Is Dishonesty a Personality Trait?
A recent study claims that dishonesty can be an inherent personality trait and that it’s fairly immutable and not situational.
Once a cheater, always a cheater?
“Cheat, cheat, repeat: On the consistency of dishonest behavior in structurally comparable situations” — research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that dishonesty is actually consistent behavior. So, as much as we hate to damn someone with “once a cheater, always a cheater” science seems to agree with that sentiment.
Web news site Boing Boing reports:
Researchers led by Isabel Thielmann tracked 1,916 participants over three years, repeatedly testing their honesty using different cheating games where they could lie for personal gain (either to make money or to avoid tedious work).
Participants in the study could cheat without getting caught individually — similar to real-world situations where people can fudge their taxes or pad expense reports without obvious detection.
“Contrary to long-standing assumptions, there is notable consistency in dishonest behavior that can be attributed to underlying dispositional factors,” the researchers write. In other words: some people are just more prone to dishonesty, and this tendency follows them across different situations.
Gosh, if only these researchers had found the Chump Lady archives, I could’ve told them that. Last week’s Friday Challenge was “what else didn’t you know about?” And our research shows infidelity often goes with other unethical behavior like financial abuse, swindled coworkers, hidden children, or criminal workplace conduct.
Where’s Esther Perel?
I thought cheating was just an exuberant act of defiance? If dishonesty is an inherent personality trait, cheating doesn’t seem so spontaneous and liberating now, does it?
I don’t know much about how hard-wired personality traits are, but basic neuroscience shows the more you do something, the more you’re creating neural pathways to reinforce that behavior. So, it stands to reason, the more you lie, the easier it gets. And when you get rewarded for lying (more kibbles!), you’ve wired yourself to be dishonest.
I’ll leave the chicken and egg / nature or nurture stuff to the scientists, but my takeaway is, if you have a partner who is reflexively dishonest about little stuff, it’s a huge red flag.
Chances are you’re dealing with a Dark Triad personality. The FWs known as narcissists and sociopaths.
The researchers found that certain personality traits — specifically low “Honesty-Humility” scores and high “Dark Factor” traits (the nasty personality characteristics like narcissism and psychopathy) — predicted not only who would cheat but also who would cheat consistently.
Seriously, where is the Reconciliation Industrial Complex?
I thought if I sent you $399, you’d affair proof my marriage. Now research says that cheaters will cheat consistently? Where’s the research saying my flaws make dicks wander? And if I improve myself I can create a honest partner? Esther? HelloOoo? Anyone?
This research challenges the old “situation matters more than personality” view that’s dominated psychological thinking about dishonesty since the early 19th century. Turns out your shifty cousin who “borrowed” money and never paid it back probably isn’t just having a one-off ethical lapse — it might be a pattern woven into their personality.
I think anyone scammed by a shifty cousin or a cheating partner could tell you this. But I’m glad science has caught up.
Sadly, this also reinforces my fear that my child may turn out like FW. I caught him lying yesterday when I asked him a simple question about whether his new braces were fitting. I was in my office and on the phone with the orthodontic office and messaged him to ask. Oh yes, he said they were fine. I found them later in the bathroom untouched. He had never put them on to check and had lied about it. So today I have to call the ortho office back to schedule an appointment because they do NOT fit and are NOT fine.
He cried when I caught him so maybe I have to make consequences painful enough so there is no reinforcement. But it did frighten me with the thought that he is following FW’s dishonest lead. Maybe I can nurture away that nature.
I have the same fear too. FW parents are both liars and at least one a serial adulterer. OMG why didn’t my chumpy younger self run as fast as possible?
I’m not a parent, but I think you’re right about consequences.
MWE, I have had this same thought/fear. My daughter had done the same here and there, saying this is fine, or I like this food, and has been — on its face — lying to me about it. However, I also recognized in her a sense of not wanting to disappoint or rock the boat. I have been treating it more like a people pleasing tendency than lying to some villainous end (but with how deep her father’s lies went, that thought has often worried me, I completely understand). I have tried to address it as a teachable moment, i.e. explained to her why me buying a food she won’t eat isn’t going to be a positive end to her not telling me the truth because then I’m possibly out that money (if I don’t eat it) and she doesn’t have a thing to eat, which was the point of buying it. I think over time this has sunken in. It started when she was younger (pre-school/lower elementary) and has gotten better to date (about to wrap up elementary school). It’s been a while since I’ve had to say I’m upset because I didn’t have the full story, not because of the thing you said/did.
I joked that I would throw a party on the day my once severely disabled, once nonverbal son lied like any regular kid. Now that he’s fully verbal and high functioning, I’ve caught him in a few fibs here and there and, even if I still bust him for it, I’m still secretly relieved that he’s graduated to having normal challenges and issues.
One of the ways I deal with this crux with all the kids is to talk with them in the abstract about issues related to honesty. It’s not just because I don’t want them growing up to be compulsive liars or cheats but also because I don’t want them being overly forthcoming or “constipatedly honest” in situations where this might put them at unfair risk.
The typical academic exercise for this is to talk about the limits of “Kantian” honesty– like, is it immoral to lie to the Nazis that you’ve got Anne Frank hiding in your attic? But there are less lethal situations in which being overly honest can arm perpetrators. Do you have to admit to the classroom or workplace that you just had, say, bowel surgery or something else they could turn into spiraling ridicule? Or, for my daughter especially, if she finds herself being interrogated on a first date about vulnerabilities or past misfortune, should she be wary that this might be intel gathering in order to weaponize this information later as a form of psychological warfare or smear tactic?
I think the point I want to convey to the kids is that the morality of honesty depends on circumstances and stakes but it’s never okay to lie gratuitously to cheat another person, to dodge justifiable consequences or take advantage of anyone innocent.
It seems to me that there are things it’s not appropriate to discuss or disclose on a first date. I’d probably say something like “Let’s discuss that when we know each other better.” If the other party doesn’t respect that, red flag.
Not minimizing, but kids do this type of thing. The key is to hold them accountable, but ultimately it has to come from within.
Mine are both adults now, acing young adulthood. One was scrupulously honest, and one got caught at times. In adulthood, they confessed to some things I didn’t know, which is a good sign IMHO. I like to think they both have chosen a show-up/own-up lifestyle, but the ball is in their court at this point.
I did my best.
My sons are grown but not reinforcing lying when they are children matters. One of my sons said “you put some shame in us” and I did- when they lied, or were mean, didn’t do as asked, etc..This has to matter. My ex, his mother – and I don’t believe it’s just mothers, but then the social environment one gravitates toward, or has available (see poverty) – loved it when her children were “clever”/lied and cheated. I tried to save him from that. It was a miserable psycho thing, and I felt SORRY for him haha. Anyway. Love that science has caught up with CL.
Re your MIL – isn’t that strange that she was proud of the lying children? Bizarre. My FW’s family was expected to lie. If they told the truth about something that their parents would disapprove of then it was considered disrespectful. If they lied about it then that showed that they respected their parents’ rules. His parents knew that the he and his siblings were doing what the parents considered wrong (for example FW and I lived together out of wedlock for 2 years before marriage – everyone knew), but as long as he lied about it there was no problem. So bizarre. And I married it – smh.
I wonder if it’s a cultural thing. I knew a woman from my ex’s ethnic group who got married when 6 months pregnant. When the 10 lb baby boy was born 3 months later everyone accepted the little guy as a preemie. Whatever…
This quote from the dark triad article (Sandra Brown) got me because my therapist something similar. It bleeds into every relationship, which is consistent with the dishonesty study. This isn’t someone who hides a thing or two that they’re ashamed of. It’s a pattern.
“A personality disorder is the inability to sustain non-manipulative and consistent positive behavior.”
Every relationship is affected, period. They lie to keep control, while most of us would back off or choose other ways of dealing with someone.
My ex tried to manipulate and control his attorney. That backfired big time, with the attorney turning on his client in some ways. My older attorney said that he had never seen something quite like that and would quickly drop someone like my ex. He was at the point in his career where he could choose clients who didn’t lie and wouldn’t try to manipulate and control him.
Thanks for that quote. I am seven years post-discovery, but even now I have bad days. Today is one of those days. I just need to get through something.
(((hugs)))
Coming up on eight years for me. I had a bad day not long ago because of back-to-back losses. One of my adult kids was with me and pointed out that I dwell on my ex when I have other losses. Yes, it’s a pattern; admitting that is the beginning of working through it.
Same here – time passed and mental/emotional process. This is always what is dredged up when something bad happens. It’s almost like it’s just tied to that kind of thing now because it’s the worst thing that’s happened to me so far. It’s like some sick frame of reference. Still trying to work the burden of it through.
The way my retired therapist friend described it, it’s normal to want to sift through current loss in light of past losses, particularly if it was a big one.
Yup. There.
After I had partially processed the shock that the forthright honest man that I dedicated my life to was actually a habitual liar. I was very concerned about what the now adult children had absorbed and how they might be using it in their adult lives. I’ve had several short conversations with them and their spouses and I feel reasonably sure that they had a healthy fear of consequences installed by me. It appears that they inherited my forthright honest nature and I reinforced it with my parenting style. Looking back it wasn’t difficult to install my integrity and ethics in the kids because I operated as a single parent much of the time.
Similar here. My ex was also an addict, so I had to overcompensate, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in that situation. My young adults thankfully seem to have taken after me way more than their dad, and we’ve talked quite a bit about this.
A life of honesty and integrity is a life well-lived.
My lived experience supports these theories. My maternal grandfather was a prolific liar his whole life- claimed he invented maple syrup dispenser and someone stole his invention…. Lies. My mother is also a prolific liar- claims she’s a neurologist, the former mayor of the town…. All lies. She never even graduated from college and never ran for or held any public office. She’s repeated the one about being a MD to everyone- including her doctors! She stole a Rx pad in the 80s and wrote prescriptions for victims she scammed into paying for visits with her and was prosecuted for it. She cheated on every partner she ever had. My middle sister is also a prolific liar- she’s been in and out of jail for fraud and theft for a decade+. I married two dark triad-types. Serial cheaters. Ran any scams they could. FW #2 is a tax lawyer! The irony. So, I believe these traits are not only innate, they are inheritable. Crispr tech can’t come fast enough. I suspect that we’ll locate the genes responsible and get rid of them someday.
Like your mother, my ex claimed to be an MD, specifically a radiologist who served in war. This was all to fit in with a veteran’s medical group. As far as I know, he didn’t try to practice medicine. However, he faked MBAs from two Ivy League schools to get jobs and was usually fired within a year since he lacked the knowledge. He also falsely claims to have won several international competitions, perhaps his equivalent of being a former mayor.
My sister, too, is a prolific liar and scammer who has so far gotten away with stealing homes from multiple family members.
I’ve wondered it growing up with scammers somehow makes us more vulnerable to cheaters, rather than less. Mine managed to scam me and family out of a LOT of money and got away with it because we didn’t discover it until after the statute of limitations ran out.
Mask-wearing is another type of lying. My ex came from a family of preachers and missionaries, and boy, did they expend a lot of effort on their image and reputation.
When my ex and I separated for the last time, some of them were all over me about the “family name,” as if I was the one who clouded it by my choices at that point. No, he had, but they didn’t see it that way. He proceeded to game-and-blame with them to make himself the victim of his “rebel” wife. I gave up and went my own way. As a retired therapist friend of mine said to me much later, changing a complex family system like that is about as likely as snow in July (at least where I live). LOL.
(my inner 12 year old had to giggle about information about cheating-generally a sexual act as it is often perceieved-being reported on from a website named “Boing Boing. Sorry.)
Yes. very Yes.
You mean to tell me that SCIENCE is countermanding cutely marketed horse hockey sold to desperate people? What’s the line from Princess Bride? Something to the effect of “Life is suffering. Anybody that tries to tell you otherwise is selling something.”
What I have noticed in my career working in mental health is that abuse and its analogues do not exist in a vacuum (and this illustrates my point.) The abusers I deal with day to day never, NEVER have just one thing they do “wrong.” It’s never just aggravated assault-there is always theft and other things associated with it. You don’t see “check fraud” without some other form of theft. Lying isn’t necessarily a crime but it tends to also be closely associated.
Clients I have had almost never have been solely sexually abused; you can almost set a watch by physical and emotional with it as well (from the same perpetrators).
I don’t think I’ve ever met a harmful individual that just does ONE thing that’s awful. The mentality usually is wrapped up in entitlement or criminal thinking errors.
So yes, dishonesty is a trait with wider reaching implications.
We were not simply cheated on. We were lied to. We were psychologically abused. We were burglarized. We were exposed to STDs. We had our futures stolen from us. It’s why I use the word “betrayed” when I tell my story (usually to people that knew the idiot)-it better explains the scope and gravity of what happened better than “you know those lifetime movies? It turns out I was the big city guy with the good job and just didn’t love the chick enough.” Because that’s not at all what happened.
Feliz Jueves!
I think you should use your creds to author a neat little book titled something like “When Cheating isn’t Just Cheating: Infidelity and the Spectrum of Relationship Abuse” (though I’m sure you could come up with a more clever title). I think it would sell like hotcakes.
My ex committed financial infidelity (gambling), later fired from his office for forgery, and I kept catching him in lies over and over again. Everything fell apart when I insisted on couple’s counseling to deal with the lying. When he asked me for a divorce a few months later, he said, “Lying is an instinct to me, I want to be with someone for whom honesty isn’t as important.” Pretty hard to beg someone to stay with you after they hit you with that!
I pieced together his emotional affair (at least, likely more, I’ll never know) with the “just a friend” over the course of the few months after that. Honestly, because we fought about their “friendship” my instincts knew things were inappropriate between them, but I was a chump and got stuck on his “you don’t want me to have any friends,” “you’re controlling,” BS. I also wasn’t ready to loose my marriage yet, so I spackled and ignored some glaring flags and behaviors.
Funny thing is, he got what he wanted! From what I hear, the “just a friend” he ended up marrying plays fast and loose with the truth as well! Not sure if they included that part about dishonesty in their vows though…
Once I got my head out of the blender of all that deceit, I stopped beating myself up because there was never any marriage to save. It was all mirage built on lies.
No surprises there.
It’s why, seven years plus out from DDay, I have shifted the conversation about my circumstances from “cheating” and “infidelity” to “dishonesty”and “lying” and “deception” and “fraud”.
Infidelity is just one manifestation of a pattern of dishonesty on the part of the cheater.
Discussing my situation in terms of cheating leaves all kinds of room for horsesh*t debates about love, soulmates, marrying the wrong person, growing apart, blah blah blah.
(Although it looks like I actually did marry the wrong person.)
Keeping the focus on DISHONESTY keeps the door closed on all that irrelevant nonsense and keeps the focus on the real issue, which is dishonesty, lying, deception, fraud….
The very expensive co-parenting therapist I found in response to his badgering me to go told him at our final session, “Your dishonesty is profound.”
He and the primary side piece opened their very own illicit Asian massage parlor. They are lying to law enforcement, code enforcment, and the state licensing board, pretending it’s a legitimate therapeutic massage studio while pimping, pandering, and human trafficking. The business is a manifestation of who they are. Phony as a three dollar bill.
Cheating requires lying, and lots of it. Lying is abuse because it steals another person’s reality and their ability to make accurate decisions. Ergo, cheating is abuse.
Are there actually still adults out there who believe in soulmates? Teenagers, yes, but adults? But I forgot. FWs and APs act like they’re still teenagers, yes?
SMDH.
I think that some people just find that the truth can be annoyingly inconvenient (particularly when it stops them from getting what they want or believe they are entitled to) and so they prefer to go with the alternative.
These people don’t like being called “dishonest” ….. they find the term to be a little too “judgey.”
LFTT
Oh, wow. This is…chilling. Another bright red flag to look for!
My great-grandfather was a liar — we charmingly called him a “teller of tall tales.” My grandfather was also a teller of tall tales. My father allowed as there are “three kinds of lies — lies, white lies and tall tales. He was proficient at all of them. He, his father and his grandfather modeled lying and cheating to all of their progeny. I grew up in a family of liars and cheaters. My sister and all of my cousins were liars and cheaters. My father tried to teach me to cheat on my taxes, cheat the customers, employers, employees and venders, cheat on exams in school, cheat “the system” and lie to my mother. I failed to “learn” that lesson, and have been more or less ostracized from the family for being a “goody two shoes.”
I have always wondered whether the lying and cheating I observed in my cousins and sibling was “nature or nurture,” but at any rate of the 13 cousins in my generation, there are only two of us who have never been enmeshed in a scandal involving fraud, dishonesty or infidelity.
I’m glad there’s now scientific evidence to prove what I’ve already observed.
Why would I possibly thought I was the only one he wouldn’t lie to? Big, little, I heard sooo many. But yes, when the truth was in the way of what he wanted, no problem, lie and think nothing of it.
Yes, I guess we can all take heart that we are not the only people our cheaters have lied to! My EX FW#2 was always lying: to his parents (when he was a child and even as an adult) to friends, co-workers, lying on his taxes, stealing from companies, cheating on his ex-wife and me. These were all warning signs, BIG blatant red flags, but of course, I thought I was “special” and he’d never do it to me. Until he did…
My X made a big deal out of his honesty when things went wrong on the job or he made mistakes. He talked loudly about how he did the right thing and spoke out about repaying or redoing or apologizing…WHILE ALL ALONG he was doing other dishonest things and covering them up. Including emotional affairs and after work dalliances, tax fudging and lies to others. I believed he could not lie to me because he acted transparent and shamed at other times..Yet he was still manipulating us all!! Faking honesty but undercover of darkness he was cheating and lying. How do you even do that? Shakespeare would have been proud of Act 🎬 2.!
As I have said before on different posts here : were we married to the same FW?
Would really be fascinated to compare all our posts to see if we have twins, crazy ones. Let’s see bipolar, years of emotional or actual affairs, looking good in church and acting the part of a devoted everything: father, husband, step father, son, but actialy not loving anyone, all a show to manipulate.Changing jobs every 2 years, cars and motorcycles, every 1 -2 years. Spending, shopping, hidden porn, hidden workers, inappropriate with my family, …cycles of abuse, kind, demeaning, silent raging, HR reviews, losing jobs due to depression or was it co worker rejections? Archer, i hope this is not you too. It was a scandalous 30 years.
Minus the church part. Lots of similarities. FW proclaimed being bipolar at one point but it was to disguise his mood swings and crappy behavior towards us as he juggled multiple literal whores
Did you Archer,also have a strange infection for years? I had one that my GYN kept treating over and over again with all manner of awfulness. My X blamed me and said I used that excuse to avoid him. 2 1/2 years of appointments creams and antibiotics…Then!!! 6 months after lock out I was 100% clear and 3 years later, not one more event. I wonder how many chumps are suffering reinfections by their cheater and take the blame for that too?
Wait! And 2 miscarriages from #1 cheater while he was cheating!! Who will ever know???
I think lying is a person’s defense mechanism when they do something that can cause others to condemn them, harm them, and change their life for the worse. This is one of the ways to survive. Any criminal lies to avoid punishment. In everyday life, people lie “by commission” and “by omission”. This often happens “automatically”. None of us can boast that we have never lied “big” or “small.” This is especially true for children who want to avoid punishment and do not know any other ways to cope with a dangerous situation for them. In other words, lying is a childhood disease of humanity that we all overcome more or less successfully at an older age. I agree that the tendency to lie, which was not overcome in childhood and adolescence, can and is becoming a stable trait of a person’s character. And there is no doubt that cheaters belong to this category of people.
You need to have the courage not to lie. Not lying means respecting others and, above all, yourself. Therefore, cheaters are outright cowards, people who are afraid of responsibility for their actions and feelings, but at the same time cannot resist the temptation to satisfy their sexual desires “here and now” with selected sexual partners outside the constraints of marriage / relationships.
As we age, we (but alas, not all of us) learn not only survival skills, we learn to follow universal morality, we learn to overcome fears of being punished for our behavior by society as a whole and by people around us, we gain courage, of course, each to a different degree. And we gain the ability to be ashamed of what we have done wrong. That is why some cheaters admit to their partners in long-standing undisclosed affairs decades after infidelity, even knowing that this threatens them with a breakup / divorce.
So:
Lie of adults is a perverted survival mechanism that has not been overcome at the stage of adulthood.
Cowardice, the ability to lie, and the ability to betray are the result of a cheater’s upbringing in childhood and adolescence under the influence of family, school, social institutions, mass media, literature, cinema and television.
The root of lies is cowardice i.e. inability to cope with dignity with the fear of being punished, morally, financially or physically, of being judged by public opinion, the opinion of relatives and friends for actions already committed or planned.
Cheaters are people who have not coped with their childhood behavioral problems. Therefore, they are subject to whims that they cannot resist. Therefore, they lack psychological inhibition when strong desires arise, so they do not know any other way to protect themselves from their “bad” desires and actions.
And yes, the ability to lie is a persistent character trait of a cheater that the entire arsenal of the modern reconciliation industry cannot cope with.
A cheater can (in very rare cases) really change, change their moral attitudes. However, this requires the strongest shock, the strongest emotional experiences, which, of course, are not sessions of IC, MC, special boot camps, reading books and soul-saving conversations.