Longitudinal relations among Honesty-Humility, moral disengagement, and unethical behavior in adolescents: A between- and within-person analysis

Although low Honesty-Humility is associated with unethical behavior, few studies have examined this relation from the longitudinal perspective across late adolescence. The present study investigated the longitudinal relation between Honesty-Humility and unethical behavior, including whether moral disengagement served as a mediator of this relation at both the between- and within-person levels by using a three-wave data of 1,646 Chinese adolescents (M_age = 15.22). The results revealed that (1) Honesty-Humility and unethical behavior bidirectionally predicted each other at both levels; (2) Honesty-Humility indirectly predicted unethical behavior via moral disengagement at the between-person level but not at the within-person level, and Honesty-Humility indirectly predicted moral disengagement via unethical behavior at both levels. Honesty-Humility and unethical behavior are indeed developmentally and dynamically intertwined.