You’re a Hypocrite and It’s Destroying Democracy. Here’s Why.
By: Jeff Valdivia
Tags: Self-awareness, Politics, Mindfulness, Psychology, Morality

I am, too.

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

Imagine you attended the first session of a psychological experiment on “cognitive training” several weeks ago. Today is the follow-up session. You’ve just arrived and are ushered into a small waiting room. In it, you find two people already seated. There is one empty chair and you sit down.

A minute later, someone on crutches and wearing a boot on her foot enters the room. She notices there are no open seats, lets out a big sigh, and then leans up against the wall, clearly in discomfort.

You quickly glance at the other two people. They both ignore her.

What do you do?

Do you give up your chair to this person who’s in obvious need? Or, do you copy what the others do and pretend the problem doesn’t exist?

If you think you’d offer her your chair, you’re probably wrong. This study found that only 14% of participants offered their chair to someone who clearly needed it. Just so we’re clear, that’s only one in seven people!

Of course, the scenario was a ruse. The other two people seated were actors, as was the person “in distress.” The test also wasn’t quite fair. There’s something called the bystander effect, which makes it less likely for you to help someone if there are other people present.

But, from the outside looking in, 86% of people kind of look like assholes, don’t they?

You might be tempted to say, “Yeah, most humans are assholes!”, but let’s try not to jump to conclusions. After all, you probably don’t consider yourself an asshole. Maybe you’ve done asshole-ish things, but that doesn’t mean you’ve got “asshole” branded on your soul, right?

But, isn’t it interesting that we tend to label other people as “assholes” far more often than we do ourselves or people we feel similar to? Don’t we seem to love to rage about the moral hypocrisy of others while simultaneously turning a blind eye when it occurs in ourselves or people we identify with?

What does this say about us? Why does each of us think we’re exempt from moral failings? And, most importantly, what do we do about it?

We’re all moral hypocrites

Imagine you’re involved in another study. You’re taken into a room and seated at a computer. The researcher tells you there are two tasks. The “green” task will take about 10 minutes and consists of a photo hunt. The “red” task will take about 45 minutes and consists of logic problems. You can either assign yourself one of the tasks based on preference or use the computer to randomly assign one for you. The catch? If you perform the “green” task, the next participant will perform the “red” task, or vice versa.

The researcher then leaves the room.

What would you do?

More importantly, what do you think is fair?

The researchers had some participants make the decision and other participants watch actors choose “green” for themselves. Participants then rated either how fairly they behaved or how fairly the actors behaved on a scale from 1 (“extremely unfairly”) to 7 (“extremely fairly”). The participants who selected “red” or had the computer assign the task to them were excluded from the results.

When rating their own actions — that is, choosing the “green” task — participants rated their fairness at about 4. However, when rating the actions of someone else — that is, actors choosing the “green” task — participants rated their fairness at about 3.

Interestingly, if participants were made to feel similar to the actor they were observing, they rated the actor’s actions as a little higher than 4. On the flip side, if participants were made to feel dissimilar to the actor, they rated the actor’s actions as a little less than 3.

As a result, the authors concluded:

At a basic level, preservation of a positive self-image appears to trump the use of more objective moral principles. It is equally disconcerting, however, that the stain of hypocrisy actively spreads to group-level social identities, and in so doing may inflame intergroup discord.

What this means is that how we assess moral actions depends on our relationship with the person performing them. We tend to think of ourselves as having moral principles that stay constant. We’re wrong.

Why would this be the case?

The same authors performed a follow-up study to answer this very question. What they suspected was that people rationalized — that is, made excuses for — their behavior, but not the behavior of others.

So, when the participants were again asked to rate the fairness of the same actions, the researchers kept the participants’ rational minds preoccupied with what they called a cognitive load. In this case, it meant the participants were asked to remember and report on a series of 7-digit numbers as they were answering the questions.

What the researchers found was that, under cognitive load, the participants didn’t rate their actions any differently than the actions of others. They concluded:

Hypocrisy readily emerged under normal processing conditions, but disappeared under conditions of cognitive constraint.

Isn’t that interesting? Our intuitions about morality and fairness are consistent — but it is our rational minds that twist and distort the circumstances to turn us into hypocrites.

Combatting moral hypocrisy in ourselves

We see hypocrites everywhere we look. The news and social media abound with stories of people self-righteously claiming one thing while doing the opposite. It’s amazing how sensitive we are to morality, except where it matters most — in ourselves.

If you take anything from this article, I hope it’s that you’re not exempt from this uncomfortable truth. Don’t believe me? Simply watch your mind the next time you judge your actions or the actions of another. What you’ll see is your mind scrambling to interpret the information in a way that supports what you already believe — which is that you and the people you agree with are the “good guys” and that all others are the “bad guys”.

The trouble is, this isn’t something that will miraculously fix itself. The polarization of society is resulting from none of us recognizing our own hypocrisy. There’s a lot at stake here. Perhaps even democracy itself.

So, the next time you see someone acting immorally, stop yourself from rushing toward an immediate judgement. Take a step back and ask yourself if you haven’t acted similarly in the past. You just might realize that they’re not so different from you.