#5 - Christian Miller, Ph.D. - Cultivating the Virtue of Honesty

Experimental Honesty with Brian Curtis, Ph.D.

In this episode, Brian Curtis, Ph.D. speaks with Dr. Christian Miller. Christian is the A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University, Director of The Honesty Project, and among his 5 books and over 100 academic papers, author of the excellent book, Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue that was published in 2021.

Brian and Christian discuss a wide range of topics, including how Christian became interested in moral character and virtues like honesty, whether we are the type of person who has the virtue of honesty by examining our patterns of behavior and our motivations for acting honestly, different strategies we can experiment with in our daily lives to close any character gaps that might exist between the honest people we want to be and our less-than-honest behaviors. These strategies include adding moral reminders of our values, drawing inspiration from role models of honesty, being aware of the temptation for dishonesty to preserve our reputation of being an honest person, and the benefits of truthfulness, openness, and forgiveness to find relief from guilt and other forms of psychological suffering. We discuss how Christian’s life has changed since his career has focused more on honesty, ongoing efforts of The Honesty Project, where the future of honesty research might be heading, and more.

You can learn more about Christian and his work by visiting his website at christianbmiller.com, you can purchase his awesome books online or wherever awesome books are sold, and you can find him across various social media platforms by searching his username: @charactergap.

During our conversation, Christian refers a few times to the Experimental Honesty app, which will be released later this year. On the app side of things, we could actually use your help in building this community by beta testing early versions of the app and giving us your feedback to make the app as useful as possible. For your testing and feedback, we’ll give you a free year of the app and our sincere gratitude for helping us bring this out into the world. If all of that sounds interesting, you can learn more at experimentalhonesty.com.

Christian's Website: https://www.christianbmiller.com/

Christian's Book: Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue (Amazon)

Christian's Book: The Character Gap: How Good Are We? (Amazon)

Christian's Twitter: https://twitter.com/CharacterGap

Christian's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CharacterGap

Christian's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-miller-81809b26/

Christian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charactergap/

Experimental Honesty: https://www.experimentalhonesty.com

Email: [e-mail]

Twitter: @BrianCurtisPhD