Defining Honesty: A Qualitative Analysis of the Trait Honesty

A popular theoretical model in personality psychology is the Five Factor Model, or the Big Five. This model is structured to have five superordinate factors; Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientious, Neuroticism, and Openness (McCrae & Costa, 2003). Each of these factors includes numerous facets that contribute to each of the superordinate traits. However, there is some controversy over what these facets incorporate. For example, Agreeableness, according consists of straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tender-mindedness (Costa & McCrae, 1995). However, the factor of Agreeableness, as defined by the Big Five Model, lacks an important personality variable: honesty. Honesty can be conceptualized as acting in a manner consistent with ones values and beliefs in addition to telling the truth. It is displayed by someone who has a tendency to be fair and genuine towards others (Hilbig, Zettler, & Heydasch, 2011). Honesty has been viewed to be an important personality trait, as evidenced by honesty being consistently listed as one of the most desirable qualities in a romantic partner (citation). If honesty is such an important personality trait, it should be incorporated into a well-established model of personality. Although the Big Five does not incorporate honesty into the model, a different personality theory, the HEXACO (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness (versus Anger), Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience) model, has emerged which does factor in honesty. This theory is based on the lexical approach using data from different languages. The HEXACO model incorporates a sixth factor in addition to the factors included in the Big Five model. This additional trait has been labeled Honesty-Humility, which has been shown to be related to Agreeableness (Ashton & Lee, 2005). Research has shown that this model, with the inclusion of the Honesty-Humility trait, explains incremental variance beyond the classical five‐factor approach (Hilbig, Zettler, & Heydasch, 2011). Although the lexical approach, which investigates the importance of personality traits by looking at the presence of descriptive words for the trait within a given language (citation – I think Allport but double check), is a decent start, it does not address how individuals conceptualize the trait. The lexical approach only investigates whether or not there is a word present in language to explain the trait. Therefore, although the HEXACO model is a decent start at understanding the trait of honesty, it is important to investigate how regular people conceptualize honesty using empirical methods. Consequently, we used open-ended questions as a framework for identifying major themes related to the trait of honesty in the current study. 85 undergraduates participated in the online survey in exchange for course credit. The survey consisted of 8 open-ended questions inquiring into participants perceptions of honesty in addition to demographic questions. These questions asked participants to describe both honest and dishonest situations, as well as the qualities that both honest and dishonest people have. Therefore, we were able to address both individual differences and situational factors that contribute to the conceptualization of honesty. 12 members of the research team read through the responses and identified major themes and commonalities of honesty and dishonesty. The next step for this project is to create a quantitative measure of honesty based on the major themes generated from the open-ended questions and to determine how well this new measure aligns with the measure of honesty developed for the HEXACO model in addition to the Big Five Factor of Agreeableness. By incorporating how individuals conceptualize honesty into the development of the scale, we will be better able to understand the construct through further research

The Truth About Honesty: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Trait of Honesty

In both the psychological and philosophical literature, there is little time devoted to a robust understanding of the character trait of honesty. The trait of honesty is often used as an example of a beneficial or good character trait, yet the gap in the literature raises a vexing question: what is honesty? This poster reports ongoing work aimed at identifying folk theories of honesty. We argue that an understanding of these theories can illuminate a principled understanding of this character trait in both psychology and philosophy. Currently, we are using qualitative surveys to develop an operational definition of honesty. This will allow us to develop a quantitative measure in order to assess the strength of the trait in particular individuals. The quantitative data will be used to classify and categorize the trait of honesty within the Five Factor Model of personality and to generalize the construct of virtuous traits within virtue ethics in philosophy. If honesty is shown to be distinct from existing categories of traits in psychology or if its characteristics are shown to be incompatible with situationist ethics in philosophy, then we will formulate a new research program in order to better understand the relationship between the trait of honesty and each theory. This poster sketches some approaches to these possible outcomes that we find plausible

Situationism, Honesty, and the Folk

This project aims at finding a widespread folk theory of honesty in order to construct an accurate account of the philosophical nature of honesty as a character trait. Our research process involves gathering responses from the folk, then combining and interpreting the responses. Our broad goal is to discover a solid case for the existence of character traits that can be used against the recent situationist attacks being seen in psychology. Proponents of situationism reject the existence of broad character traits, arguing that behaviour is driven by situational factors and that humans posess no significant character traits at all (Harmon, 1999, 2000 and Doris 1998, 2002). Research in psychology has been used to support situationism, but skepticism arises about the interpretation of study results. For example, Kamtekar notes that “[I]t is noteworthy that the experiments appealed by situationists for the most part assume that subjects share the experimenter’s construal of the situation” (2004, p. 471). Our research aims to provide a single, agreed-upon basis for evaluating action in terms of character traits

Distributed Computing with Channel Noise

A group of $n$ users want to run a distributed protocol $\pi$ over a network where communication occurs via private point-to-point channels. Unfortunately, an adversary, who knows $\pi$, is able to maliciously flip bits on the channels. Can we efficiently simulate $\pi$ in the presence of such an adversary? We show that this is possible, even when $L$, the number of bits sent in $\pi$, and $T$, the number of bits flipped by the adversary are not known in advance. In particular, we show how to create a robust version of $\pi$ that 1) fails with probability at most $\delta$, for any $\delta > 0$; and 2) sends $\tilde{O}(L+T)$ bits, where the $\tilde{O}$ notation hides a $\log(nL/\delta)$ term multiplying $L$. Additionally, we show how to improve this result when the average message size $\alpha$ is not constant. In particular, we give an algorithm that sends $O(L(1 + (1/\alpha) \log(nL/\delta) + T )$ bits. This algorithm is adaptive in that it does not require a priori knowledge of $\alpha$. We note that if $\alpha$ is $\Omega (log(nL/\delta))$, then this improved algorithm sends only $O(L + T)$ bits, and is therefore within a constant factor of optimal

Dance Experience Affects Tempo Perception

In music, the word “tempo” refers to the speed or pace of the music (the number of beats per minute, for example). Tempo is surprisingly subjective, given that beat perception depends on age and cultural experience. Other factors besides beat (like the density of events per unit time) might influence how fast or slow people dance to music. Certain styles of music afford different speeds of dance, even when their tempos are the same.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/durep_posters/1134/thumbnail.jp

Experimental Philosophy--An Emerging Discipline

This poster will explain the nature of a newly emerging field in philosophy called experimental philosophy (“X-phi”) and its presence on Boise State’s campus. BSU’s X-phi group operates via gathering data from “everyday” people, sorting and statistically analyzing the data, then reviewing trends identified people’s intuitions about certain concepts (e.g. know-how, intentional action, moral correctness, etc.). We are exploring the concept of Honesty—a concept that has, to date, not been adequately analyzed. To distinguish theories developed as a result of this research, X-phi employs the term “folk theory”, literally referring to the theory that the majority of people are found to hold. It’s then interdisciplinarily informative determine where these folk theories match up, or fail to, with existing philosophical theories. X-phi is still establishing itself in the greater academic community, but is proving its worth; philosopher and professor at Tufts University, Daniel Dennett, acknowledges in a recently published book review that “some of the work has yielded interesting results that certainly defy complacent assumptions common among philosophers.” BSU’s X-Phi group has been active on campus for two years; this poster will report the group’s evolution, current work, and explain what X-Phi is in general