1. Honesty

Honesty means telling the truth, but also avoiding deception and ensuring you are not misrepresenting facts. Being honest can earn you trust from others and demonstrate that you possess personal integrity.

Honesty can help you build a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness. This can help you meet other goals, like building positive interpersonal relationships and a respectable reputation. In this sense, it’s what sociologists call an instrumental value.

Different moral frameworks will have competing thresholds for when it is and isn’t appropriate to lie – i.e. should we be dishonest to protect someone’s feelings, or keep a child’s belief in Santa alive?

Example of Honesty
If you found a wallet full of cash on the street, what would you do? An honest person would make an effort to locate the owner and not decide that the money was theirs without putting effort into finding the true owner.