Why some people are more honest than others is, IMO, a very tricky question. How much of a person's honesty is determined by how they were raised? I would hypothesize that people raised by parents who often stress the importance of honesty and integrity no matter what are more likely to be honest in this experiment than people raised by parents who spent little time talking about those topics. But I imagine you'd still find people in the first group who lied. Maybe they didn't get along with their parents for whatever reason and little white lies, as these would be counted as, are a form of rebellion. Or there could be numerous other reasons why they'd lie.
As to why people will refuse to lie even if there are no real consequence, I'd hypothesize the answer to that is fairly straightforward: there are no real EXTERNAL consequences to the lie, but there are INTERNAL consequences. The person will know they lied.
It's a similar principle, IMO, to intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards. Some people are motivated by external rewards - they do their best at whatever it is they do for the accolades and/or awards and/or money. Some people are motivated by internal rewards - they do their best at whatever it is they do for the pride they feel in doing their best and achieving their goals.
I would be interested in seeing the results of an experiment on honesty where the researchers also attempted to measure how extrinsically or intrinsically motivated the subjects were.
As to why people will refuse to lie even if there are no real consequence, I'd hypothesize the answer to that is fairly straightforward: there are no real EXTERNAL consequences to the lie, but there are INTERNAL consequences. The person will know they lied.
It's a similar principle, IMO, to intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards. Some people are motivated by external rewards - they do their best at whatever it is they do for the accolades and/or awards and/or money. Some people are motivated by internal rewards - they do their best at whatever it is they do for the pride they feel in doing their best and achieving their goals.
I would be interested in seeing the results of an experiment on honesty where the researchers also attempted to measure how extrinsically or intrinsically motivated the subjects were.
