnighan, 2007)
(+) Instructions (e.g.,
Dunlop et al., 2020)
(+) Codes of conduct
(e.g., Umphress et
al., 2009)
(+) Oaths (Jacguemet et
al., 2019)
(+) Conversations (e.g.,
Gunia et al., 2012)
Individual
Individual
Social & Organizational
(+) Labeling (truthlabeling influences
acceptance;
Pennycook et al.,
2020)
Opportunity for Future
Research
Opportunity for Future
Research
(+) Social norms (e.g.,
Ayal et al., 2021)
(-) Negative emotions and
self-concept threat
(e.g., Berger et al.,
2020)
(+) Trust and moral
judgement (e.g.,
Lupoli et al., 2018)
(-) Exclusion (Whitson et
al., 2015)
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3 Honest disclosure
Opportunity for Future
(+) Incentives (Scheele
(+) Social norms (e.g.,
(-) Negative emotions
4
Research
et al., 2s018)
Brunner &
(e.g., Griffith & Hebl,
5
Ostermaier, 2019)
2002)
6
(+) Question asking
7
(Minson et al.,
8
2018)
9
10
Opportunity for Future
Opportunity for Future (+) Surprising
(-) Self-concept threat
11 Honest delivery
Research
Research
information
(Pitesa et al., 2018)
12
(Yuthas et al.,
13
14
2002)
15
(-) Unfair information
16
(Lavelle et al.,
17
2016)
18
Note. Plus (+) indicates an association with more honesty. Minus (-) indicates an association with less honesty.
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(+) Social learning (Kim
et al., 2003)
(+) Trust and moral
judgement (e.g.,
Bitterly &
Schweitzer, 2019)
(+) Stakeholder
satisfaction (Strong
et al., 2001)
(+) Positive impressions
(Roulin et al., 2015)
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Intellectual Humility and Motivated Reasoning
Intellectual honesty is challenging; it requires substantial cognitive and emotional efforts
to achieve. Cognitive effort is required to search for information and evaluate it for accuracy.
Emotional effort is required to manage the discomfort that can arise from questioning one’s
beliefs and opening oneself up to the possibility of being wrong. Fortunately, there is much
management researchers can learn about intellectual honesty from other fields, including
philosophy and social psychology, and this could provide a jumping off point for future
organizational research on intellectual honesty.
Philosophers have pointed out that intellectually virtuous honesty requires that a person
care about the truth and be motivated by a desire to convey the truth and not distort it (King,
2021), and that such honesty requires skill (Byerly, 2022). Intellectual humility enables
intellectually honest behavior by facilitating openness to questioning one’s beliefs and
acknowledging the limits of one’s knowledge. Empirical work on intellectual humility has
shown that it is more difficult to be intellectually humble about strongly held and personal
beliefs, such as one’s religious or moral beliefs (Porter et al., 2022). Concerns about group
loyalty and solidarity can amplify this challenge. For example, a communicator that is concerned
with their group status may cling to group ideology over other information (Porter et al., 2022),
even when this ideology is inconsistent with logical arguments. Likewise, intellectual honesty
can be impeded by the degree to which the issues are politically contentious, such as when
evaluating information about climate change (Kahan et al., 2012) or the effectiveness of firearms
regulation (Kahan, Peters, Dawson, & Slovic, 2017).
Recent research on motivated reasoning also highlights the discomfort associated with
confronting counter-attitudinal information (Minson & Dorison, 2022). Successfully overcoming
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such discomfort is challenging, as research suggests that individuals overestimate how
uncomfortable they will feel when engaging with counter-attitudinal information, leading them
to instead seek information that aligns with their beliefs (Dorison et al., 2019). Moreover, it is
not only the case that people seek belief-confirming information and take efforts to avoid
information that runs counter to deeply held beliefs, but they may also think evidence is not
necessary for certain personal beliefs. For example, morality is seen as a legitimate reason for
forming beliefs, independent of impartial evidence (Cusimano & Lombrozo, 2021b). This work
is informative for understanding antecedents and consequences of truth-seeking behaviors in
organizations and beyond. When people believe they have a moral, political, or familial
obligation to uphold certain beliefs, truth-seeking—and therefore honest communication—is
likely to be significantly stifled.
Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Tactics
Despite the importance of communication delivery to honesty, we identified relatively
few papers that focused on this topic. Integrating communication delivery into the study of
honest behavior raises fascinating questions related to when, why, and how do communicators
deliver honest content in a way that facilitates understanding versus misleads recipients. A
growing body of research on the social psychology of communication has begun to address these
questions. Much of this work is informed by classic research on politeness (Brown, Levinson, &
Levinson, 1987; Goffman, 1967, 2009), and the verbal strategies that communicators use in
difficult conversations, such as when delivering bad news or criticism. Rather than lying,
communicators often equivocate, by redirecting the conversation or being intentionally vague
(Bavelas, Black, Chovil, & Mullett, 1990; DePaulo & Bell, 1996). Levine, Roberts, and Cohen
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(2020) described these sorts of communication behaviors as “compromising strategies” because
they aim to strike a balance between honesty and benevolence (i.e., promoting the well-being of
the target), but often fall short on both of these goals. For example, communicators may choose
to answer a different question than the one that they were asked, in order to redirect a
conversation away from an uncomfortable topic (dodging; Rogers & Norton, 2011). Similarly,
communicators may choose to answer a question with a question, thus redirecting a conversation
rather than providing an answer (deflecting; Bitterly & Schweitzer, 2020). Alternatively,
communicators may avoid outright deception by using truthful statements to intentionally
mislead targets (paltering; Rogers et al., 2017). Although none of the aforementioned tactics
involve explicit lies, these communication behaviors are also not fully honest because they
prevent communication recipients from developing an accurate understanding of the truth.
Moreover, these communication tactics are not fully benevolent either because they fail to help
the recipient learn and improve. However, precisely because these tactics allow communicators
to avoid lying, communicators often believe them to be ethical, despite the fact that recipients of
these communication behaviors evaluate them as deceptive and ethically questionable (Bitterly
& Schweitzer, 2020; Rogers & Norton, 2011; Rogers et al., 2017).
In addition to using creative verbal tactics, communicators sometimes manipulate the
honesty of their delivery through accompanying non-verbal cues. Nonverbal cues, such as
maintaining eye contact, exhibiting vocal fluency (e.g., continuity, smoothness, rate, and effort in
speech production), using positive facial expressions (e.g., smiles), and engaging in dynamic
hand gestures, influence the degree to which a message is perceived as honest (Burgoon, Blair, &
Strom, 2008; Gardner, 2003). Dishonest content can still be perceived as honest if
communicators’ nonverbal delivery connotes confidence (Burgoon et al., 2008). Conversely, a
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communicator that tells the truth may be judged as dishonest if their nonverbal delivery signals
anxiousness (Vrij, Granhag, & Porter, 2010). Verbal and non-verbal delivery strategies
collectively influence recipients’ understanding of information. To understand honesty in
organizations, it is essential to understand when and why communicators employ these tactics,
and how these behaviors influence communication recipients and organizational outcomes more
broadly.
Voice, Silence, and Psychological Safety
There is a tremendous opportunity to integrate research on voice, silence, and
psychological safety into the study of honesty. These topics were noticeably absent from the
papers we reviewed because investigations of these topics have not been framed around
“honesty.” However, these constructs fall squarely within our broader conceptualization of
honest behavior, as they all relate to whether information is disclosed versus withheld.
Employee voice refers to “informal and discretionary communication by an employee of
ideas, suggestions, concerns, information about problems, or opinions about work-related issues
to persons who might be able to take appropriate action, with the intent to bring about
improvement or change” (Morrison, 2014, p.174). Interestingly, research on voice over the last
several decades has predominantly focused on the predictors and outcomes of voice, with less
focus on the content of the communication or the communication delivery (Morrison, 2014,
2023). This suggests parallels and complementarity between the honesty and voice literatures,
with opportunities for integrating and deepening both. For example, when an individual chooses
to withhold a concern during a meeting and notes that they have no objection, even when asked
for their opinion, they are manifesting silence while also engaging in dishonest disclosure. Our
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framework suggests that this behavior could be viewed as a lack of honest disclosure, or even an
outright lie by confirming a falsehood (i.e., that they do not have a concern). We suggest that
future research on honesty incorporate insights from the voice literature, and in particular from
new work on ethical voice inside of organizations (Chen & Treviño, 2023).
Similar to the voice literature, the literature on psychological safety — “people’s
perceptions of the consequences of taking interpersonal risks in a particular context such as a
workplace” (Edmondson & Lei, 2014, p.23)—is relevant to understanding when people will (or
will not) decide to communicate truthful information (Edmondson & Bransby, 2023). Integrating
insights from research on psychological safety into the study of honesty could help identify
antecedents of truthfully and candidly sharing information and opinions. For example, research
on psychological safety in Intensive Care Unit rounding teams finds that inclusive leader
behaviors by attending physicians are associated with team members (e.g., nurses, respiratory
therapists, clinical pharmacists, physician trainees) feeling more comfortable discussing
problems (Diabes et al., 2021). This work, along with other related research on psychological
safety (Edmondson, 2018), emphasizes the importance of leadership, among other factors, for
encouraging honest disclosure in teams and organizations. Our systematic review of the honesty
literature identified surprisingly few papers investigating how leadership behaviors or
organizational culture influence honesty, which suggests opportunities for future work to
integrate insights from the psychological safety, voice, and silence literatures to identify the
individual and organizational factors that make people more (versus less) willing to truthfully
and candidly disclose information and opinions.
Guilt and Moral Judgements
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Communicators who lie must contend with threats to their self-image and guilt (Van
Zant, Kennedy, & Kray, 2022). An open question is whether similar self-image threats and moral
emotions arise when communicators deliberately shield themselves from truth or obscure the
truth through means other than false statements. If not, are there ways to highlight the harms
associated with failures of truth-seeking and fostering understanding so that people internalize
them, as they do failures of honest content, and consider the damage created by these other
deviations from honesty?
Related to these questions, how should we evaluate others who perpetuate
misinformation through failures of truth-seeking, belief-speaking, and fostering understanding?
Recent work finds that people are deeply troubled when others hold false beliefs (Molnar &
Loewenstein, 2020), suggesting that failures of truth-seeking may lead to social punishment.
However, other ongoing work finds that when misinformation is attributed to bias (incorrect
beliefs, which reflect a failure of truth-seeking) rather than deception (which reflects a failure of
belief speaking), communicators are penalized less and more likely to be trusted in the future.
For example, Wallace and Levine (2023) find that government leaders who give constituents
false information about the success of a new health technology are penalized less and trusted
more when constituents believe that the leaders actually (but incorrectly) believed the technology
worked compared to when constituents believe that the leaders knowingly lied about the
technology. This work connects to research on “workplace bullshitting” (McCarthy, Hannah,
Pitt, & McCarthy, 2020). Whereas liars knowingly and deliberately make false statements,
“bullshitters” simply do not know or care about whether the statements they are making are true.
Overall, more work is needed to understand precisely why and when communicators who hold
false beliefs are penalized more or less than communicators who make false statements.
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Comparing reactions to failures of belief-speaking and fostering understanding will also
be fruitful. In the context of negotiations, lying is seen as less ethical, and leads to more negative
interpersonal and economic outcomes than acts that foster misunderstanding without lying (e.g.,
paltering; Rogers et al., 2017). These dynamics are also relevant to many organizational domains
outside of negotiations. For example, it is commonplace to engage in cherry-picking when
presenting data in a marketing context. Companies and salespeople routinely selectively present
statistics, consumer reviews, or other information to give consumers falsely positive impressions
of their products or services. However, these same companies and individuals likely stop short of
actively fabricating information. Consistent with work on paltering, recent work suggests that
cherry-picking is seen as more acceptable than fabrication (Duncan, Levine, & Small, 2023).
Future work should examine the mechanisms underlying these effects, as well as how these
dynamics influence judicial decisions and consumer law more broadly.
Cultural Values and Norms
An unfortunate limitation of the extant honesty literature is the dearth of research on how
cultural values and norms affect honesty. It is well established that culture influences
communication, negotiation, and trust (Aslani et al., 2016; Brett & Mitchell, 2022; Gunia, Brett,
& Nandkeolyar, 2014; Meyer, 2014; Ramirez-Marin, Olekalns, & Adair, 2019), so is surprising
that we have such a limited understanding of how culture affects honesty. Indian negotiators, for
example, trust their counterparts considerably less than do U.S. negotiators (Gunia, Brett,
Nandkeolyar, & Kamdar, 2011). Such cultural differences in trust are likely to influence how
honest people are in their negotiations, however, there is not yet conclusive empirical evidence
that this is indeed the case.
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Several ambitious papers have reported data from numerous countries to provide insight
into how honesty varies around the world (Cohn, Maréchal, Tannenbaum, & Zünd, 2019;
Crittenden, Hanna, & Peterson, 2009; Gächter & Schulz, 2016; Hugh-Jones, 2016; PascualEzama et al., 2015; Payan, Reardon, & McCorkle, 2010; Triandis et al., 2001). These papers
have used diverse and creative methods to study honesty among people from very different
cultural backgrounds. For example, Cohn and colleagues (2019) planted “lost wallets” with
varying amounts of money in 40 countries across the globe, finding that in nearly all countries,
citizens were more likely to return wallets that contained more money. Though not the focus of
their paper, their data show that people in some parts of the world (e.g., Switzerland, Norway,
Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden) are considerably more likely to return lost wallets than are
people in other parts of the world (e.g., China, Morocco, Peru, Kazakhstan, Kenya). While these
country-level findings are intriguing, the overall body of work on how honesty varies by culture,
and more importantly, on why cultural differences might emerge, is far too preliminary and
fragmented to offer firm conclusions.
Beyond national culture, honesty is also influenced by organizational culture (Cohn,
Fehr, & Maréchal, 2014; Kish-Gephart, Harrison, & Treviño, 2010). However, as with the
research on national culture, the body of research on how honesty varies according to
organizational culture is relatively thin. Accordingly, a particularly generative area for future
research is to examine how and why each of the four facets of honest behavior described by our
model vary across different organizational cultures and in different parts of the world.
CONCLUSIONS
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We hope our systematic review and new multidimensional framework of honest behavior
will alter the trajectory of research and practice in management, organizational behavior, applied
psychology, business ethics, and related fields by motivating researchers to think more
expansively about the topic of honesty. We view the identification of the critical roles of
intellectual honesty, honest disclosure, and honest delivery in the honesty process as a key
contribution of our review. Honesty is more than a binary decision of whether to lie versus tell
the truth. We encourage researchers to broaden their focus beyond the accuracy of the content of
the communication and allocate more research attention to intellectual honesty and
communication behaviors that foster understanding of the truth in others via the way information
is disclosed and delivered.
Our new multidimensional framework of honesty also has practical implications for those
aiming to increase honesty in organizations. To encourage honesty in organizations, we need to
do more than simply discourage lying or distorting facts. We also must consider how to
encourage people to seek out truthful information, update their beliefs based on this information,
and attempt to foster true beliefs in others. Managers should prioritize the communication of
verified and truthful information to promote honesty and avoid the spread of misinformation.
This can start at the individual level by implementing interventions to promote the search for
accurate information. For example, interventions to increase attentiveness (Dannals et al., 2020)
or to manipulate construal levels during information seeking (Shani et al., 2009) may help people
evaluate their beliefs and seek out truthful information. Given that emotional discomfort and
threatening situations can be barriers to intellectual honesty, creating a safe and inclusive
environment in the workplace is likely to promote more commitment to truth-seeking.
Additionally, organizations can train communicators to think of honesty as more than the
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absence of lies, and ensure they communicate in a manner that avoids creating a misleading
impression in their targets. By identifying and labeling these largely underexplored components
of honesty, we provide individuals and organizations with the outlines of a road map to become
more honest.
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