Looming Integrity Crisis
Apparently, Britons are becoming less honest. At least according to a study conducted at the University of Essex, where several thousand respondents filled out an online survey that repeated questions from a study on citizenship and behavior conducted ten years earlier. According to researcher Paul Whiteley, the purpose of the study was to try to gain an idea of the level of dishonesty in British society, and moreover, what’s considered acceptable and whether that has altered over time.
In the survey, participants were asked to rate various behaviors—such as littering, drunk driving, or having an affair—on a scale from 1 (always justified) to 4 (never justified). What researchers found was that people’s tolerance of certain dishonest behaviors have changed, and almost entirely for the worse. For instance, in 2000, 70% of respondents said having an affair could never be justified, a number that dropped to around 50% of respondents in 2011. And two out of three people said they could justify lying in their own interest. In fact, there was only one behavior that people condemned more in 2011 than in 2000. Perhaps not surprisingly, given that governments the world over have tightened their belts since 2000, that one behavior was falsely claiming benefits.
With this apparent relaxing of moral standards, one might wonder if this is the case across the board. Researchers observed that while women were slightly more honest than men, the most appreciable differences were found among different age groups. Young people were significantly more tolerant of dishonest behavior than older people—for instance, only around 30% of people under age 25 thought lying on a job application was never justifiable as opposed to 55% of people over 65. Neither income level nor education affected levels of honesty.
This is bad news, but the worst part is that over time, if no one counteracts the spread of dishonesty, it is likely to continue. Because we generally look to our peers for cues on what kinds of behaviors are acceptable, if lying on job applications seems to be par for the course, it will increase in frequency. So does this mean that England will be governed by degenerates in a few decades? I guess we’ll see.
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves
As a corporate executive, I wonder how this translates into work behavior and its effects on corporate culture. I have a wild guess:)…
filling out job applications and CVs is like advertising – painting a picture – i for one, because of my age am usually considered “overqualified” so i need to downplay and sometimes omit details, is this dishonest? maybe the under 25s experience of the job application “culture” is different and not necessarily are more dishonest (i don’t know if the questions in the survey were detailed or just yes/no)
Am currently reading The Honest Truth about Dishonesty and am glad someone has taken up this “cause”–by illuminating the relaxing of our moral standards we are reminded to be more mindful of the importance of honesty
“. . So does this mean that England will be governed by degenerates in a few decades? I guess we’ll see”
You don’t have to wait a few decades. . . .
Yes, I agree with Ed – no need to wait a few decades, unfortunately
I agree with Ed Asner. It won’t take decades but just a few years at most. Look at India, my home country. Totally ruled by degenerates. Indira Gandhi condoned corruption and institutionalised it. Today its all-ecompassing.
Changed attitudes to being less than honest on job applications might go hand in hand with both increased unemployment, and the in my opinion more and more unreasonable standards set by employers. Job ads seem to demand more and more of applicants, but I doubt the person eventually hired will actually meet all of the qualifications. But can you blame young people without jobs for padding their resume a little when it seems like no employer would ever want them based on their job ads?
And some other things aren’t inherently dishonest, like having an affair. It’s dishonest because our culture values monogamy, but an alternate interpretation of the survey results might be that morals have changed over time away from the traditions.
What I’m trying to say is that just because our parents agreed something was immoral, doesn’t mean our children will think the same. And it doesn’t necessarily mean they are degenerates, but that values change. See homosexuality or interracial dating for some examples.
You don’t think this is simply a result of dishonest behaviour being more difficult to hide? In other words, people have only started to think that such things are okay because they realised how widely all of them are practiced? The biggest change over the past 10 years is that social interactions have become a lot more documented and transparent/public.
I do not think that there is more adultery and cheating, I think it’s just that more people are getting caught.
Interesting topic “The Metrics of disonesty”!
Great work should be done in the selection,research and ponderation of the “disonesty attributes” considering the culture and the circumstances.
Omnium rerum(mensura) homo.
Vidi:panton hrematon…
It will be interesting to see this study duplicated in other countries, and similar to the Gross Happiness Index, we might need a Gross Honesty Index.
Another consideration may be that this behavior is universal, and that young adults are testing society to see what they can get away with. As they mature, they realize that honesty becomes the best policy. The study could then have shown a change from the last time the study was done by simply having different compositions of the age ranges.
Most people are generally good. It is what they do when faced with survival instincts and competition that sets us apart from animals.
The more things change, the more they remain the same! It has been said that we get what we think about, and it’s true that most people are followers. These concepts are at play when we ponder the societal behaviors you present. When the tabloid media (which is strong in England, by the way) presents us with the worst behavior of our public figures, the public follows suit. In the past, “good” social behavior was encouraged by establishing religious beliefs among society. Errant behavior was punished by such drastic measures as stoning, burning at the stake, disenfranchisement, and other public humiliations. This led to publicly practicing good behavior, while privately some individuals rebelled against artificially imposed shackles. While I am no longer a “church goer”, I have recognized the stabilizing influence of religions on society. We tell ourselves that, in our more advanced western world, we have less need for such artificial stabilizing belief systems, yet we seem not to have found an equally powerful replacement for the “threat of hell and the loss of heaven”. Rules, laws, and religion can be good for maintaining social order, but as in modern western medicine, treating the symptom without addressing the underlying malady allows more control, and far more profit, for those in positions of power. It is quite entertaining to observe as the dominant power structure changes it’s face over time and through history. In a way, your weblogs seem to document how society is controlled from the top down, and the ignorance of the general public of how effectively we are manipulated.
Some eastern belief systems recognize compassion as the language of the universe. I believe we currently stand on a precipice: on one side we have a path that leads to further control and manipulation from a long-standing power structure; on the other, freedom through compassion toward each other. History indicates we’ve been here before, and we were not yet ready for such freedom.
Carry on good man, and continue to show us our foibles. You are a wonderful provocateur!
In Uruguay the same. Look my results:
http://www.fcs.edu.uy/archivos/1009.pdf
I am almost certain that this same attitude is universal, but would love to see studies of different countries and whether their native culture extant within them, as opposed to that derived from globalization, has any effect.
Fear not, England has been governed by degenerates since at least Margaret Thatcher.
Personally I think we need look no further than the 80′s and the rise of greed is good, individual choice above all else, the corporate takeover of public spaces and institutions, the coverups of appalling crimes & breaches of trust by religious leaders, and the blatant private revolving door in our governments.
When it is clear to everyone that the majority of our leaders are behaving no better or much worse than us, and not only getting away with it, but being rewarded, then there is no incentive to be honest. It is only because most people still value honesty and morals amongst friends and family that society hasn’t already descended into every person for themselves.
I took a peek at this study and there was a section that compared people’s opinions on committing traffic offenses and categorized the responses to those who had and had not committed the offenses in question. I do think the way a question is posed to respondents does have an effect on their opinions. If they were asked their approval of their spouse or partner’s cheating activity or traffic offenses on their street or in their neighborhood, you may get different responses. Personalizing or framing a question that presents a standpoint to someone (where the behavior of others has an effect on them for example), might get different results in this study. It just seems that concluding that British people are becoming more dishonest is not fair, although they may be more accepting of the behavior of others, as long as it does not have an effect on them.
Dan Ariely, I love your work, and I completely understand the dynamic that leads to greater dishonesty when you observe your peers being dishonest. But somehow that dynamic hasn’t led to every society being filled with nothing but a bunch of liars, and I’d bet large amounts of money that at some points in history, some societies have become MORE honest. So there must be other dynamics that work in the opposite direction.
Based on your research and insight, what do you think those are? I know you’ve identified religion (and other explicit reminders of morality) in much of your work. What other things might prevent an endless downward spiral?
Am I doomed to become a degenerate just because of my post code?
The data collected may not represent a decline in integrity. It could also represent a) a change in moral reasoning to a less authoritarian perspective and/or b) more middle-ground responding due to less interest, less time on survey, etc. Strangely, the report focuses mostly on % of respondents who feel a behavior is never acceptable, but does not report if there are changes in median responding, variability of responding etc.
The original study is here: http://www.essex.ac.uk/government/documents/are_britons_etting_more_dishonest.pdf (you should post links to the studies).
I’m surprised that no one has invoked the “All Cretans are liars” logic.
Surveys like the one discussed here cannot be reliable for the simple reason that it depends on peoples’ honest answers and I suspect many people will lie for a variety of reasons. People who cheat at interviews my lie and say that they don’t and vice versa.
Also no mention if employers are dishonest in the descriptions of the jobs they advertise. That’s happened to me.
Also would you really want to employ someone who was 100% honest in their interview answers? They’d be the kind of people that could get your organisation in trouble in many ways. eg “Our products are crap, Madam, and I wouldn’t buy them if I were you.”
“Yes, you’re right, Sir, we do a 100% markup on the price.” and so on.
And as to the conclusion that seems to be drawn here that more people (for ‘more people” read “young people’, then that maybe this so called increase in dishonesty is due to the fact that more people are now honest in saying they’re dishonest.
I think this so called survey is utter crap and would be laughed out of court by truly professional statisticians because of the way it is constructed.
Perhaps there are two counterside trends.First gouverments make more laws which influences the daily life and give the feeling the growing limitation of our
freedom. Secondly I have the feeling that the entropy of people is strongly increasing. So perhaps this will lead to an increase of the internal stress in the society and end in a driven by completely new paradigma’s. I am anxiuos to what!
“…[T]he most appreciable differences were found among different age groups. Young people were significantly more tolerant of dishonest behavior than older people—for instance, only around 30% of people under age 25 thought lying on a job application was never justifiable as opposed to 55% of people over 65.”
This raises as many questions as it answers. The biggest one is whether this is a generational issue (which the writer appears to assume) or an age-group issue.
I other words, if the survey had been taken 20 years ago or 20 years hence would the results have been very different? There is a very obvious reason why over-65s can afford to be more censorious of fiddling job applications!