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We see it in on nightly news reports, hear about it driving in our cars and read it on blogs: politicians and public officials that have said one thing at one point and then said something completely different or taken the opposite stance later.
It happened with Elliot Spitzer, a prosecutor of prostitutes and responsible for increasing penalties for those who were considered "clients". Yet his adamant stance against prostitution was a shield in which he used to hide his illegal activities involving prostitution.
In a
news article today, Psychologists affirm what most already know and that is politicians cannot be believed. However, they explain the phenomenon, labeled as
moral hypocrisy, in greater detail to provide an understanding into why all humans do it.
Moral hypocrisy is different than what Elliot Spitzer shared with the deceived state of New York, in that Spitzer knew his actions were wrong and were hypocritical in light of his political position. Conversely, moral hypocrites actually convince themselves that their actions are virtuous and helping others, creating what is known as the "self-halo" effect all for the greater good even though his or her action is something that he or she would condemn in another person.
A simple human behaviour experiment executed by two psychologists, Piercarlo Valdesolo and David DeSteno substantiated the moral hypocrisy phenomenon, and how it relates to all humans, including politicians.
You show up for an experiment and are told that you and a person arriving later will each have to do a different task on a computer. One job involves a fairly easy hunt through photos that will take just 10 minutes. The other task is a more tedious exercise in mental geometry that takes 45 minutes.
You get to decide how to divvy up the chores: either let a computer assign the tasks randomly, or make the assignments yourself. Either way, the other person will not know you had anything to do with the assignments.
Now, what is the fair way to divvy up the chores?
When the researchers posed this question in the abstract to people who were not involved in the tasks, everyone gave the same answer: It would be unfair to give yourself the easy job.
But when the researchers actually put another group of people in this situation, more than three-quarters of them took the easy job. Then, under subsequent questioning, they gave themselves high marks for acting fairly. The researchers call this moral hypocrisy because the people were absolving themselves of violating a widely held standard of fairness (even though they themselves hadn’t explicitly endorsed that standard beforehand).
A double standard of morality also emerged when other people were arbitrarily divided in two groups and given differently colored wristbands. They watched as one person, either from their group or from the other group, went through the exercise and assigned himself the easy job.
Even though the observers had no personal stake in the outcome — they knew they would not be stuck with the boring job — they were still biased. On average, they judged it to be unfair for someone in the other group to give himself the easy job, but they considered it fair when someone in their own group did the same thing.
The experiment results showed that not only were humans hypocrites as far as "doing" what what they admittedly considered unfair, but that they would excuse breaking the rules if someone in their group did it but did not excuse the behaviour if it were from another group.
As Dr. DeStono said, "“The importance of group cohesion, of any type, simply extends our moral radius for lenience. Basically, it’s a form of one person’s patriot is another’s terrorist.”
Taking the results of this simple experiment can help one understand how a political side may be more "lenient" or understanding when the rules are broken or bent and may help to make better sense out of flip-flopping issues or the changing of sides or opposite voting positions when it comes to politics.
Yet, it didn't stop there. The experiment's hypothesis wanted to see if that selfish desire was stronger than a possible instinct towards fairness so after new participants assigned themselves the
easy tasks as the first group had done, some were asked to memorize lists and retain the list in their brains, keeping their brain occupied.
The results? Those who were assigned the added mental tasks were less judgemental of others, holding themselves to the same standards. The initial double-standard selfish behaviour that over three-fourths of participants exhibited disappeared.
Politicians have a job: to persuade mass (hopefully more than their opponent) followers to vote for them. The more followers, or voters, the better your place in the public eye. They must appear virtuous, even to themselves, in order to accomplish this task. Their mental calculations of past accounts, votes, visits, etc. are massive given the nature of their positions and changing legislation, hence the need for political advisers with their own agendas.
However, in the end, basic instincts override the fassad and despite the self-halo effect associated with moral hypocrisy, the gut still knows wrong from right.
