Are People Inherently Honest? Essay

There argon numerous theories that get down to explain the pauperization behind hoi polloi acting in certain ways. This paper go out brood three of these theories, apply these theories to how mint choose to direct h iodinestly or dis aboveboard, and will attempt to delay whether or non plenty argon natively honest.Before beting into the motivation behind tidy sums decision to be honest, it is important to specify some key terms in gild to fully understand and explore what it means to be inherently honest. Merriam-Webster defines honest as free from subterfuge or deception, or simply put, truthful. It defines inherent as belonging by nature or habit. The absolute majority of commonwealth simply associate something being inherent as natural or innate. Interestingly, this description expands our view on what one may portion out inherent by noting how past habits can overly play a vital role in how one moves.Now that we lose defined what verity and inherent beh aviour entails, we can now look at the various theories that attempt to identify the motivation behind spate behaving frankly. One of these theories is the fact that world choose to act honestly or not based on what we feel is cleanly estimable or the decent thing to do match to a very personal engraft of rules and morals. An soulfulnesss behaviours atomic number 18 heavily regularized in companionship to satisfy this single(a) set of rules.Of course, there ar a number of positions one can bourgeon on when defining this set of rules. Deontologists would argue that one should be honest one hundred percent of the time, regard slight of the situation. They be broodve that it is ones moral obligation to come honestly and have a duty of adhering to this prevalent rule. On the other hand, utilitarianism claims that the decision to act honestly or deceitfully varies depending on the situation, pick outing all costs, benefits, and consequences that will result from the behaviour.Regardless of the persons moral standpoint, their choice to practice honestly or not is strongly influenced by their personal, or inherent, set of behaviours that they select morally right. This supports the argument that people be in fact inherently honest. Another surmise that attempts to explain the motivation behind behaving honestly is think on the consequences that will result from behaving honestly or dishonestly. Uri Gneezys paper on the role of consequences in lying looks at how different benefits and costs influence ones decision to behave honestly or dishonestly.From his studies, he comes to a number of conclusions describing how people conduct a cost-benefit analysis when deciding to pillow or not. First, he finds that people are oddly sensitive to their personal gain when deciding to lie, essence that they place a high priority on personal gain in their cost-benefit analysis. He same(p)wise finds that people also lam to lie less when the lie harms a nother party. However, this harm plays less of a role in choosing not to lie compared to the change magnitude gains from lying.This suggests that the marginal personal gain from a lie is greater than the marginal harm that is caused from the lie. Because people are constantly trying to maximize their personal utility, these findings video display how one will behave dishonestly when doing so maximizes their utility. This suggests that people do not inherently behave honestly, hardly rather behave in a way that will hold the most personal gain. A third theory that explains how people behave is based on the impression that is associated with behaving honestly or dishonestly, as well as the use of excuses to unfreeze dishonesty.There tends to be a negative firebrand attached with lying therefore, people are tend to be honest simply to remark a compulsory image of themself. There are a number of ways to look at this. First, people have a natural desire to look on themselves i n a positive light and like to feel that they are doing what is right. Much of this plays into the previously discussed individual set of morals that people have and doing what they consider morally right.However, there are cases when people create excuses to justify to themselves that acting dishonestly is the right thing to do. For example, if a man lies by verbalise his pregnant wife that she doesnt look over campaignt, he will justify this lie to himself by claiming that he doesnt involve to hurt her feelings, maintaining a positive image of himself. In addition, people will tend to lie less to avoid making a bad impression to others. Similarly to above, people may use excuses to justify acting dishonestly, simply to maintain their positive impression on others.This shows that in articulate to maintain a positive impression of oneself on oneself as well as on others, people are inclined to behave honestly and are willing to make excuses to justify acting dishonestly to mainta in this impression. This suggests that due to the natural desire to create and maintain a positive impression, people are inherently honest. The above theories and discussion suggest two that people are and are not inherently honest. This is precisely why many social scientists have difficulty in this area.On one hand, people behave honestly to satisfy their personal set of morals and to promote a positive image of themselves (in their own as well as others eyes), but are willing to be dishonest if it results in enough personal gain to justify the lie. From this, we refrain that one cannot make an overarching statement claiming that people are or are not inherently honest. Whether a person is inherently honest depends on how they weigh and balance the importance of their morals, personal gain, their self-image, and the image they want to portray to others.