Two apparently unassociated issues struck chords with me this morning. This first was this report from the Guardian:
Many car brands emit more pollution than Volkswagen, [a] report finds: Diesel cars by Fiat, Suzuki and Renault among makers emitting up to fifteen times European standard for nitrogen oxide
The second was another Guardian report headed:
Bradley Wiggins faces a fight for his reputation in wake of Wada hack
What do they have in common? A suspicion that something less than the whole truth has been told. It was always going to be a surprise if VW were alone in having problems with diesel emissions: if the standards were hard to achieve it was odd that only one company failed. And it is also odd on initial reading, I admit (although I suspect there may be a perfectly good explanation) that so many top cyclists have asthma.
Neither story says there is wrong doing. Both say more could have been said, which is the point I am making. Saying just enough, or saying nothing when positive assurance could lay matters to rest, is usually a mistake and yet time and again people make it.
I put this in the context of a discussion over the weekend where a male friend noted that as far as he could see what every women wanted online was someone who was honest. He thought it should be made a default option in dating profiles as a result to save the time of having to write it. I pointed out it may be bitter experience that made this a priority. It certainly is with those demanding transparency of the business community.
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It’s more ‘hard to do’ in circumstances where dishonesty reigns (Greshams Law). Our social and public history of the last thirty years has been a procession of high-level dishonesty being enabled if not rewarded so it’s not surprising the trait is copied. It’s not just impressionable young boys copying the antics of overpaid, narcissistic footballers that is of concern when we look for examples or role models of good behaviour, as intensely social apes, everyone takes their cue from the context in which they live. The reward of peerages, vast pension pots, lucrative sinecures, adulation, prizes and attention to dishonest business and political figures sends clear messages.
Kahnemann and Tversky have shown that the behaviour choices of individuals in populations appear on a distribution. Both extreme tails of that distribution (at the one end compulsive honesty-peddlers and at the other psychopaths and sociopaths; both display relatively fixed patterns of behaviour, less affected by their environment) contain a few percentage points of the population. The rest of us (90% of the population) inhabit a spectrum between these two extremes and exhibit behaviour which is highly influenced by context; we will all steal paperclips and justify the action to ourselves afterwards. Very few people are inherently ‘honest’ in any circumstances but we are mainly honest if the context demands it.
So the other answer to your question is ‘because we have failed to design contexts which discourage or frustrate dishonest behaviour choices’. To break the cycle of dishonest behaviour being copied, we need to demonstrate that it is unacceptable, punish offenders and be seen to do so, then change the systemic nature of the context to be far more difficult in which to be dishonest. In other words, charge dishonest people, make them do the orange jump-suited walk of shame, then find ways to make it more difficult for the dishonest to thrive and prosper in the future. We may then all be a lot more happy that honesty is more prevalent.
So, if you thought that you were going to have to walk the orange jump suited walk of shame would you tell the truth?
I’m one of those at the extreme truth-telling end of the spectrum so not representative.
How would YOU choose to behave?
The thing about “honesty” is that whilst there is a dictionary definition of it, it’s always open to interpretation. A common defence line is relevance.
Sir Bradley Wiggins, for example, is defending his claim in his book where he stated that he was clean and never had ANY injections other than vaccinations for travel. With the hacking leak, this was shown to be untrue as he had had various other injections. His defence is that when he said “injections” he meant intravenous ones whereas the ones of the banned drugs he took (under TUE) were intra-muscular, and therefore don’t count, so he didn’t lie… So, he says he was honest. From the point of view of the question being asked, he considered the injections to be relevant, therefore it was reasonable and ‘honest’ to claim he hadn’t had any, because the ones he had were irrelevant.
So, to the point of emissions, I expect VW might have justified it to themselves in their own mind or internally as, irrelevant. Sure, in real use the emissions limits are exceeded but the purpose of the test is to show that the engine is capable of passing the test. In this case, it’s bogus of course, but my point remains, honesty is hard to do because everyone judges it differently in borderline cases especially where there is partisan motivation.
In both cases though, I don’t buy it. Injection to the average person means a vial of liquid going into your body via a needle (I remember that much from med school). He got caught and his excuse is silly. The use of any TUE drugs ought to be public. If he claims it’s for allergies, then fine, but that means another athlete has a better immune system than him so is the use of the drug really excusable anyway if it’s use to mitigate genetics?
“the purpose of the test is to show that the engine is capable of passing the test”
I meant like that on a driving test you’re on best behaviour but once you pass the test you drive like a maniac. Perhaps that was VW’s thinking. I’m not excusing it.
Every MP found to be a hypocrite has an excuse. Rarely do they say “it’s a fair cop”. Even David Cameron on Panama had an excuse because everyone wants to protect their brand. Rarely does someone say “I was wrong. I have no excuse” – though partly that’s because it’s then used by anyone to beat them with forever. People don’t forgive when there is political capital to be made.
By the way, about online dating and honesty, I recall from when I employed people (I am semi-retired now) CVs often stated that someone was “honest and hardworking” etc. I wonder if we should have immediately rejected the people who didn’t say they were honest.
Where are the incentives for honesty?
If there are disincentives, are they enforceable?
Can we challenge the boardroom belief that the good opinion of the public and ‘reputational damage’ can be bought off by media spend and good PR?
We can list examples of wrongdoing and mendacity all day: all were committed in the certainty that there would be no consequences.
It would be more productive to highlight examples where lying proved to be a painfully expensive mistake.
The incentives are the risk of being found out and exposed as ‘dishonest’ if people don’t buy into your excuse. Ask Lance Armstrong – end of career.
Or if you don’t declare your tips to the revenue and they find out, you go to jail.
Seems like enough incentive. On the other hand, someone will factor in the chance of being caught and decide the risk is worth taking vs. the benefit that the half-truth or lie might bring.
Being an occasional cyclist I can say that one of the reasons why cyclists might suffer from asthma is that they spend a lot of time breathing in the noxious fumes from diesel vehicles. I’d think that any cyclist could have told the powers that be long ago that the manufacturers of diesel vehicles were fiddling their emissions figures. But then again, governments never wanted to hear that.
I hadn’t seen that link!
Ware a mask – I always have done and it has changeable filters. The filters are black with particulates and other filth. They are well worth it believe you me.
When I was a kid in Oz in the 70s, competitive swimming was full of asthmatics – quite disproportionate for the population. Seen as a good way to strengthen breathing. It had been the thing to do for decades before. I did it for that reason.
Some of those kids went on to become Olympians etc.
Don’t know if it is the same for cycling, but I can see the parallels.
Why is honesty so hard to do? I’m assuming the headline is rhetorical and simply to draw attention to the general lack of integrity in society. Nothing new there but some may think that the emphasis on materialism and the financialisation of everyday life may have excacerbated a human failing that has demonised our existence since Adam & Eve (allegorically).
All authentic religions & philosophies offer wisdom and advice on this topic, not least Quakers – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimony_of_integrity.
While it is of course useful to cast light into dark corners in order to trigger social reform for the benefit of the many, honesty / integrity are basic qualities that each of is should essentially question within ourselves before judging others.
I hope that doesn’t sound too ‘pompous’ for a Monday – lol!
That’s fine with me
Oops – ‘us’ not ‘is’*
The Guardian had an article on this back in April :
Why do so many elite athletes have asthma ?
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/apr/29/elite-athletes-asthma-simon-yates-team-sky-swimmers
Fascinating
And a complete reply
Honesty is hard to do because it does not always benefit us.
I was honest with a colleague when I scuffed his car in the car park and then watched as he took advantage of my honesty and milked the insurance side of things for all he could get. He treated the free car etc., as reward – an opportunity to have fun. And my premium went up – that was my reward.
There is also plenty of evidence around us in public life on the political and celeb scenes that illustrate that dishonesty works – it results in money and power.
Then we look at people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange who by all appearances did what they did in the public interest and look how they get treated!!!
These days what is good is actually bad and what is bad is actually good (yes I know – not a fantastic generalisation). It all smacks of some kind of decline to me in our civilisation.
Worrying.
Agreed
I would say, after the wretched EU referendum, that the two main forces in British political life now are dishonesty and stupidity. Politicians (mostly from the right)who are shameless liars get ignorant/bitter/desperate voters to vote for whatever nonsense they are peddling, such as leaving the EU, or voting in the Conservatives in 2015. Depressing is a better word than worrying I think.
Why is honesty hard? Actually, because people do not want it.
Social convention requires that the answer to a simple how are you? is along the lines of I’m fine, even if you are very far from well or at ease. From that it’s easy to extrapolate out the view that people don’t actually care what you get up to, and it’s relatively harder in those cases to see where the line is between behaving in a way that’s socially acceptable and transgressing.
I often break that convention, just for the sake of it
I wish others would