Amount Awarded: $20,000
Honesty is a fundamental building block for well-functioning societies. In all spheres of life, people must trust each other to cooperate effectively. Without honesty, intimate relationships can deteriorate, businesses can go bankrupt, and governments can collapse. Nevertheless, individuals may still choose to act dishonestly for selfish gain, and their willingness to cheat may also reflect causal forces in the social environment. There is a strong need to understand what motivates people to prioritize honest decisions and how we perceive the honest and dishonest choices of other people. We present an ambitious, interdisciplinary research project on the interplay between time perspective and honesty in social life. Our overarching research question is to examine whether people think of honesty as a good long-term strategy. First, we will explore the causal role of time perspective for honesty in moral decision-making. Second, we will explore the social costs and benefits of future-oriented honesty, as judged by others, and whether decision-makers are able to predict these consequences. We will explore these questions through open and empirically robust research methods. The project will contribute to our understanding of societal challenges by developing new knowledge about the moral mind and how people perceive morality in social life.