Emotional Congruence and Judgments of Honesty and Bias

Abstract

Psychological and philosophical discussions typically understand honesty as reporting truth with propositional statements. In this model, emotions are often seen as irrelevant or a hindrance to honesty, because they can bias our reports. In relational contexts, however, emotions can provide information about deep-seated convictions. We report the results of a study (N = 827) finding that individuals whose emotional responses are congruent with their explicitly stated egalitarian positions are judged as significantly more honest and less prejudiced than those with incongruent emotional responses. This is seen in judgments of white male targets who have negative emotional responses to a black man, a gay man, and a female supervisor. These results suggest that emotional reactions provide information used when judging the honesty and bias of an individual.