Abstract: Honesty plays an important role in promoting social harmony and economic development. Therefore, it is very important for individuals to act honestly in society. Most of the time people always face a trade-off between self-interest and honest self-image when making honest decisions. What kind of cognitive process is when individuals make honest behaviors? In the past, researchers still had controversies about the cognitive process of honesty, Greene and Paxton(2009) proposed the “Grace” hypothesis and the “Will” hypothesis. “Grace” hypothesis and “Will hypothesis are two hypothesis proposed in this area who are contradictory to each other. According to the ‘‘Grace’’ hypothesis, honesty results from the absence of temptation, it emphasizes that the first reaction of individuals when facing honest decisions is more inclined to be honest. Both the behavioral characteristics and neural activity characteristics of intuitive processing support the “Grace” hypothesis, individual’s honest reaction is faster than the lie reaction, and the honest response has less cognitive control participation to a certain extent. The brain regions related to cognitive control are less active when they exhibit honest behavior. According to the ‘‘Will’’ hypothesis, honesty results from the active resistance of temptation, it emphasizes the role of cognitive control in honest behavior, people made more cognitive efforts to overcome the temptation of profit in order to behave honestly. Both the evidence from research on self-depletion and the neural characteristics of cognitive control supports the “Will” hypothesis, the individual act more dishonestly after self-depletion, and the individual act a greater degree of activation of cognitive control brain areas when acting honestly. In summary, these two hypotheses have been supported by related studies. This article starts from the social heuristic hypothesis to explain the contradiction between the two. The social heuristic hypothesis proposes that individuals in a typical situations will adopt successful strategies automatically in typical situations, thus showing intuitive response characteristics. In honest decision-making, some people will internalize honesty as a typical strategy, while others will internalize dishonesty as a typical strategy. Individuals who use honesty as a heuristic strategy are intuitively honest, while individuals who use dishonesty as a heuristic strategy need cognitive control to be honest. Based on previous studies, the factors that influence the heuristic hypothesis include moral identity factors, the degree of importance individuals attach to economic interests, and different social situations. In view of the previous research on honest behavior, the current research paradigm of honest behavior mainly comes from the measurement paradigm of dishonest behavior, it is doubtful whether these paradigms measures real honest behavior. In addition, it is not clear that the neural coding of brain activity of individuals who default to honest or dishonest, and the dynamic neural processes of individuals when they act honestly. Therefore, future research can be explored using honest measuring paradigms with more ecological validity, the dynamic neural activity of honest behavior also deserves further exploration.