Personality in Gneezy's cheap talk game: The interaction between Honesty-Humility and Extraversion in predicting deceptive behavior

Abstract Recent papers have suggested that personality traits may predict behavior in cheap talk games. This paper investigated whether Honesty-Humility predicts dishonesty and whether Extraversion moderates the relationship between Honesty-Humility and dishonesty — all as measured by senders' behaviors in a cheap talk game. We hypothesized that the correlation between Honesty-Humility and dishonesty would be stronger among those who measure high for Extraversion than among those who measure low for Extraversion. One hundred and forty-three undergraduate students participated as senders in the study. Although Honesty-Humility did not correlate significantly with dishonest behavior, the results supported the hypothesis that Honesty-Humility interacted with Extraversion to predict dishonest behavior. The results suggest that the effects of a personality trait may depend upon other traits.