Page 36 - MidWeek - August 11 2021

36 MIDWEEK AUGUST 11, 2021
I’m a guy, and a female friend asked me to ob- jectively rate her looks onascaleof1to10.Shehas a very high opinion of her looks, but she insisted she wanted the truth, so I told herI’dputherata5.5or 6. Afterward, she sent me a text about boundaries and said she’s cutting me out of her life — for being honest like she asked me to! – Burned
If there were a class in “how to be a heterosexual man,” lesson one would be how to answer a woman’s questions about her appear- ance. She’ll insist you give an honest answer to the classic
THE SCIENCE ADVICE GODDESS Amy Alkon
The Honest-to-goodness Truth About The Liar Drill
gotcha question: “Do I look fat in this dress?” Always lie. Well, unless you are held at gunpoint or threatened with disemboweling with a steak knife or rusty pliers. In which case, also lie.
and researchers Joseph Gas- par and Maurice Schweitzer. They define deception as “the transmission of information that intentionally misleads others.” That sounds pretty awful. However, they sug- gest, “Think about what you should do when your grand- mother asks if you enjoyed her meatloaf” or “your friend asks if you enjoyed her wed- ding reception.” In situations like these, lying “might be the exactly right thing to do” (tempting as it might be to tell your friend you wish you’ d been given a choice: attending the reception or being repeat- edly electrocuted via a car bat- tery attached to your nipples).
These feelings-preserving
falsehoods are “prosocial lies.” “Prosocial” is psych professor-ese for “intended to help other people.” Prosocial lies mislead but also benefit the person we’ re lying to, explain Gaspar and Sch- weitzer. It’s basically benev- olent deception — in service of kindness and even respect.
yes. And we’d even take this claim a step further.” Instead of telling our kids never to lie, “we should teach them the guiding principle of be- nevolence” and advise them to make “careful — and de- liberate — choices when they face a conflict between telling the truth and being kind.”
reassurance that she’s pretty. Judicious honesty is the right amount of honesty at the right time. For a personal example, I’m pretty slim, but there is no pair of skinny jeans in which I do not look like a redhead stuffed into a sausage casing. There’s a time to gen- tly hint that I might put a pair of skinny jeans out to pasture, and it’s not moments after I strut into a party all Alkon- wursty, but in the cold light of several days afterward. You’ll be doing your sworn job as my friend, looking after my interests, but in a way that allows me to enjoy myself at the party instead of hiding under a parked car with the
cat till it’s over.
Admittedly, this advice is at odds with the black-and-white notions of honesty and decep- tion drilled into us from an ear- ly age: Honesty, good! Lying, evil! If we lie, terrible things will happen to us — such as cancer of the nose (as seen in that lie-arrhea-prone puppet, Pinocchio) or pants that spon- taneously explode into flame.
Reflecting on the merits of prosocial lying, they ar- gue that “deception has been unfairly disparaged” because “scholars have conflated de- ception with the pursuit of self-interest.” Schweitzer, in Friend & Foe, advocates that the truth be judiciously told, or withheld. The bot- tom line: “Is it ethical to tell prosocial lies? Our answer is
The same goes for situ- ations that no amount of honesty can change. Take your friend asking you where she lands on the 1-to-10 hotitude scale. She probably believed she was seeking an honest review, and it’s reasonable that you took her at her word. How- ever, she was probably fish- ing not for the truth but for
“For centuries, philoso- phers and ethicists have railed against deception,” note business school professors
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