Dataset Information

Dishonesty as a signal of trustworthiness: Honesty-Humility and trustworthy dishonesty.

ABSTRACT: 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%).

SUBMITTER: Scigala KA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7657889 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Dishonesty as a signal of trustworthiness: Honesty-Humility and trustworthy dishonesty.

Ścigała Karolina A KA Schild Christoph C Zettler Ingo I

Royal Society open science 20201028 10

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 expecta ...[more]

PMID: 33204452

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Project description:Most past research has focused mainly on the personality of the victims of bullying and not on the personality of workplace bullies. Some researchers have suggested that bullies and their victims may share bully-typifying personality traits. The aims of this study were to find out what characterizes the personalities of workplace bullies and their victims, and to investigate the relationship between the Dark Triad, HEXACO and workplace bullying. We tested three hypotheses. H1: Machiavellianism and Psychopathy, but not Narcissism, predict the use of bullying tactics (i.e., bullying perpetration). H2: (Low) Honesty-Humility, (low) Agreeableness and (high) Extraversion predict the use of bullying tactics. H3: Honesty-Humility moderates the association between Machiavellianism and the use of bullying tactics. Employees in southwestern Sweden (N = 172; 99 women) across various occupations and organizations were surveyed. Negative Acts Questionnaire-Perpetrators (NAQ-P) and Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) were used to assess the use of bullying tactics and victimization. NAQ-P was correlated with NAQ-R (r = .27), indicating some overlap between the use of bullying tactics and victimization. NAQ-P was correlated with Machiavellianism (.60), Psychopathy (.58), Narcissism (.54), Agreeableness (-.34), Honesty-Humility (-.29) and Extraversion (.28). The results of linear regressions confirmed H1, but only partially confirmed H2: Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, (low) Agreeableness and (high) Extraversion explained 32%, 25%, 27% and 19%, respectively, of the variation in the NAQ-P. Replicating past research, NAQ-R was correlated with Neuroticism (.27), Extraversion (-.22), Openness (-.19) and Conscientiousness (-.16). Neuroticism explained 25% and (low) Extraversion 17% of the variation in the NAQ-R. Confirming H3, Honesty-Humility moderated the relationship between the NAQ-P and Machiavellianism. We conclude that bullies, but not their victims, are callous, manipulative, extravert and disagreeable, and that dishonest Machiavellians are the biggest bullies of all. In practice, the victims of workplace bullying need strong and supportive leadership to protect them from bullies with exploitative and manipulative personality profiles.

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Dataset Information

Dishonesty as a signal of trustworthiness: Honesty-Humility and trustworthy dishonesty.

Publications

Dishonesty as a signal of trustworthiness: Honesty-Humility and trustworthy dishonesty.

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