Research projects

Research indicates that dishonesty in romantic relationships is linked to decreased relational satisfaction, commitment (Cole, 2001) and closeness (DePaulo & Kashy, 1998). Despite these negative consequences, romantic partners are assumed to tell about one lie in every three interactions (DePaulo & Kashy, 1998). The planned research should bring together two lines of research, which has not been merged so far: One the one hand, the question about which personality factors affect the prevalence of lying in romantic relationships already provides first insights (e.g., Kashy & DePaulo, 1996), but the investigation of potential associations to Honesty-humility are missing so far. On the other hand, Honesty-humility reliably appeared to be the major predictor for dishonesty in economic cheating paradigms (e.g., Hilbig & Zettler, 2015). With the present project, we aim to merge both lines of research to check the hypothesis that Honesty-humility is also negatively linked to dishonesty within romantic relationships.

Project management: Nina Reinhardt & Marc-André Reinhard

Publication: Reinhardt, N., & Reinhard, M.-A. (2023). Honesty–humility negatively correlates with dishonesty in romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 125(4), 925–942. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000456