Most people value the moral principle of honesty. At the same time, they frequently avoid being honest with people in their everyday lives. Who hasn’t told a fib or half-truth to get through an awkward social situation or to keep the peace?
New research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business explores the consequences of honesty in everyday life and determines that people can often afford to be more honest than they think.
In the paper, “You Can Handle the Truth: Mispredicting the Consequences of Honest Communication,” Chicago Booth Assistant Professor Emma Levine and Carnegie Mellon University’s Taya Cohen find that people significantly overestimate the costs of honest conversations.
“We're often reluctant to have completely honest conversations with others,” says Levine. “We think offering critical feedback or opening up about our secrets will be uncomfortable for both us and the people with whom we are talking.”
Across all the experiments, individuals expect honesty to be less pleasant and less social connecting than it actually is.
The researchers conclude that such fears are often misguided. Honest conversations are far more enjoyable for communicators than they expect them to be, and the listeners of honest conversations react less negatively than expected, according to the paper, published in the Journal of Experiment Psychology: General.
For purposes of the study, the researchers define honesty as “speaking in accordance with one’s own beliefs, thoughts and feelings.”
In a series of experiments, the researchers explore the actual and predicted consequences of honesty in everyday life.
In one field experiment, participants were instructed to be completely honest with everyone in their lives for three days. In a laboratory experiment, participants had to be honest with a close relational partner while answering personal and potentially difficult discussion questions A third experiment instructed participants to honestly share negative feedback to a close relational partner.
“Taken together, these findings suggest that individuals’ avoidance of honesty may be a mistake,” the researchers write. “By avoiding honesty, individuals miss out on opportunities that they appreciate in the long-run, and that they would want to repeat.”
Roflkopt3r on September 22nd, 2018 at 16:01 UTC »
People are very quick to say that you can be honest with them, only to be very offended when somebody actually is. Obvious white lies are often expected, and people who don't make them appear suspicious or rude.
Germans are an infamous example for this. Americans coming to Germany often are shocked at how much less Germans sugarcoat things, and interpret that as personal hostility, because in America this degree of honesty would commonly be ment that way. It can take them a long time to get used to it. So considering that the study is American, I think many of the people asked overestimate the amount of honesty they are actually capable of accepting.
There is also the issue that dishonesty may protect either oneself or the other person. When somebody tells me they're "fine" even though they're obviously not, I might think that people should be more honest with me. But when people tell me lies to protect my own ego, like "yeah that looks good", I might not actually want to know their real thoughts, so I just choose to accept their lie (be that consciously or not).
CowboyBoats on September 22nd, 2018 at 15:35 UTC »
Part of the reason for this might be that lying is used to avoid disclosure (of some fact or opinion). The thing about disclosure is - as beneficial as honesty might be - it's irreversible. You can admit a past lie, and try to make amends, but you can't un-tell a truth.
I wonder what the control groups looked like? There's no link to the study here. For experiment 2, was there a control group of participants who weren't required to be honest, but who were still asked to answer personal and potentially difficult questions? Maybe it's just the act of communicating that is helpful, whether it's honest or dishonest.
What about long-term negative consequences of truth-telling, such as reputation damage resulting from admitting fault?
I probably sound like I'm trying to justify lying, which I'm not, of course. I just wish I had more information here. This is basically a press release about a psychology study, not even a news article about it.
Hayw00dUBl0wMe on September 22nd, 2018 at 14:02 UTC »
Did they ever look at the way the information was communicated?
I ask because there are different ways to convey the same piece of honest information that will be met with different reactions.
Saying "dude u suck at -insert activity here-" will pretty much always be met with some level of negativity, no matter how honest the statement is