Understanding Trait and State Honesty through Goals

The variation in (dis-)honesty can be attributed to both enduring traits and temporary states. While goals have been recognized as crucial in understanding other personality traits, their interplay with honesty, as both a trait and a state, remains underexplored. To address this gap, we conducted two preregistered studies. In Study 1 (N = 400), we developed a comprehensive questionnaire consisting of 78 items to assess goals related to honesty and dishonesty, examining its psychometric properties and factor structure. The results demonstrated that goals have significant predictive power in relation to (dis)honest behavior, above and beyond trait honesty. In Study 2 (N = 200), we adapted the questionnaire into an Ecological Momentary Assessment format consisting of 21 items. Through a specialized mobile application, participants reported their goals and honesty levels five times a day over a two-week period. The findings revealed that a goal structure comprising two correlated factors (honest and dishonest goals) provided a better fit to the data compared to orthogonal two-factor and unidimensional models. Moreover, the temporal relationships observed between goals and honest states, both concurrently and over time, further substantiated the questionnaire's validity. In summary, our results indicate that goals associated with honesty and dishonesty are partially dissociable motivational tendencies, with dishonesty goals demonstrating a stronger link to predicting deceptive behavior and corroborating the importance of goals for the processes of honesty and dishonesty.