Are People Inherently Honest? Essay

There argon numerous theories that attempt to explain the motivation behind people acting in certain ways. This paper pull up stakes address three of these theories, apply these theories to how people choose to behave frankly or dish unrivalledstly, and will attempt to determine whether or not people are inherently honest.Before looking into the motivation behind peoples decision to be honest, it is important to define round key terms in order to fully understand and explore what it means to be inherently honest. Merriam-Webster defines honest as free from fraud or deception, or simply put, truthful. It defines inherent as belonging by nature or habit. The majority of people simply associate something being inherent as natural or innate. Interestingly, this definition expands our view on what one may consider inherent by noting how past habits can also melt a vital contri yetion in how one behaves.Now that we have defined what honesty and inherent behaviour entails, we can now look at the various theories that attempt to identify the motivation behind people behaving honestly. One of these theories is the fact that humans choose to act honestly or not ground on what we look is chastely good or the right thing to do according to a very ain set of rules and moral philosophy. An individuals behaviours are heavily influenced in order to satisfy this individual set of rules.Of course, there are a physical body of positions one can take on when defining this set of rules. Deontologists would argue that one should be honest one hundred percent of the time, regardless of the situation. They be inhabitve that it is ones moral obligation to behave honestly and have a duty of adhering to this universal rule. On the other hand, utilitarianism claims that the decision to act honestly or dishonestly varies depending on the situation, considering all costs, benefits, and consequences that will event from the behaviour.Regardless of the somebodys moral standpoint, their choice to behave honestly or not is strongly influenced by their personal, or inherent, set of behaviours that they consider morally right. This supports the argument that people are in fact inherently honest. Another theory that attempts to explain the motivation behind behaving honestly is focused 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 lie or not. First, he finds that people are particularly sensitive to their personal gain when deciding to lie, meaning that they place a high priority on personal gain in their cost-benefit analysis. He also finds that people also tend to lie less when the lie harms another party. However, this harm plays less of a role in choosin g not to lie compared to the increased 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 continuously trying to maximize their personal utility, these findings display how one will behave dishonestly when doing so maximizes their utility. This suggests that people do not inherently behave honestly, but rather behave in a way that will nominate the most personal gain. A third theory that explains how people behave is base on the image that is associated with behaving honestly or dishonestly, as well as the use of excuses to justify dishonesty.There tends to be a negative stigma addicted with lying therefore, people are inclined to be honest simply to fight back a official image of themself. There are a number of ways to look at this. First, people have a natural desire to see themselves in a positive light and like to feel that they are doing what is right. Much of this pla ys 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 telling his pregnant wife that she doesnt look overweight, he will justify this lie to himself by claiming that he doesnt want 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 order 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 maintain this impression. This suggests that due to the natural desire to create and maintain a positive impre ssion, people are inherently honest. The above theories and discussion suggest both that people are and are not inherently honest. This is just now 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 nice personal gain to justify the lie. From this, we conclude 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.