THE DIMENSION
Self-reported preference for transparent, equitable dealings when personal advantage is possible.
The dimension in context
Self-reported preference for transparent, equitable dealings when personal advantage is possible.
You may describe checking whether you are benefiting from an unfair advantage.
You may place greater emphasis on securing your own interests in an exchange.
An illustrative work situation
A supplier accidentally sends a team pricing information intended for another customer. The information could strengthen the team’s negotiating position, but it was not meant to be shared. The participant must decide what to disclose, whom to consult, and whether the advantage fits the responsibilities attached to the relationship.
A self-description of fairness cannot settle what happened or certify someone’s character. The useful reflection concerns how the person recognized the situation, whose interests they considered, and which process guided the decision. An example involving a real tradeoff is more informative than agreement with an attractive general principle.
A small practice to examine
Use a fictional version of the episode to identify the information boundary and the people who could clarify the appropriate response. Write the action you would consider and the reason for it. Then change one condition, such as whether the information was already public, and examine whether your reasoning changes with the relevant facts.
Treating every unequal outcome as unfair can overlook legitimate differences in contribution or need.
A question for closer study
Can participants distinguish fair dealing from impression management when a question carries an obvious socially desirable answer?
Read the example alongside the research
The following editorial passages come from the linked framework chapters. They provide context for the original teaching example above; the example is fictional and is not a reported study finding.
Construct interviews for fair dealing should use disagreements that reasonable people might resolve differently. Consider an accidental advantage in a shared activity: one participant may see it as something to disclose, while another may believe the rules already permit it. Researchers would ask what agreement, obligation, and affected person the respondent imagined. The aim would be to determine whether an answer reflects transparency, a particular allocation principle, or uncertainty about the situation. An ambiguous moral scenario is a poor basis for a confident character interpretation.
Before data collection, researchers might predict that fair-dealing and patience items remain distinguishable even when they correlate. If they collapse into a general self-presentation factor, the team must investigate rather than simply celebrate internal consistency. If sensitivity items split by relationship context, that result may require a narrower domain or different sampling.
Fair dealing can involve competing principles. Equal shares, contribution-based shares, and need-based shares may each be defensible under different agreements. An item about fairness should not silently equate one allocation rule with virtue. MSDC’s interviews should ask what rule the participant imagined and whether everyone understood it. This would help determine whether the item samples transparent conduct, a particular moral preference, or ambiguity in the situation.
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
Hilbig et al. (2014): Personality and prosocial behavior ↗Lee & Ashton (2004): Psychometric properties of the HEXACO Personality Inventory ↗Thielmann et al. (2020): The HEXACO-100 across 16 languages ↗Zettler et al. (2020): The nomological net of the HEXACO model ↗