The Honor System or Honesty System: How Honest Are you?

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How trusting are you? Do you believe people are basically honest, or do you think people are honest only when they think someone else is watching? There are theories that people feel under pressure when someone else is watching to do the good thing, but when no one is looking they don’t feel as pressured to do what is usually expected. Many people have observed people being deterrence, or following the honor system.
Deterrence is a theory based on behavioral psychology about preventing or controlling actions and behavior through fear of being punished. (Henry Farrell, 2013). Deterrence is divided into two separate categories. General deterrence is examples are made of deviants. The individual is not the focus of the behavioral change, but rather the punishment in the public eye in order to keep individuals from deviance in the future. Specific deterrence focuses on individual deviant and the attempts to correct his/her behavior.
The honor system or honesty system is a philosophical way of varied endeavors based on trust, honor, and honesty. A person involved in the honor system has a strong concept of breaking or going against it. The negatives include community shame, loss of stature, and loss of a personal integrity and pride in extreme situations. They are more likely to do the good thing even when no one is looking or is around to witness their actions.
Scientist have conducted experiments to prove different theories on if people feel more pressured to do good when someone is around, if people just don’t care, or if they are more likely to do good when being watched. One experiment is leaving some kind of edible item on a table with a donation jar and watching from a distance to observe if more people take the cookie witho...

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...o learn to lie either. A child's main reason for lying is to avoid punishment, or also to impress the friends at school. In studies children have been observed, 4-year-olds fib once every two hours, six-year-olds could only last 90 minutes before making something up.

Works Cited

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deterrence http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/deterrence%20briefing%20.pdf http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2430530/Helsinki-worlds-honest-city-Lisbon-lost-wallet-test.html - http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24165872 http://www.hlntv.com/article/2013/07/23/how-honest-are-americans-honesty-index-experiment-honest-teas http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/average-person-tell-lie http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/big-question-confess-or-keep-secret.htm
http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/average-person-tell-lie

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