Watching the watchmen: Vigilance-based models of honesty fail to explain it
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Date
2023
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Abstract
Promoting honesty is considered a key endeavor in the
betterment of our societies. However, our understanding of
this phenomenon, and of its evil twin, dishonesty, is still
lacking. In this text, we analyze the main tenets assumed by
empirical models of vigilance and sanctions. We approach
our analysis in three sections. Initially, we investigate the
concept of honesty as assumed by commonly used meth odologies in studying honesty. This then leads us to identify
the previously overlooked but essential element of epistemic
privilege in characterizing honesty. In the third part, we delve
into how current explanatory models of honesty lack suffi cient consideration of epistemic privilege, resulting in incom plete narratives about honesty. Our analysis of the extant
literature suggests that both internal (including the self concept maintenance theory) and external vigilance models
fall short of explaining honesty and dishonesty because of
both conceptual problems and empirical inadequacy.
Identifying these shortcomings allows us to suggest some
possible directions of research.
Description
Keywords
Vigilance; honesty; norms; motivation; self-concept maintenance theory