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in our work our lives ethical on the
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tension benevolence and honesty what we
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do is we look at deception a little
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differently than people have in the past
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we look at deception that sometimes can
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be helpful to other people we typically
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think about deception as selfish
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deception so I lie to gain some
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advantage at the expense of somebody
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else and we typically think of honesty
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is something that might be costly to me
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but helpful to others
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in our research we actually disentangle
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those two things we think about
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deception that can help other people and
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honesty that might be helpful to myself
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and may be costly to somebody else we
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really do this we separate honesty and
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deception from pro-social and pro self
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interests what we do is we find that
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people actually don't care that much
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about deception we find that the
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aversion to lying when people say don't
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lie to me
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what they really mean is don't be really
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selfish
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broadly the advice on the table until
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now has been you know always be honest
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honesty is the best policy we're
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suggesting that maybe we had revised
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that advice and make the statement lie
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sometimes the key takeaway is to
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understand when we should lie when does
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honesty actually harm trust seem immoral
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and when does dishonesty
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when can deception actually breed trust
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and be seen as moral so we could think
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about how that might be used in
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delivering feedback because managers
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often have to balance this tension
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between benevolence giving kind
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supportive feedback and honesty giving
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critical harsh feedback so we might
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suggest that managers actually err on
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the side of benevolence if their goal is
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really to promote trust and
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relationships
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what surprised us was that when we
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really separated dishonesty from
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selfishness we found that what's driving
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all of this behavior what-what people
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judge me moral or immoral when people
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trust somebody or they don't trust
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somebody we find that what really
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matters is how kind how benevolent
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somebody is and that deception plays a
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very small role that is when we tell
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people never lie to me
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what we really mean is don't be selfish
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we studied this tension between
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benevolence and honesty using economic
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games we had people come to a lab and
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watch someone or interact with someone
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who had an opportunity to lie about the
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outcome of a coin flip or a die roll
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some objective fact in order to make
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money for their partner so they could
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lie and be dishonest in a way that would
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help a counterpart and then we had
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participants judge this dishonesty
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versus truth-telling which would harm
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the counterpart and we found that when
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participants are lied to in a way that
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helps them they actually really
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appreciate that dishonesty it boosts
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trust and it causes them to think that
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their counterpart is moral also when
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they simply observe somebody who's lying
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to help someone else to earn someone
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else more money they also trust this
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person more I think this person is more
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moral than someone who is just always
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honest
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we ran three different experiments in
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our paper our Liars ethical and each
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experiment had about 200 participants so
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each experiment builds on one another
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the the first one just looks at lying to
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help someone else first being honest
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which harms others and then the second
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experiment which had another 200
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participants looks at the effect of
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lying to help someone else even when it
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actually causes harm
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so we disentangle intentions from
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outcomes and then in our third
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experiment which again had another 200
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or so participants we start to
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disentangle the role of the effect of
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lying on the self verse the effect of
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lying on others
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we think about interacting with other
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people it could be our customers it
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could be subordinates we're giving
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people feedback or we might be
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explaining why we're terminating a
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contract the the interactions we have
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with other people are often influenced
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not just by brutal honesty that we want
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to communicate but also important
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concerns about demonstrating the care we
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have for other people when we for
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example tell a client that we're gonna
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go with a different vendor sometimes we
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want to phrase things in a way that is
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different from the complete unvarnished
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truth we find is that we often really
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care about the benevolence that people
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signal through their communication and
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that's often more important than the
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harsh and complete truth so the advice
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here is to think about ways in which we
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might balance these two things and our
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findings suggest we want to tilt toward
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benevolence and we often do this
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intuitively and one key takeaway here is
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some of the codes of conduct some of the
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exhortation --zz we tell people when we
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say that honesty is a supreme concern or
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all honesty is always the best policy
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but what we're finding is that that's
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not really what we mean
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they're really two key ideas that that
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we have about new ideas for implementing
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some of these findings why does it
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change codes of conduct that is when we
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talk about codes of conduct and we have
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honesty in there for the sake of
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hypocrisy I would take that out because
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it's not what we mean it's not what we
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do and second when we think about
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training we think about the rules that
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we implement when we interact with our
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colleagues at work and our external
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clients we don't always strive to be
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completely honest it's not a core value
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really and our argument is to be
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consistent both in the codes of conduct
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and the way we train and teach other
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people so we want to think about the
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demonstrating concern and other elements
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of morality they're going to be really
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important in guiding the institution so
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I think ultimately we can become more
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consistent and less hypocritical when we
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think about the role and this tension
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between honesty and benevolence and how
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we don't always mean that the complete
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truth is what we're after I think
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instead of saying we should always be
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honest with others we should think about
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always treating others the way we'd want
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to be treated
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we should think about creating a caring
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community and we should think about this
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tension that is as we as managers as
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executives we want to think about
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balancing this in our training programs
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and we deal with other people and
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explicitly acknowledge that we're making
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trade-offs between honesty and care for
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others that's the key idea
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there are a lot of domains in which
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individuals face this conflict between
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honesty and benevolence very very
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intensely one examples in healthcare
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right so doctors frequently have to
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deliver very negative news to patients
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and actually prior research has found
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that oftentimes doctors do lie they
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inflate the positivity of these
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prognosis and we we seem to think this
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is bad and we and I think doctors feel a
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lot of tension and conflict around how
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to handle this situation but our
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research suggests that perhaps doctors
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and maybe teachers and parents should be
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explicitly acknowledging this tension
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and this trade-off and thinking about
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and talking about how to navigate it
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when might benevolence and kindness and
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maybe a little dishonesty be right or be
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appreciated and how could that enhance
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you know the delivery of medicine
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another case where we manage this
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balance between being completely honest
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and managing being benevolent is when we
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interact with children this is true as
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parents and it's also true as educators
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so teachers will need to give feedback
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to students and they have to balance
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this tension between being completely
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candid and being benevolent and kind
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demonstrating kindness and concern for
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the child as parents we frequently tell
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our kids never lie but that's not all
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what we mean for example before we go
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over to Grandma's house we might tell
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them say you remember thank grandma for
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that sweater and tell her how much you
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liked it even though we both know you
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never wear it
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for centuries we've been talking about
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honesty as a virtue and dishonesty as a
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vice so that's an idea that's been
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around in philosophy for centuries
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starting with Immanuel Contin actually
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before that but also empirically there's
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a wealth of research on deception
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documenting that deception harms trust
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that deception makes us angry the
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deception is immoral but these studies
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have really just looked at selfish
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deception it's the lies that we tell
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that hurt others and help ourselves
00:10:02
we're trying to overturn this idea
00:10:05
because we find that when we actually
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disentangle deception from selfishness
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people don't care all that much about
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dishonesty per se they really care about
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helping others so I think this the sheds
00:10:18
new light on this idea that deception is
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bad
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prior work that studied deception has
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really confounded deception with
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selfishness what we know about deception
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is really we know about selfish
00:10:37
deception and our work separates this
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out so we can actually learn about
00:10:42
deception per se and we find is that the
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way we feel about deception itself is
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actually not all that bad and it
00:10:52
challenges this enormous body of
00:10:55
research that's made these broad claims
00:10:57
about what deception does or doesn't do
00:11:00
really what we know is what deception
00:11:02
that selfish does or doesn't do
00:11:09
so I'm really excited to look at the
00:11:12
effects of pro-social lying how this
00:11:14
tension between benevolence and honesty
00:11:16
plays out in the feedback process how
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does it affect performance and how does
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it affect relationships when we give
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feedback I mean so a lot of people they
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might say that honesty is the way we
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improve honesty is important to get
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accurate feedback to become better you
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know employees better students but it's
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very possible that we need benevolence
00:11:40
we need kindness sometimes we need
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dishonesty to be given the confidence to
00:11:45
improve so benevolence and honesty don't
00:11:48
only have effects on trust and character
00:11:50
perceptions but might actually affect
00:11:52
performance in organizations so I'm
00:11:54
excited to take a look at that next
00:12:13
you
