tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post2832849858815026189..comments2024-03-25T11:49:21.281-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: A Theory of HypocrisyEric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-35576807803099496802022-05-23T03:11:43.193-07:002022-05-23T03:11:43.193-07:00My coauthor and I have a new working paper explain...My coauthor and I have a new working paper explaining Hypocrisy from a purely strategic standpoint, https://www.cesifo.org/en/publikationen/2022/working-paper/theory-hypocrisy <br /><br />Our theory is that it comes down to the relative costs of different actions. If it is very costly to make the effort, or 'lie,' at all, but once one has started to lie, the cost of further lies (or efforts to appear 'better,' in terms of group-values, than one is in private) is relatively small, we should observe Hypocrisy. Would love to hear your thoughts on it! <br /><br />Best regards,<br /><br />Alice Alice Hallmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-27301503957906695362015-10-26T16:47:44.101-07:002015-10-26T16:47:44.101-07:00Robert -- thanks for the quote and the reference t...Robert -- thanks for the quote and the reference to that very cool essay by G.A. Cohen. On cognitive dissonance, I think that's one way *out* of hypocrisy. One adjusts one's beliefs to match one's behavior. Then one can be entirely sincere!<br /><br />That's part of why I think there can be something admirable about the hypocrite. She continues to affirm her principles rather than giving into the pressure to shift her principles to suit her behavior. I'd rather have a hypocritical Nazi who secretly loves Jews than someone who has tweaked hismelf into sincere Jew-hatred via cognitive dissonance.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-70898283509746985392015-10-25T17:06:51.783-07:002015-10-25T17:06:51.783-07:00Hello Eric,
Thanks for this thought-provoking pos...Hello Eric,<br /><br />Thanks for this thought-provoking post. It seems to me that a major cost of hypocrisy, in addition to the ones you mentioned, is cognitive dissonance. Thus, hypocrisy often results in unprincipled adjustment of beliefs to suit behavior. <br /><br />I wanted to flag my favorite quote on hypocrisy, by George Eliot in <i>Middlemarch</i>:<br /><br />There may be coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all, to whatever confession we belong...<br /><br />(G.A. Cohen puts this quote to apt use here: http://www.giffordlectures.org/books/if-youre-egalitarian-how-come-youre-so-rich/10-political-philosophy-and-personal-behavior)<br /><br />-Rob<br /><br /><br /><br />Robert Longhttp://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/object/RobertLong.htmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-5631824916150774472015-09-25T09:19:33.323-07:002015-09-25T09:19:33.323-07:00Callan: Fair enough.
David: Right -- obviously so...Callan: Fair enough.<br /><br />David: Right -- obviously some disadvantages to that!Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-24824444639668475962015-09-25T04:22:23.197-07:002015-09-25T04:22:23.197-07:00Like in the small town surveillance state where ev...Like in the small town surveillance state where everyone knows your business?David Duffynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-44177178122201717412015-09-25T03:18:52.244-07:002015-09-25T03:18:52.244-07:00For one, we find the opportunistic brands so forgi...<i>For one, we find the opportunistic brands so forgivable as be invisible. The egregious species we generally greet with our own public demonstrations of outrage. </i><br /><br />Aww, so cruel!Callan S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15373053356095440571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-12887914384111110182015-09-25T03:06:47.289-07:002015-09-25T03:06:47.289-07:00Eric, well it's probably a throwback to a trib...Eric, well it's probably a throwback to a tribal time as Scott suggests. But even then, exactly how easy is it to hop between communities? In terms of getting a job, lots of people agree it's not what you know, but who you know. Hopping communities means giving up the job in that community and hitting a network brick wall.<br /><br />Plus if those new communities are, say, not terribly forgiving of you giving hate speach against them, you can't join them or will join only to be found out eventually. As soon as you lay out some hate against what you actually are, you're commited to the community you're in.<br /><br />I feel like I'm describing chess configurations, heh!Callan S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15373053356095440571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-6893859124749699422015-09-24T10:00:07.566-07:002015-09-24T10:00:07.566-07:00Callan: You write: "What's the best way t...Callan: You write: "What's the best way to survive in a community that hates homosexuals, when you are one? Become a hater!" Yeah, sometimes that can be a good strategy, especially if you can deflect suspicions about your own behavior that way ("He hates them so much, it's not possible he could be one, despite this one reason to be suspicious.") But it's a high-risk strategy, and I'm not sure it's generally optimal, especially if there are ways to exit the community to find a similar community that is more tolerant.<br /><br />Scott: That seems about right to me (although "so forgivable as to be invisible" is a little too strongly put, maybe). I especially like your point about how it might play out differently in small communities. I do think that public pronouncements can have this self-regulatory effect (a point Victoria McGeer has nicely emphasized), and that can be part of the function of such pronouncements. It’s a nice further thought that technique might have worked better in ancestral environments than in the modern metropolis.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-6380420623486105272015-09-24T09:52:12.482-07:002015-09-24T09:52:12.482-07:00Scott Bakker writes:
If you situate these behavio...Scott Bakker writes:<br /><br />If you situate these behaviours in a hunter gatherer context, I think the apparent irrationality of the risk/reward evaporates, and you can see acts of egregious hypocrisy (apart from hypocrisy more generally) in quite a different light. In small communities characterized by extreme codependence, the chances of acting on taboo urges are accordingly smaller. Verbally condemning the activity, publicly professing outrage at these urges, can be seen as a management strategy, a way to leverage normative behaviour via pitting social instincts against reproductive ones, say. These people are instinctively making it more difficult to do what they do, the problem being that the impersonal nature of the modern social world renders the strategy effectively toothless. It could just be a malfunctioning coping mechanism.<br /><br />Hypocrisy more generally seems to turn on 'situational opportunism,' the local exploitation of attention and memory limitations, stuff like that, and 'ingroup opportunism,' the ways in which we manage interpersonal relations via mutual 'other-way-looking.' It's quite different than the spectacular instances of Eliot Spitzer or Jimmy Swaggart, say. For one, we find the opportunistic brands so forgivable as be invisible. The egregious species we generally greet with our own public demonstrations of outrage. Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-30213105333805814742015-09-22T18:59:06.524-07:002015-09-22T18:59:06.524-07:00With the preacher, I'd attribute a different p...With the preacher, I'd attribute a different psychological ecology (especially in regards to being 'tempted' to homosexuality. Tempted to engage in his sexuality is different than that)<br /><br />What's the best way to avoid being killed by a nazi? Become a nazi!<br /><br />What's the best way to survive in a community that hates homosexuals, when you are one? Become a hater!<br /><br />Ironically, driven by the need to survive and then running into the temptation of riches that come from really inciting hatred (and there are riches in it!), they become paragons of hating...the thing they are.<br /><br />Callan S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15373053356095440571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-86553757037491686842015-09-22T09:43:54.687-07:002015-09-22T09:43:54.687-07:00Having just finished a Socratic conversation, with...Having just finished a Socratic conversation, with my wife and 6 month old grandchild on her lap about 'being aware of going down that road and resting on laurels' I now engage the Platonic way...note, for the philosopher, salient conduct with-without purpose could lead to the friction needed for the neutrality in transformation instead of the inconspicuousness of transition....Arnoldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02580641063222662041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-15520210400985585322015-09-22T09:13:08.363-07:002015-09-22T09:13:08.363-07:00Thanks for the comments, Howie and Rolf!
Howie: Y...Thanks for the comments, Howie and Rolf!<br /><br />Howie: Yes, it is an interesting analogy, I think, moral behavior and dieting. In both cases, it's so tempting and easy to come up with excuses, to miscount and mis-estimate, and in general to feel like you're exerting effort and trying to make progress while in fact you aren't progressing at all!<br /><br />Rolf: Yes -- I 100% agree! Thanks for highlight this dimension of it.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-79045850359167906582015-09-22T01:37:01.648-07:002015-09-22T01:37:01.648-07:00Hello Eric, thanks for touching one of the most ex...Hello Eric, thanks for touching one of the most exciting topics in social psychology, no matter in what bad shape that field now stands. I would like to add a few points. One, the fundamental attribution error might be at play: When we "sin" ourselves, we can see the situation and reflect on the situational triggers which "made" us behave badly. Watching others, our attention is fixed on their behavior, giving the impression that they acted from "bad" character.<br /><br />Furthermore, if we act badly, we are aware of all the rationalizations and instances of "dissonance reduction" that make our bad behavior appear understandable, if not noble to ourselves. We don't see these "attenuating circumstances" in others. Still, there must be more going on. This is a "biblical" subject.Rolf Degenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11189924731801181022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-53581538428910587602015-09-21T18:51:27.446-07:002015-09-21T18:51:27.446-07:00To augment your analysis (I think) hypocrisy is li...To augment your analysis (I think) hypocrisy is like cheating on your diet or failing to do anything you really want- the diet book I read (by a cognitive psychologist) taught me how easy it is to violate your diet unless a series of techniques, like using index cards to remind you why you want to diet are employed.<br />The analogy is the great philosophical schools who employed a whole cognitive and behavioral regimen to overcome temptation.<br />What I'm saying is that belief (professed belief) is insufficient and needs to be backed up by reinforcement and cognitive techniques to be effective<br />we are easily unmoored.<br />This is compatible I suppose with your theoryhowie bermannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-83875032359165867402015-09-21T14:29:43.407-07:002015-09-21T14:29:43.407-07:00On Facebook, Jonathan Kaplan posted this comment, ...On Facebook, Jonathan Kaplan posted this comment, which I found helpful enough that I wanted to share it here:<br /><br />"But I don't think it is at all hypocritical to be an environmentalist committed to combating climate change, and taking no steps in one's personal life to do so. If one thinks, as is surely correct, that climate change is an especially ugly collective action problem, with very powerful groups poised to lose almost unthinkable amounts of money if it is actually addressed, one might reasonably conclude that any policy that promotes individual decision making as the solution is just stupid, and in fact, more likely to do harm than good ("If we all just made good decisions..." No. That won't in fact work, and pretending that it will distracts us from e.g. the hard work of forging enforceable international agreements.)"<br /><br />My reply: Good point, Jonathan Kaplan. I'd be inclined to distinguish two cases here. A non-hypocritical case would be to defend the implementation of environmental regulations from the top down, while doing nothing personally other than that. A hypocritical case would be to scold someone for running her A/C at 76 degrees while running one's own at 75 degrees (without good reason). There will be a range of intermediate cases between these that might be more nuanced in terms of the presence or absence of hypocrisy.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.com