KarunaNews Story

While honesty promotes trust, fosters healthy relationships, strengthens organizations and societies, and prevents harm, it is largely absent from academic research, rare in society, and not commonly found in discussions of how to become a better person, says scholar and author Christian B. Miller. In this article, he explores some important questions relating to honesty and offers some practical steps about cultivating it in ourselves and others. Such steps include seeking out and better understanding exemplars of honesty, and having regular moral reminders of honesty in our lives. Some preliminary evidence suggests reminders like the honor code used in many schools can be effective in preventing cheating. Instead of policing and penalizing cheating, the desire to cheat could be diminished by fostering other virtues alongside honesty, such as friendship and love, he suggests.