Honesty

Honesty refers to an aspect of ethics and detects such characteristics as integrity, frankness, and straightforwardness, excluding deceitfulness or deviousness. In psychology, there are two theories that tend to explain the concept of honesty. The first one is the 'will theory in which sincerity is derived from the dynamic struggle of enticement and relations to the restricted cognitive processes that facilitate postponement in look upon to reward” (Dungy et al., 2011). Honesty may also refer to an aspect of morality that indicates positive, honorable characteristics such as uprightness, straightforwardness, and frankness expelling any kinds of lie.

A lie hurts people a lot. Moreover, self-dishonesty which makes people keep silent when it is necessary to tell the truth sometimes causes much harm. Secondly, honesty appears from the lack of temptation to cover up some facts or present oneself from the better side. However, one should possess a strong will to be always honest and never lie.

Honesty and frankness can be considered of as related notions. Honesty is openness; this feature is well-valued because it tells the truth without compromising with anything at all. Frankness is considered as completeness, goodness, and brilliance. Including honesty and frankness in ones’ life is quite important as it can motivate an individual to be confident in daily living and help achieve a high level of reliability. Moreover, it can go further and have a positive effect on relations between people, when an individual expresses truthfulness and frankness towards others. An individual easily attains respect in the community when he is reluctant to negotiate his own values. Integrity is all about openness and being honest is telling the facts (Johnson et al., 2003).

I applaud everybody who works hard at telling the truth. Nowadays it is necessary to be honest to ourselves, and to all the people that surround us as well. It is much better to be ourselves and tell the truth than always lie and pretend to be someone else.

Reliability is a unity of actions, morals, ways, dealings, values, hope, and product. In the moral code, uprightness is considered as the honesty and openness or correctness of one's owns deeds. Uprightness can be regarded as the contrary of insincerity. Domestic constancy is regarded as a good value as well (Johnson et al., 2003).

A person, who pretends to be happy and optimistic and lies about his /her inner state, may be actually filled with such negative feelings as fury, bitterness and dread. Such a person is very unpredictable as one day an emotional explosion may happen, and if these emotions are negative, it may cause much harm to the people around.

However, it is possible for a person to learn to be honest. First of all, one should understand and accept the importance of this feature in one’s life. There is no doubt that sometimes it is uneasy to be honest in some situations, but it is worthwhile as honesty is a very valuable feature nowadays. One should make an attempt to become more open and frank and people around will for sure notice and appreciate this change.

One should never keep silence when telling the truth is of a primary importance, despite all its bitterness. Keeping quiet will just make the lies spread further (Shrock et al., 2007).

People should not be afraid of telling the truth as it is the best way to avoid different misunderstandings in the future. Nothing can be worse than being overwhelmed with your own lies and lose any kind of confidence from other people. Thus, it is very important to be honest in relationship with other people and with oneself as well.

There are some main reasons which make individuals not always tell the facts as they are, For example, dread of being harmed is the simplest reason which explains why we recline to lie for self-defense. Sometimes people are self-dishonest, being unable to accept some facts. Telling lies can cause much damage which is either physical or psychological. Another reason for not telling the truth is the dread of conflict, when we afraid to have an argument with others. There is also the biggest fear of being punished which makes us to come up with lies to cover up our own mistakes. A fear of dismissal is another reason which pushes us to tell lies. When people are afraid to offend their partners or try to save the relationship, they often lie too.

Another reason why we lie is a dread of loss, for example, when we are afraid to lose money or high-priced items. Gluttony is the basis for this lie and can be easily found in the midst of the society (Watson, 2005). Very often people strive not to lose their position in the society.

We also lie because of some unselfish reasons. For example, we often flatter people to make them happier or maybe when we want them to do a favor. We also end up not telling the whole truth in order not to hurt someone. These are some of the reasons of why we are not always honest (Watson, 2005).

In conclusion, a matter of honesty is a very relevant issue nowadays. Try and ask yourself if you dare to say the truth in any situation. Also, learn to earn trust from the people around. Being truthful is vital because it makes people trust you and consider you as a reliable person.