What Is Self-Honesty and How to Teach It

“Should I keep my struggles a secret and maintain my reputation?”

As your child or student starts facing such dilemmas, an attitude toward self-honesty develops and only grows stronger with age.

Without proper guidance, it’s not guaranteed that your adorable little one will make the right choices.

Not when self-honesty means choosing between an uncomfortable truth and a convenient lie; a struggle even for adults.

Wouldn’t the most likely choice be, “I’m smart, I can figure this out without disclosing my flaws?”

When self-deception seems much easier, how can you effectively teach self-honesty?

Well, here are five effective ways: mindset coaching, essays, movies, behavior contracts, and the Positive Action Program.

As we go over them, you’ll also learn:

• Why it’s better to praise effort rather than intelligence
• Why attitude toward failure influences self-honesty
• Why movies are effective for behavior modeling

But first, what is self-honesty?

In essence, self-honesty is telling yourself the truth about your strengths and capabilities while acknowledging your limitations.

It’s self-honesty that keeps us from falling victim to delusional judgments and decision-making that limit our potential to learn, grow and adapt.

For instance, self-honesty can benefit a problem student who believes he’s in control and decides to avoid seeking help.

1 - Foster a Growth Mindset

Children with a growth mindset are less inclined to cheat or lie to uphold a reputation.

They recognize the value of progress and are therefore more honest in their assessment of personal abilities and skills.

Unfortunately, many educators today are encouraging fixed-mindedness by focusing on their student’s inherent abilities or intelligence.

For instance, an educator will praise a student for being a “genius” rather than acknowledging their thought process or working pattern that led to success.

As a result, these students believe that they were successful because of their inherent intelligence, which is fixed, and are inclined to cheat when facing a tougher challenge to uphold that “genius” reputation.

How to Foster a Growth Mindset

• Acknowledge process rather than ability. For example, instead of praising your student or child for being smart, congratulate them on their approach to problem-solving. Mention that you are pleased with their persistence that led them to a working strategy.

• This approach eliminates the need to cheat by emphasizing success as a result of effort rather than innate ability, as one research found.

• Promote failure as a means of growth. Fear of failure is the leading motivator for self-delusion in students. They perceive failure as evidence of inherent incompetence and believe that they must cheat to succeed at difficult tasks. This perception is a form of low self-confidence.

• Sell the idea that skills and abilities are not fixed and failure is a growth opportunity. For instance, talk about famous people who candidly confronted their failures to better their abilities and eventually succeed.

2 - Use Self-Honesty Essays

Self-honesty essays are effective teaching tools. They encourage your students to think about self-honesty from a day-to-day perspective, making it relatable.

When writing essays, your students draw from their previous interactions with parents, teachers, and peers to identify instances of self-honesty, such as when a classmate admitted that they weren’t sure of a concept.

The students then assess the outcomes of these experiences to conclude their essays.

For instance, when their classmate admitted that they didn’t know something, they got assistance from the teacher. They’re now scoring better grades in the subject because they were honest with themselves.

This thought process helps your students establish cause-and-effect relationships of self-honesty, furthering their understanding.

It also gives them a practical reason to practice self-honesty. For example, “Self-honesty helps me track and improve my abilities.”

How to Use Essays to Teach Self-Honesty

• Make it a requirement for the essays to give self-honest examples from personal experiences and their direct outcomes.
• This will create awareness in the minds of your students by posing the questions: “What does self-honesty have to do with my life?” and “Why is self-honesty important?”
• The essays must conclude with a section on how I plan to practice self-honesty in the future. This will create a sense of importance outside of examination and encourage practice.

3 - Form Behavior Contracts for Self Honesty

Behavior contracts are powerful development tools and excellent for teaching self-honesty.

They use positive reinforcement to encourage new behavior and have a proven track record in various psychological studies.

For instance, one research study found behavior contracts to have a 61% efficacy rate in improving commitment, such as attendance, among students.

Another study found that 65% of interventions done using behavior contracts were successful.

How to Form a Self Honesty Contract

• Your students must lead the creation process for self-honesty contracts, from setting goals to rewards and timelines.
• This voluntary aspect enhances engagement and your student's likelihood of compliance.
• Schedule the contract goals by starting with the easiest ones. For instance, committing to weekly self-honesty evaluations before daily.
• This will allow your students to build on success and gather momentum for the harder goals.

4 - Have Your Students Watch a Movie

Using movies as educational tools is an excellent strategy for teaching self-honesty. They provide insight into the lives of various characters and the chance to evaluate self-honesty.

For instance, in the movie Coach Carter, the school’s basketball coach locks out the entire gym when some of his players fail to maintain their GPAs and try to cheat their way out. This was despite pressure from the school’s administration and parents to reopen the gym.

The coach was determined to instill self-honesty in his boys and was willing to step down from his role rather than compromise and reopen the school gym.

Movies are also more entertaining and memorable than books, making them more impactful as behavior modeling tools. A 2014 study of 154 students found movie-based teaching to be more effective at teaching new behavior than conventional print-based teaching.

How to Use Movies to Teach Self Honesty

1. Involve the class in preparing a list of evaluation questions for self-honesty. For instance, how do different movie characters demonstrate self-honesty? How did it affect their lives? Did they benefit from self-honesty?

This will guide the focus of watching the movie and discussions thereafter. 2. Have an in-class movie viewing, paying close attention to the evaluation questions. This will ensure greater class participation than asking your students to watch the movie individually or out of class. 3. Organize the class into small groups and let each group discuss their answers to the self-honesty evaluation questions. Groups will optimize the exchange of perspectives and ideas among your students for a deeper understanding of self-honesty. 4. Let each group present their conclusions from the movie. This will allow your students to critique each other for a deeper comprehension of self-honesty and give you the chance to assess their overall understanding.

5 - Implement the Positive Action Program

The Positive Action curriculum starts by helping your students understand the concept of self before proceeding with an entire unit on self-honesty. In this unit, your students practice:

• Telling themselves the truth
• Knowing themselves
• Admitting to mistakes
• Keeping their word

Self-honesty is essential for Positive Action’s wider goal to improve academic performance and influence student behavior, which has proven successful in various institutions.

The program was behind Critzer Elementary’s sensational 50% drop in disciplinary incidents after the first year.

Also, Positive Action helped a school of 450 students completely transform its “inner-city” reputation through academic performance. Critzer now ranks among the top-performing schools in its district.

Schedule a webinar today to find out more about how Positive Action can benefit your children

"I like the Positive Action curriculum. My students now have a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses." Mr. Watkins, Compton Unified School District

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some examples of self-honesty?

You can find plenty of self-honesty examples in everyday choices, for instance:

• Admitting that you’re wrong when you don’t have to
• Correcting a mistake that benefited you
• Choosing not to cheat when you can get away with it
• Choosing to be authentic on social media

What are the stages of learning new behavior?

The following table highlights three stages of picking a new habit.

• Stages

• Preparation

• Characteristics

• Takes a month

• Involves setting long-term goals and identifying the best methods to use

• Stages

• Practice

• Characteristics

• Takes between 3–6 months

• Involves fighting the urge to stop and reiterating long-term goals

• Stages

• Maintenance

• Characteristics

• Occurs after six months

• Involves fighting relapse with rewards

How can I detect self-deception in my students or child?

Actions are a great way of detecting self-deception.

Generally, if your child or student’s actions aren’t consistent with their claim or belief, they are indeed lying to themselves. Take the case of a student who claims to be studying while watching a movie.