The Intrinsic Value of Honesty

Societal narratives suggest that cheating for one’s benefit in a situation where it goes unnoticed is common. One reason is that resisting cheating and being honest implies extrinsic costs and is inherently aversive. Here we challenge this view, showing that honesty is frequent, immediately rewarding, and buffers the negative affective consequences resulting from missing extrinsic reward. In two studies we found that foregoing a reward in favor of being honest, compared to when cheating was impossible, was associated with higher activity in a network of reward-related brain regions (Study 1, n = 65) and a weaker negative impact on mood (Study 2, n = 2’005). These results show that beyond the moral imperative, there is an immediate intrinsic reward associated with honesty.