On Being Honest About Dishonesty: The Social Costs of Taking Nuanced (but Realistic) Moral Stances

Despite the well-documented costs of word–deed misalignment, hypocrisy permeates our personal, professional, and political lives. Why? We explore one potential explanation: the costs of moral flexibility can outweigh the costs of hypocrisy, making hypocritical moral absolutism a preferred social strategy to admissions of moral nuance. We study this phenomenon in the context of honesty. Across six studies (total N = 3545), we find that communicators who take flexible honesty stances (“It is sometimes okay to lie”) that align with their behavior are penalized more than hypocritical communicators who take absolute honesty stances (“It is never okay to lie”) that they fail to uphold. Although few people take absolute stances against deception themselves, they are more trusting of communicators who take absolute honesty stances, relative to flexible honesty stances, because they perceive absolute stances as reliable signals of communicators’ likelihood of engaging in future honesty, regardless of inconsistent behavior. Importantly, communicators—including U.S. government officials—also anticipate the costs of flexibility. This research deepens our understanding of the psychology of honesty and helps explain the persistence of hypocrisy in our social world.