A Sociocultural Approach to Honesty-Humility

Home , Humility, Trait theory

A SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH TO HONESTY-HUMILITY

______

A Thesis

Presented

to the Faculty of

California State University, Chico

______

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

Psychology

Psychological Science Option

______

Waleed Jami

Spring 2017 A SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH TO HONESTY-HUMILITY

A Thesis

Waleed Jami

Spring 2017

APPROVED BY THE INTERIM DEAN OF GRADUATE STUDIES:

______Sharon Barrios, Ph.D.

APPROVED BY THE GRADUATE ADVISORY COMMITTEE:

______David Hibbard, Ph.D. Lawrence Herringer, Ph.D., Chair Graduate Coordinator

______David Hibbard, Ph.D. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Lawrence Herringer for his mentorship. I really appreciate the support. I hope to have an advisor as supportive as you in the future.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

Acknowledgments ...... iii

List of Tables...... v

Abstract...... vi

CHAPTER

I. Introduction...... 1

II. Literature Review...... 11

Honesty-Humility and Related Variables...... 11 Social and Environmental Influencers of Personality ...... 16 Social Status ...... 19 Hypotheses and Research Questions...... 22

III. Methodology...... 23

Materials...... 23 Procedure...... 25

IV. Results...... 26

V. Discussion...... 30

General Discussion...... 30 Limitations...... 34 Future Research...... 35

References ...... 36

iv LIST OF TABLES

TABLE PAGE

1. Descriptive Statistics for the Self-Perceived Status, Honesty-Humility Narcissism, SDO, and Machiavellianism...... 26

2. Bivariate Correlations of Self-Perceived Status, Honesty-Humility and Its Facets, Narcissism, SDO, and Machiavellianism ...... 27

v ABSTRACT

A SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH TO HONESTY-HUMILITY

Waleed Jami

Master of Arts in Psychology

Psychological Science Option

California State University, Chico

Spring 2017

Honesty-Humility is a sixth major trait of personality (adding to the Five

Factor Model) that describes the degree to which an individual is sincere, modest, honest, prosocial, and without a desire for elevated social status. Social status—our wealth, prestige, and societal respect—not only stratifies people into different social classes; it impacts our self-concept, behaviors, and perhaps even our personality tendencies. Prior research has found that high social status individuals tend to be less socially engaged with people outside of peer groups, lack empathic accuracy, express favorable attitudes towards greed, and are more likely to consider unethical behaviors, compared to lower status individuals. I predicted that priming high social class status (by comparison to lower status persons) would decrease self-reported honesty-humility, and increase social dominance orientation, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. MANOVA analyses indicated that priming high or low social status did not influence self-reports of those traits.

vi However, multiple regression analyses found that self-perceived social status was positively related to narcissism and one facet of honesty-humility, inversely related to

Machiavellianism and one facet of honesty-humility.

vii

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Everyone in the world has their own level of concern for others, their own degree of consideration and integrity in dealing with other people. Alfred Adler (1931) referred to this almost a century ago as “social interest” or “community feeling,” and considered it an essential characteristic of both individual mental health and collectively successful societies. Some individuals have high integrity and prosociality, and others tend to be somewhat antisocial. Recently, Michael Ashton and Kibeom Lee (2007) highlighted the importance of this individual difference in the personality trait of

“honesty-humility,” the typical degree of integrity, prosociality and honesty of a person.

Extensive research in personality identified many constructs that are indicative of “social interest.” In modern personality theory, two particular variables stand out as reliable predictors of prosocial behavior: honesty-humility, and agreeableness. In the late 1980s, theories of personality organized characteristics in a taxonomy of personality “traits.” The first widely accepted, contemporary classification of personality traits was developed by Costa and McCrae (1989). Their efforts resulted in a personality model that comprised five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. This five factor model defines agreeableness as a construct that explains individual differences in kindness, sympathy, compliance, and tolerance. In the five factor model, agreeableness is the trait that best

1 2 resembles the notion of prosociality. However, in recent years, several studies across different cultures around the world replicated the same five traits, but also suggested the emergence of a sixth trait: honesty-humility (Lee & Ashton, 2004).

Honesty-humility is defined as a person’s propensities towards fairness, sincerity, modesty, and a rejection of manipulative exploitation of others and lavish lifestyles. In the six factor model, agreeableness is defined as the degree a person is flexible, forgiving, and supportive. However, honesty-humility and agreeableness are both traits that are involved in the expression of social interest.

Although these two traits are indicative of prosociality, they are independent of each other and represent different patterns of behavior. Theoretically, a person can have elevated levels of honesty-humility, yet also have low levels of agreeableness and vice-versa. In other instances, some people tend to demonstrate high levels of both honesty-humility and agreeableness, and others may portray low levels of both traits. For example, a person with high levels of agreeableness and low levels of honesty-humility could be highly cooperative and amicable, but also have insincere intentions and a conceitful attitude. In contrast, an individual with low levels of agreeableness, but high levels of honesty-humility could be uncooperative and inflexible, yet also be modest and sincere.

Both traits have prosocial implications, but in different ways (Hilbig, Zettler,

Leist, & Heydasch, 2013). In an experimental economic study, Hilbig et al. (2013) established contextual differences between honesty-humility and agreeableness. The prosocial differences were seen in two experimental economic games known as the dictator and ultimatum games. Participants assigned the role of dictator can split an

3 endowment (e.g., a few dollars or tokens) anyway they want without any input from the other player. The other player’s only choice is to take whatever is offered to them.

However, in the ultimatum game, the responder can agree or disagree with the partitioned endowment, and if they disagree, neither of the players reap the endowment. In these games, honesty-humility is predictive of non-exploitative cooperation and fairness in endowment allocation as the dictator in the dictator game, but not significant in the behavior of the responder in the ultimatum game (Hilbig et al, 2013). On the other hand, agreeableness has a proclivity towards receptive partnership; higher agreeableness predicted higher acceptance rate of the endowment in the ultimatum, but did not relate to non-exploitative cooperation or fairness in the dictator game.

At the opposite end of the social interest spectrum, there are personality traits that represent consistent maladaptive patterns of thought and behavior; they are known as the Dark Triad or dark personalities (Paulhus, 2014; Paulhus & Williams, 2002). The dark triad consists of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Just as honesty- humility and agreeableness complement each in different aspects of social interest, the

Dark Triad are three traits that are moderately related to one another, and complement each other in different features of mischief, selfishness, and even malicious behaviors.

Psychopathy is a trait that describes a pattern of callousness, exploitation of others, and violent behaviors such as vandalism and criminal activity. Narcissism is a personality trait that instills a sense of superiority, entitlement, exhibitionism, and grandiosity to oneself. Finally, Machiavellianism is trait that describes the degree to which a person is insincere in their motives and actions, unethical, and cruel (Paulhus & Williams, 2002).

In the five-factor model of personality, agreeableness has moderate to strong negative correlations with the Dark Triad traits (r = -0.25 for psychopathy, r = -0.36 for narcissism, and r = - 0.47 for Machiavellianism (Lee & Ashton, 2005). These results corroborate agreeableness as functioning contrariwise to the dark traits. However, honesty-humility has a stronger negative relationship with the Dark Triad and all correlations have huge effect sizes (r = -0.72 for psychopathy, r = -0.57 for narcissism, and r = - 0.53 for Machiavellianism (Lee & Ashton, 2005). Agreeableness in the six- factor model had weak negative relationships with the Dark Triad, with the strongest correlation at -0.16. These findings indicate that honesty-humility is more opposed to the dark personality traits that clash with social interest in comparison to either forms of agreeableness.

To summarize, it seems that honesty-humility is a better indicator than agreeableness for determining an individual’s prosocial tendencies. Agreeableness can predict indicators of prosocial behaviors like cooperation (Hilbig et al., 2013) and is moderately, inversely related to the dark personality traits. Honesty-humility, on the other hand, can predict non-exploitive behaviors and fairness when given power over others. It is also a stronger negative predictor the Dark Triad. Honesty-humility is a more representative personality attribute to of Adler’s notion of social interest than either forms of agreeableness.

Personality is not the only parameter that influences social interest, but the social systems people reside in also impact the consideration of and behaviors towards others. In the social systems (e.g. communities, countries, culture) many sociological variables, such as our neighborhoods, laws, and customs often impact and guide thoughts,

5 emotions, and behaviors. Two particular variables that warrant investigation in the context of social interest are identity and status.

Social Identities are outward and socially observable components of our self- concept (Larson & Buss, 2010). Examples of social identities include, but are not limited to: race, gender, nationality, and occupation. Most adults have multiple group memberships with which they identify, consider meaningful, and attempt to maintain

(Tajfel & Turner, 1986). For example, an individual might identify as a white, female lawyer; she has potentially many forms of herself construed from her social identities.

However, people do not merely possess a single mental representation of their self- concept, instead they regularly differentiate themselves with regard to the multiple versions of the “self” (Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984). Relating back to the white, female lawyer, she can be conscious of all three of identities and in other scenarios, be aware of only one or two.

Social identities guide thoughts and behaviors much like personality does.

People often make choices based on the identities they have and even behave differently based on the most salient identity. For example, results on math tests varied greatly among two groups of Asian women (Steele & Ambady, 2006). Those primed as

“woman” scored substantially lower than those primed as “Asian” (Steele & Ambady,

2006). The identities, Asian and woman have different expectations in terms of math scores and by making one or the other salient by priming, math scores were influenced. A mere shift of identity lead to negative math scores for those primed as “women”, but positive math scores for those primed as “Asian.”

Turning back towards social interest, social identities are a dynamic that encourage in-group favoritism and out-group hostility (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). This is so strong that actual identities aren’t necessary for bias between groups to occur. Between group struggles can easily be seen through arbitrary and practically meaningless labels

(e.g. groups created from different artwork preferences), formed from minimal group paradigms (Tajfel, 1970).

In group favoritism may have evolutionary roots; favoring one’s group ensures stability, credibility, and legitimacy for the group, and thus strengthening the chances for survival; therefore, making social interest a necessary virtue in order to survive. Perhaps some people focus on social interest because it is a necessary tool for their existence and because it is beneficial for their group.

Certain social identities are not a static attribute of an individual; they are fluid and have many dimensions and different identities derive different values based on the social context they are in (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). One example of a dynamic social identity is one’s socioeconomic or social status. Where one resides in the social strata is relative to many variables. In some instances, an identity can become high or low status depending on the situation. For example, Kraus, Piff, and Keltner (2011) manipulated participant’s college student identity to be either of lower and higher status to measure empathic accuracy. Participants were instructed to imagine either a high ranking (e.g., graduate students) or low ranking individual (e.g., high school students). Subjects that imagined a high-ranking person reported lower perceived social status and in turn, demonstrated higher levels of empathic accuracy when examining facial expressions.

One the other hand, participants instructed to imagine a lower ranking person reported

7 higher perceived status and on the subsequent task, produced lower levels of empathic accuracy.

Social status comes in two forms: perceptual and objective. Perceived social status is not based on metric measures of social status (e.g., socioeconomic status and income), but rather on where an individual believes themselves to be (Kraus et al., 2011).

This form of social status is dependent on the perceiver, meaning that it is subjective and possibly even erroneous. Objective social status is based on quantifiable parameters like income. Both forms of social status guide thoughts and actions similarly, and thus, both have their own tangible influence in prosocial and unethical behaviors. Perceived social class status can be manipulated experimentally by using a paradigm known as the “local ladder.” The local ladder manipulation instructs participants to either focus on the top rung (e.g. where wealthy and powerful people stand) of the ladder and indicate differences between them and the people at the very top, or focus on the bottom rung

(e.g. where people with no money or influence reside), and compare themselves to the people at the very bottom of the ladder. This manipulation of perceived status predicts differences in attitudes and behaviors as well as do objective measures of social class status (Kraus et al., 2011).

This manipulation found that individuals with higher social status display higher narcissistic thought patterns compared to lower status individuals (Piff, 2013).

Higher status people become more individualistic and egoistical, and believe themselves to be more entitled than others from the prime. In contrast, lower status people better understand other people’s situational constraints and have a heightened awareness to their environment due to the prime.

Similar to the findings regarding honesty-humility and agreeableness, experimental economic game studies demonstrate social status differences in ethics and behaviors (Kraus et al., 2011; Piff, Kraus, Cote, Cheng, & Keltner, 2010). The economical trust game requires at least two players to allocate their tokens into a pot for a designated amount of rounds. At the end of the game, the pot doubles and all players receive double their investment, but between rounds, each player has the option to take all the money in the pot and exit, leaving the other player with nothing in return for their investment. Participants with objectively higher social status were more likely to break rules in the trust game and run off with the money (Piff et al., 2010). In addition, high status people tend be less sensitive towards others’ suffering (Stellar, Manzo, Kraus, &

Keltner, 2012) and are less socially engaged with people outside of their social groups

(Yearwood et al., 2015). In contrast, lower status individuals tend to be communal, interdependent, and more likely to have taken care of other people (Argyle, 1994; Piff,

Stancato, Martinez, Kraus, & Keltner, 2012). They are also more charitable than their high-status counterparts and more sensitive to other’s pain (Piff et al., 2010; Steller et al.,

2012). So that it appears that social status is yet another variable that is relevant to prosociality and social interest.

In conclusion, both personal and situational factors play a role in a person’s level of social interest. Considering that prosocial or unethical behaviors can be ascribed to social systems and personality traits such as apathy displayed in the Dark Triad traits or the vanity in high status people, there could be some kind of interplay between personality and the social world. Perhaps even personality modification due to variables from the social world. Honesty-humility is the newest major personality trait proposed;

9 all of its characteristics are not fully discovered, including possible interactions with the environment. Some researchers believe there has not been enough disassociation between honesty-humility and agreeableness to justify the authenticity of honesty-humility as the sixth major trait (Shepard & Boon, 2012).

Extensive research on whether or not levels of honesty-humility fluctuate due to an environmental or situational influence has not been tested. Interestingly, some traits, such as agreeableness, conscientiousness, and aspects of neuroticism, and extraversion can change gradually throughout the lifespan (Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006). A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies in personality change indicated that personality develops throughout the entire lifespan. Contrary to Costa and McCrae (1994), some personality traits continue to change significantly beyond the age of thirty.

Agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, a facet of neuroticism (emotional stability), and social dominance (a facet of extraversion), steadily increased after the age of thirty and openness fluctuated throughout the lifespan (Roberts et al., 2006). However, personality traits not only shift back and forth throughout the lifespan, they also increase or decrease quickly in certain situations and return back to normal after the scenario is over; these instances of sudden personality change followed by returning to normal levels are known as personality states (Wilt, Bleidorn, & Revelle, in press). For example, when an individual has a goal that requires them to approach a person or a target, their personality undergoes a state increase in extraversion and positive affect. Thus, personality traits may fluctuate across scenarios as a self-regulatory method to achieve desired outcomes (Wilt et al., in press).

No research to date has examined whether factors like status or identity, might influence the trajectory of honesty-humility during the lifespan and whether or not honesty-humility can function as a personality state that responds to a social status scenario. As noted above, social status is a robust predictor of ethics and morality, and so is honesty-humility. I hypothesize that honesty-humility will fluctuate inversely with social status. That is, evoking higher social status should temporarily move one’s honesty-humility lower and evoking lower social status should temporarily move one’s high-honesty humility higher.

The local ladder paradigm manipulates perceptions of social class status effectively enough to replicate real world instances of unethical behaviors from high status people. Thus, I predict by manipulating perceptions of social class, honesty- humility will show a personality state response. This alteration of honesty-humility is not expected to be a permanent change, but rather a temporary shift in state honesty-humility.

It is also expected that narcissism, Machiavellianism, and social dominance orientation will show similar changes (increasing) through the prime manipulation because they are related to honesty-humility and to some degree, can shift due to environmental factors. In addition to state responses to manipulation, I also expect narcissism, Machiavellianism, social dominance and honesty-humility to be related to the participant’s perceived social status.

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

Honesty-Humility and Related Variables

In general, honesty-humility relates strongly to positive personality characteristics and predicts contextual prosocial behaviors, such as fairness in social dilemmas, virtuous workplace ethics, avoidance of workplace delinquency, and positive attitudes about the world (Johnson, Rowatt, & Petrini, 2011; Lee & Ashton, 2005; Leoni,

Desimoni, & Chirumbolo, 2012). In both theoretical and applicable terms, honesty- humility fairs better than agreeableness as an indicator of social interest and prosociality

(Hilbig et al., 2013). Several other personality traits that relate to honesty-humility will be examined, all of which are negative predictors of honesty-humility and to some degree, can be influenced by the environment.

Machiavellianism is a personality trait characterized by emotional detachment, low empathy and a willingness to exploit; Machiavellians are inclined to commit white collar crimes and create workplace issues (Paulhus, 2014). Unlike the other two members of the Dark Triad, Machiavellianism did not originate as a personality disorder; it described a personality characteristic that is both inspired by and developed to mimic the attributes and actions of Nicholo Machiavelli (Furnham, Richards, & Paulhus,

2013). Christy and Geis (1970) developed this construct from extracting philosophical and tactical recommendations from Machiavelli’s manuscripts. Machiavellianism is

11 12 known to be modifiable by experience and is influenced by environmental factors. It can be shaped by parental or peer influences and is the mostly likely of the Dark Triad to be attenuated by an intervention (Pualhus, 2014). It appears that Machiavellianism is more a cognitive mindset than a biologically based personality trait. Thus, this trait is worth examining in relation to perceptions of social status.

Continuing with the next member of the Dark Triad, narcissism is a construct categorized by an inflated view of the self, a self-aggrandizing and dominant orientation toward others, increased grandiosity, and heightened feelings of uniqueness and individualism (Paulhus, 2014). Along with psychopathy, narcissism started out as a clinical syndrome (Furnham et al., 2013). The sub-clinical version of narcissism was proposed by Raskin and Terry (1988) to describe the self-promoting tendencies that do not necessarily indicate psychopathology. Although narcissism is more biologically linked than Machiavellianism, there is also evidence for environmental influences on narcissism. Piff (2013) measured narcissism in high status people and moderated their levels of narcissism by implementing an egalitarian prime. The egalitarian prime was evoked by asking participants to list three benefits from regarding others as equals. Those affected by the prime reported lower levels of narcissism compared to participants in the control group. It seems that sub-clinical narcissism is partly based on attitude and mindset. Thus, if narcissism can be changed by an egalitarian prime, it is worth examining as a variable that could be sensitive to brief, primed changes in social class status.

The last member of the Dark Triad, and also the most heinous, is psychopathy.

It is a trait linked to a pattern of callousness, apathy for others, impulsivity and thrill

13 seeking behaviors. Psychopathy is the only Dark Triad trait linked to antisocial behaviors, like violent crimes and repeat criminal offenses (Furnham et al., 2013). Psychopathy is a heavily biological trait supported by structural and functional neuroimaging of the prefrontal cortex (Yang & Raine, 2009). Psychopaths tend to have a myriad of brain abnormalities, ranging anywhere from gene defects, childhood traumata, and weaker neural circuits for processing emotional states like empathy. Unlike the other traits linked to honesty-humility, psychopathic tendencies do not resemble the unethical behaviors endorsed by those with high social status and the socio-environmental influences on psychopathy are not changes in mindset; personality change for psychopathy stems from deeply distressing childhood experiences (Herpertz & Sass, 2000). Psychopathy is utterly antagonistic towards social interest, and it cannot easily be manipulated because it stems more from biologically underpinned disturbances than from sociocultural influencers.

Thus, psychopathy is a variable related to low honesty-humility behaviors that are not likely to be responsive to manipulations of comparative social status, and is not used in this study.

A trait that links all three Dark Triad triats and honesty-humility together is social dominance orientation (SDO) (Furnham et al., 2013). SDO is a personality variable that predicts social and political attitudes, and is widely used in social psychology experiments (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle., 1994). Individuals with high levels of SDO have a preference for group inequalities and typically work in professions that accentuate and maintain the status quo they belong in. They tend to lack empathy, tolerance, and rank social groups in hierarchies (Sidanius, Pratto, & Bobo., 1994). Men, regardless of race, religion, political orientation, country of origin, age, income, amount

14 of racism, educational attainment, and culture, have higher levels of SDO than their female counterparts.

Sidanius et al. (1994) assert that SDO cannot simply be reduced to racism or political orientation or even biological differences between men and women, but instead posit that SDO differences in men and women arise from the socialization of boys and girls that is invariant across a vast array of societies. Many cultures, even progressive western societies, at their essence, use gender roles to establish a heuristic for differences in men and women, even though some of the differences are not tied to a biological basis.

Societies sponsor masculinity, dominance, and assertiveness as valuable virtues in men.

SDO seems to be more about dominance than about anything else, as men in cultures that promote anti-egalitarian ideology and adhere to stricter gender roles have higher levels of

SDO than men in cultures that encourage equality (Sidanius et al., 1994). SDO is negatively related to honesty-humility and is directly developed from social influence, thus making it another trait potentially responsive to manipulating social status perceptions.

A construct that functions similarly to SDO is Right Wing Authoritarianism

(RWA). RWA is the degree of willingness to submit to authorities perceived as established and legitimate, to adhere to societal conventions and norms, and to be hostile and punitive in their attitudes towards people who don't abide by them (Altemeyer,

1998). Altemyer (1998) suggested that those with high RWA do not value social equality, tend to be prejudiced towards groups different from their own, and will only help minorities if they conform.

Although both RWA and SDO predict various forms of hostility to out-group members, they each have distinct personality traits associated with them and different rationale for their aggression towards out-group members (Heaven & Bucci, 2001). They are different constructs with similar effects. Those with high RWA will accept people if they choose to conform to the established norms, but those with high SDO strive to prevent equality and typically couldn’t care less about others conforming to their group values (Heaven & Bucci, 2001).

SDO has moderate to very large negative correlations with honesty humility

(Leone, Chirumbolo, & Desimoni, 2011; Leone et al., 2012). Meanwhile RWA correlates negatively towards openness consistently, but tends to have inconsistent correlations with honesty-humility. Sometimes RWA is negatively related to honesty-humility (Leone et al., 2011), whereas other times it correlates positively with honesty-humility (Leone at al., 2012; Lee, Ashton, Ogunfowora, Bourdage, & Shin, 2010).

Unlike SDO, it seems that RWA’s preference for rigid social structure is not about hegemony, but about the preservation of norms and conventions. Lee et al. (2010) insist that religiosity increases honesty-humility in those with high levels of RWA.

RWA’s inconsistent correlations with honesty-humility makes it unsuitable for the inclusion in this study. Taking the time to distinguish these two constructs is valuable because (1) they both have many similar social and political attitudes and (2) they are often used in concert in a plethora of studies and literature reviews (Ekehammar, Akrami,

Gylje, & Zakrissen, 2004; Furnham et al., 2013; Heaven & Bucci, 2011; Lee et al., 2010;

Leone et al., 2011; Leone et al., 2012).

Social and Environmental Influencers of Personality

Personality traits are sensitive to environmental cues, whether it be gradual change throughout the lifespan or change in state levels. It is unknown how honesty- humility changes, whether it is gradual or sudden, or if change occurs in one’s neuroanatomy or simply their mindset. Another relevant possibility is that honesty- humility is a trait that functions similarly like a personality state rather than a trait; honesty-humility might adaptively shift depending on the situation.

One perspective is that there is an ongoing gene-to-environment interaction throughout the lifespan (Barlow, Ellard, Sauer-Zavala, Bullis, & Carl, 2014). The personality trait neuroticism fits into that paradigm elegantly. Neuroticism is pattern of negative affect and heightened stress levels in individuals. This trait increases throughout the lifespan as the number of unpredictable and uncontrollable instances accrue, leading to the persistence of negative affect and elevated stress hormones. Though neuroticism is genetic, adverse experiences, especially early on, may change neural circuitry by altering the sensitivity of those circuits to stressors (Barlow et al., 2014). This example cannot be used to conclude that a gene-to-environment interaction occurs with social status and honesty-humility, but it does open the doors to speculate that as social status changes, so might honesty-humility. Kraus et al (2011) argue that social class shapes daily lives and currently has become two separate cultures in and of themselves in America. This notion that social class shapes up people’s lives may influence innate honesty-humility, thus making a gene to environment interaction feasible in terms of honesty-humility and social class status.

Another approach to consider is that one index of honesty-humility may be more about mindset than biology. For example, instilling different mindsets in children can change their pattern of thoughts and behaviors (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). Children with the mindset of learning and acquiring skills proceed to attempt the most challenging tasks and do not succumb to negative affect at the face of failure, instead viewing the process of learning as trial and error. They are excited at yet the opportunity at another try. In contrast, children embedded with the mindset that performance is more important than learning and acquiring skills were keener on completing easy tasks and viewed failures as a reflection of inadequacy (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). Those children avoided harder tasks as way to circumvent failure. The different mindsets established a pattern of behaviors among the children.

Dweck and Leggett (1988) followed up with the children of the study and found that children with a performance goal were likely to give up on hard tasks at school and ascribed to entity theory, a theory that asserts characteristics as unchangeable. On the other hand, children with a learning goal, endorsed incremental theory, which posits that traits such as intelligence are alterable, and they believed that failure can lead to positive outcomes.

Dweck and Leggett (1988) suggested that these mindsets could influence people’s locus of control so the person-situation interactions are probabilistic, with the situation potentially shifting the probability that a predisposing tendency will prevail.

They also noted that the stronger a trait is the less likely it will be changed by social factors. Manipulating perceptions of social class can also be considered a shift in mindset. Thus, if honesty-humility is related to social class than this provides justification

18 for the hypothesis that honesty-humility is a socio-cognitive mindset that amplifies or lessens depending on one’s self perception of their position in the social strata.

The last theory that could account for potential changes in honesty-humility through social status is the alteration of personality states of honesty-humility, instead of changing the trait version. Personality states are the quality and kinds of affects, behaviors, and cognitions that a person engages in over a short period (Fleeson &

Jayawickreme, 2015). For example, when an individual prioritizes the avoidance of a goal, they undergo state levels of neuroticism, which in turn leads to negative affect.

(Wilt et al., in press). Personality states not only influence an individual’s affect, but they can also be manipulated by change in emotions. Personality states not only influence an individual’s affect, but they can also be manipulated by changes in emotion. Personality state and affect work as a feedback loop for influencing one another.

Wilson, Thompson, and Vazire (2016) conducted a study on the effects of positive and negative affect on the five-factor model. Their results indicated that state levels of extraversion increased in response to positive affect, but decreased from negative affect. Neuroticism shares a diametrically opposed relationship to positive and negative affect in comparison to extraversion. Agreeableness shares a weaker, but similar relationship with extraversion in terms of affect. However, openness and conscientiousness show not personality state response to affect when both variations of either positive and negative are taken into account (Wilson et al., 2016). Agreeableness, extraversion and neuroticism all have predictable variation when both forms of affect are taken into account.

Affect isn’t the only contextual variable that influences personality states.

Specifically, participants reported being less extraverted, less agreeable, more conscientious, more neurotic, and less open when they were either studying or working, compared to when they were doing something else, such as an enjoyable activity (Wilson et al., 2016). Changes in agreeableness were also prompted by scenarios that involved individuals to be around people they liked, situations they were happy to be in, and caring about making a good impression. Openness varied when people were in novel and open ended circumstances. Given the connections with honesty-humility and prosocial behaviors, and the association between social status and ethics, it is a reasonable hypothesis that state levels of honesty-humility will be influenced by changes in perceptions of social status.

Social Status

Social class status is a controversial topic in contemporary America. Social class status is more than just social categorization, it is also a social psychological phenomenon that influences social cognitive functioning, ethics, emotions, and behavior

(Kraus, Tan, & Tannenbaum, 2013). In addition, Markus and Kitayama (2003) posit that different social classes each have their own cultural values and norms. Although social class status is a continuum and many psychological studies examine social class status as a spectrum, many studies dichotomize social class status into low and high social status

(Kraus, Piff, Cote, & Keltner, 2010; Kraus et al., 2011; Piff, 2013; Piff et al., 2010).

Higher status people tend to have objectively higher income, occupational status, educational attainment, better economic opportunities, and easier access to

20 resources than their lower status counterparts (Kraus et al., 2013). Higher status people also report higher levels of mental and physiological health. As strong as the objective measures of social status are in fleshing out distinguishing tangible differences among people, mere perceptions of social class status are also just as effective. For instance, the mere thought of oneself to be high in social status contributes to physical and psychological health. People with perceptions of high social status have a heightened sense of predictability, power to influence, and control over their own social environments with limited worries of potential external constraints (Keltner, Gruenfeld,

& Anderson, 2003). In contrast, people with lower perceptions of status feel they have less autonomy and have less social influence in their environment.

There are two way to measure nonobjective social class: by comparing social class extremes, such as the local ladder technique, or by simply surveying the individual on various aspects of their own perceived social status. The first method manipulates the perceived social status of an individual by having them focus on either the very top or bottom of the social ladder (Piff et al., 2010). Individuals instructed to compare themselves to the very top of ladder become inclined to believe themselves to be of lower social status, and participants asked to compare themselves to very bottom of ladder perceive themselves to be higher in social status. Surveying people’s general perceived status can be done by using a non-experimental version of the social ladder or by using the self-perceived status scale, a five-item inventory on a seven point Likert scale

(Anderson, Kraus, Galinsky, & Keltner, 2012).

The nonexperimental ladder asks participants to rank themselves on the ladder without focusing on the top or bottom rungs of the ladder. On the other hand, the self-

21 perceived status scale is very similar to other psychological inventories using Likert scales (Anderson et al., 2012).

In the scope of honesty-humility, the most salient and important differences between high and low social class groups is ethics. Both objective and perceptual social status are predictors of unethical and amoral decision making (Piff et al., 2010; Piff,

Stancato, Cote, Mendoza-Denton, et al., 2012). For instances, people who perceive themselves with low social power are more compassionate than others who believe they have higher social power. Moreover, low status Americans donate a greater percentage of their money than high status Americans and endorse egalitarian values. Both perceived and objective determinants of social class status support the notion that lower class individuals are more generous and prosocial (Piff et al., 2010). These results were also supported through the experimental manipulation of social status. Participants with perceptions of high social class status became more inclined to justify greed, and donate less to charitable causes relative to the individuals whose perceptions of status were manipulated to be lower (Piff et al., 2010).

Naturalistic field observations further corroborate the dissimilarities between social classes (Piff, Stancato, Cote, et al., 2012). Observers were posted at busy four way intersections and coded the cars stopping at those intersections based on their brand and physical condition, ultimately rating them to indicate the social status of the driver (e.g., 1

= low status, 5 = highest status). Higher class drivers were more inclined to cut off others on the road and were less likely to give pedestrians right of way.

Status and personality have some relationship with one another (Anderson,

John, Keltner, & Kring, 2001). Anderson et al (2001) examined the personality traits that

22 best predict the attainment of social status among fraternities and sororities. Extraversion and minimal emotional expression were the significant predictors of status attainment.

Neuroticism impedes men from status, and conscientious, agreeableness, and openness are irrelevant for status attainment. However, nothing is known honesty-humility and status.

Hypotheses and Research Questions

The purpose of this study is to identify some sociocultural aspects of honesty-humility.

Prosocial behaviors can be explained from both a personality and social psychological perspective, but I am interested in potential interactions between the traits and sociocultural factors that influence ethical behaviors. Specifically, I hypothesize that honesty-humility and its facets (modesty, sincerity, greed avoidance, and fairness) will respond to brief manipulations of comparative social status. Participants primed to perceive themselves as high status will report lower honesty-humility, and participants primed to perceive themselves as low status participants should report higher levels of honesty-humility. Honesty-humility will also be examined at the facet level because the four facets are moderately independent of each other and each facet possess unique variance (Lee & Ashton, 2004). On the other hand, narcissism, SDO, and

Machiavellianism are predicted to increase from high status priming and decrease from low status priming. The self-perceived status, a non-experimental measure of perceived status, will also be correlated negatively with honesty-humility and its facets, but positively with narcissism, SDO, and Machiavellianism. The four facets of honesty- humility will also be correlated with the self-perceived status scale.

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

Participants

A sample of 132 undergraduate students (107 women, 24 men, 1 unidentified) from California State University, Chico participated in the study for extra credit.

Participant ages ranged from 18 to 62 with 77% of them under the age of 23. Fifty-one and a half percent of the participants were White and 28 percent identified as non-white

Hispanic or Latino. Participants completed online questions in person using a computer lab room.

Materials

High/Low Status Priming

I used the manipulation of Anderson et al. (2012) which uses a simple drawing and direct participants to compare themselves to those at the bottom of a 10-rung ladder of social status (to prime higher comparative status) or at the top of the ladder (to prime lower comparative status) and to identify their own position (1 to 10) on the ladder.

I then asked all participants to write about those individuals that they had been instructed to compare themselves to, and about the differences between themselves and this group of people.

23 24

Self-perceived Status

These are five questions (Anderson et al., 2012) about a participant’s socioeconomic status using a 7-point scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. It yields a total score between 7 and 35. An example item is “I am held in high regard by others.”

Personality Measures

Items from the Honesty/Humility (16 items) and Openness (16 items) scales from the HEXACO 100-item personality inventory (Ashton & Lee, 2007) were used.

These items use a 5-point Likert scale rated from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree

(5). The HEXACO is a commonly used personality inventory, which assesses the traits of the Five Factor Model (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness,

Neuroticism) and an additional sixth factor (Honesty/Humility). A sample item for

Honesty/Humility is “I wouldn't pretend to like someone just to get that person to do favors for me.” and for Openness is “I would like a job that requires following a routine rather than being creative.”

Social Dominance orientation (SDO) was measured with the SDO scale

(Sidanius, Pratto, Levin, & Liu, 2000). The SDO scale comprises sixteen questions answered on a 7-point scale from strongly disagree/disapprove (1) to strongly agree/approve (7). An example SDO item is “It’s probably a good thing that certain groups are at the top and other groups are at the bottom.”

Narcissism was measured using the NPI-40 (Raskin & Terry, 1988). The NPI-

40 uses 40 forced choice questions answered by selecting a statement that best fits the individual’s tendencies with a total score between 0 and 40. A sample item is “A. When

25 people compliment me I sometimes get embarrassed. B. I know that I am good because everybody keeps telling me so.”

Machiavellianism was assessed with the Mach-IV (Christie & Geis, 1970) which has 20 questions answered using a 5-point scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). A sample Mach-IV item is “Never tell anyone the real reason you did something unless it is useful to do so.”

Procedure

Qualtrics online survey software was used to administer all questions and manipulations. Participants responded first to the following in this order: (a) informed consent, (b) demographic questions, (c) high/low status manipulation, (d) self-perceived status. The personality measures (HEXACO Honesty/Humility and Openness; SDO,

NPI-40; Mach-IV) were completed next in a random order.

CHAPTER IV

RESULTS

Descriptive statistics for all research measures are presented in Table 1.

Bivariate correlations between nine research variables (self-perceived status, honesty- humility and its facets, SDO, narcissism, Machiavellianism) are presented in Table 2. As a manipulation check suggested by Piff et al. (2010), an independent samples t-test compared the ladder placement scores between the low and high status groups.

Participants in the high-status priming condition (M = 6.61, SD= 1.47) placed themselves higher on the social ladder compared to the low status priming condition (M = 5.47, SD =

1.77), t (129) = -4.03, p < .001, d = .70.

Table 1

Descriptive Statistics for the Personality Inventories

Variable N Mean Std Dev Minimum Maximum Honesty-Humility 131 53.66 11.18 22.00 77.00 Openness 131 54.57 7.46 34.00 71.00 Social Dominance 131 37.09 15.93 16.00 93.00 Machiavellianism 130 52.58 8.41 28.00 74.00 Narcissism 130 13.71 6.48 1.00 35.00 Perceived Status 131 25.89 4.73 8.00 35.00

A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted examinined differences in five dependent variables (honesty-humility, openness, SDO, narcissism, Machiavellianism).as a function of status manipulation (low versus high).

26 27

Table 2

Bivariate Correlations of Self-Perceived Status, Honesty-Humility and Its Facets, Narcissism, SDO, and Machiavellianism

Correlations PS HH S F GA MO SDO MAC NA Perceived- Pearson Correlation 1 Status (PS) Sig. (2-tailed) N 131 Honesty- Pearson Correlation -.232** 1 Humility (HH) Sig. (2-tailed) .008 N 131 131 Sincerity (S) Pearson Correlation -.160 .776** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .069 .000 N 131 131 131 Fairness (F) Pearson Correlation -.003 .756** .500** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .976 .000 .000 N 131 131 131 131 Greed- Pearson Correlation -.208* .770** .416** .424** 1 Avoidance (GA) Sig. (2-tailed) .017 .000 .000 .000 N 131 131 131 131 131 Modesty (MO) Pearson Correlation -.352** .737** .453** .343** .484** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 N 131 131 131 131 131 131 Social- Dominance- Pearson Correlation .117 -.480** -.320** -.332** -.342** -.473** 1 Orientation (SDO) Sig. (2-tailed) .183 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 N 131 131 131 131 131 131 131 Machiavellianism (MAC) Pearson Correlation -.097 -.576** -.422** -.560** -.337** -.436** .456** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .272 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 N 130 130 130 130 130 130 130 130 Narcissism (NA) Pearson Correlation .457** -.488** -.298** -.219* -.429** -.530** .330** .164 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .001 .012 .000 .000 .000 .064 N 130 130 130 130 130 130 130 129 130 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). 28

The multivariate Wilk’s λ test was not significant, and neither were the univariate F-tests, except for openness as low status people (M =53.15, SD = 7.966) were lower openness compared to high status individuals (M = 55.75, SD = 6.70), F (1,128) = , p = .047 , η =

.031. A second one-way MANOVA examined the four facets of honesty-humility

(Sincerity, Fairness, Greed avoidance, Modesty) as a function of status condition, and the multivariate and univariate tests were also not significant. The first hypothesis regarding the effects of manipulated status group differences could not be supported.

Two simultaneous multiple regression analyses were used to predict self- perceived social status from the same sets of personality measures as the two MANOVA analyses. Self-perceived social status was significantly predicted from Honesty-Humility,

Openness, SDO, narcissism, and Machiavellianism, R = .36, F (5, 123) = 13.83, p < .001.

The five variables accounted for 12.96% of the variance in self-perceived status. Two variables were significant: narcissism (β = .308, p = .001) and Machiavellianism (β = –

.291, p = .001). Higher self-perceived status was associated with higher narcissism and

(paradoxically) lower Machiavellianism. Honesty-humility was close, but non-significant

(β = –.196, p = .054).

Predicting self-perceived social status from the four facets of

Honesty/Humility (Sincerity, Fairness, Greed avoidance, Modesty) was also significant,

R = .27, F (5, 123) = 9.33, p < .001. This model accounted for 7.3 % of variance for self- perceived status. Only the modesty facet of honesty-humility was significant (β = –.211, p = .03), such that higher self-perceived status was associated with lower Modesty. This suggests that only this one aspect of honesty-humility was related to social status.

Multicollinearity diagnostics indicated that neither regression analyses were likely to

29 suffer from multicollinearity. This supports the assertion from Lee and Ashton (2005), that the four facets of honesty-humility (Sincerity, Fairness, Greed avoidance, Modesty) are relatively independent of each other.

CHAPTER V

DISCUSSION

General Discussion

The initial hypothesis could not be supported. The priming of comparatively higher or lower social status was successful, but differences in honesty-humility were not found in group comparisons. This indicates that honesty-humility and its four facets did not respond to the manipulation of self-perceptions of social status. It is unknown if there is a scenario that changes state levels of honesty-humility. Perhaps honesty-humility does not function as a personality state, and changes in honesty-humility due to status may be more practical from longitudinal observations taking into account the possible gene to environment interactions. Another possibility is that honesty-humility could be changed, but only through a stronger manipulation. Participants only faced a social ladder manipulation and a brief essay as a means to manipulate social status.

Moreover, social status is a social parameter that is relevant throughout an individual’s lifespan, a simple lab manipulation may not be adequate to change their comparative view of their social status. However, given the positive link between honesty-humility and prosocial behaviors and the connection between high social status and poor ethics, the possible relationship between honesty-humility and social status is still feasible. Perhaps a better method would be to examine indicators of social status and honesty-humility that are not based on self-report. For example, both social status and

30 31 honesty-humility have evidence of their behaviors in experimental economic games (Piff et al., 2010; Hilbig et al, 2012).

On the other hand, the second hypotheses could be partially supported. Self- perceived status, after controlling for the primed scores from the social ladder paradigm, had a moderate, negative relationship with modesty. Perhaps the only one facet of honesty-humility is related to social status, though it is surprising to see the other three facets not having a significant relationship with perceived status. Higher social status has been linked to favorable attitudes about greed (Piff et al., 2010), yet my result found no relationship between status and greed avoidance. Moreover, higher social status has been found to predict aggressive drivers on the road and breaking the rules in the trust game

(Piff et al., 2010; Piff, Stancato, Cote, et al., 2012), but an inverse relationship between social status and the other two facets, sincerity and fairness were not evident in my results. Honesty-humility in general, was near significance, but there is no guarantee that more data would have ensured its statistical significance.

The other traits related to honesty-humility showed mixed results on the regression analysis. Narcissism was positively related to self-perceived status; this was to be expected. Narcissists have proclivity towards grandiosity, believe themselves to be above others in some respect, and adaptive narcissists tend to become leaders and bosses

(Ackerman, Witt, Donnellan, Trzesniewski, Robins, & Kashy, 2011). With the results of this study, it is safe to conclude that narcissism and self-perceived status are linked. An individual is unlikely to be narcissistic if they don’t, to some degree, believe they have high social status.

SDO, on the other hand was not significant. This is puzzling because people with high levels of SDO think of social groups in a hierarchical fashion and are deeply invested in maintaining the status quos they belong to (Pratto et al., 1994). In some ways,

SDO can be argued as “group-based narcissism.” A possible explanation for my results is that social status is not an identity that inspires a dominant group to suppress an inferior group. A speculation to consider is that the American Dream is built on the premise that social mobility should be everyone’s goal. To be high on SDO in the context of social status might be contradictory to American culture. Another possibility is that SDO might only relate to objective measure of social class, rather than perceptions of status. It is even possible that identities like social status do not evoke a group based identification in the same manner other categories like race or gender have. SDO could be embedded in social class if a group based system was brought into the participants’ attention.

Machiavellianism and its negative correlation to perceived status might be the trickiest finding to understand. Furnham et al (2013) indicated that Machiavellianism is tied to white collar crimes and Jones (2013) concluded that upper class people, such as

Wall Street executives, have Machiavellian tendencies and often gamble with other’s money in high stakes stocks. My findings of an inverse relationship between

Machiavellianism and social status is bizarre, but there are a couple of possible interpretations. First, it is possible that high status people have the power they need and don’t have to picture the world through the lenses of the Machiavellianism mindset to achieve their goals. Machiavellianism could be a mindset individuals harness to achieve a goal and once the goal is completed, the need for Machiavellianism is diminished and manifestations of its behaviors are terminated. Another possibility to consider is that

33 people who feel they are lower in status might be cynical of the world because of their low social rank, and in turn, this cynicism might engender a Machiavellian thought pattern as a mechanism to improve their circumstances. Machiavellianism could be ascribed as a personality state; for example, when individuals feels they are underserved, state Machiavellianism is amplified to methodically find solutions to reach their end goal and once their mission is complete, their regular levels of Machiavellianism returns. My results could suggest that people with self-perceptions of low status might embrace a

Machiavellian attitude so they can evoke the cognitive tools they need to plan their way into high status ranks.

An unexpected finding in this study was the differences in openness in response to the status priming in the MANOVA. Although the multivariate test, Wilk’s λ, was nonsignificant, the univariate ANOVA for openness indicated that openness was higher in high status participants. This could be explained by some of the behaviors of high status people (Yearwood et al., 2015). Higher status people are more individualized and believe themselves to be unique, ultimately trying differentiate themselves from others. In contrast, lower status people are more communal and prefer to develop companionships with others. Openness was not originally part of the main research questions and was used more as a control trait not expected to vary like in honesty- humility through the status priming. So, a more precise study focusing on openness should be done before it is reasonable to conclude that openness is a trait with some type of relationship to social status.

Limitations

A potential limitation for this study is the lack of control for self-esteem.

Narcissism is a trait that is linked to linked to self-esteem (Bushman & Buameister,

1998). Considering narcissism’s significant correlation with every variable in this study, except for Machiavellianism, there is a possibility that every trait or facet linked to narcissism may have been measured better if self-esteem was taken in to account. It is also possible that some of those relationships are self-esteem effects.

Another potential limitation to consider is the cross-sectional and short-term design of this study. A possibility to consider is that perhaps honesty-humility is responsive to changes in social status, but a potential relationship with social status might be developed over the lifespan, not through an experimental paradigm. To my knowledge, there are no any studies available examining the gene-to-environment interaction with honesty-humility or if the trait can function as a personality state. Many studies examined the five factor model throughout the lifespan and as personality states, but this study is one of the first to test honesty-humility as a personality state.

Another possible limitation is that extraversion was not included. Extraversion is related to social dominance (Leone et al., 2011), and narcissism (Lee & Ashton, 2005).

In addition, extraversion is trait that can shift in magnitude through experimental manipulation (Wilson et al., 2016) and changes in affect (Wilt et al., in press). This study might have been too refined and missed the possibility of finding other personality traits shifting due to changes in perceived social status.

Future Research

More research on the theoretical characteristics of honesty-humility and its prediction of real world behaviors must be developed. Some researchers do not believe that the distinctions between honesty-humility and agreeableness are clean enough

(Sheppard & Boon, 2012), and others indicated differences between the two traits are modest at best (Hilbig et al., 2013). A reason why this sixth factor may not have been widely recognized is from its ambiguity as a distinct trait from agreeableness.

Establishing stronger divergence between the two traits would help to clarify the contextual consequences for both of them. If honesty-humility becomes recognized by more researchers, longitudinal studies of it must be examined along with agreeableness. Different trajectories between the two traits will help legitimize honesty- humility as the sixth trait.

Future studies pairing social status and personality should be considered.

Social status not only stratifies people into an income-based taxonomy, but also impacts thoughts and behaviors, ultimately leading to the cultivation of different cultures based on social strata (Markus & Kitayama, 2003). Just as studies have examined personality across cultures (Rolland, 2002), perhaps there is valuable insight in personality differences for the sub-cultures (e.g. social status groups) within the general national culture.

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