A new study from the University of Illinois at Chicago has implications for both politicians and advertisers — and should scare anyone who cares about ethics.
The study involved having consumers
. . . read a political monologue about federal funding for Planned Parenthood that they believed was previously aired over public radio.
Respondents were randomly assigned one of two feedback conditions where upon completion they were informed that the monologue they had just read was either true or false.
Consumers were then asked whether they felt the monologue was justified. The bottom line:
- If the consumer agreed with the monologue, they were less critical of it, regardless of whether they were told it was true or false.
- If the consumer disagreed with the monologue, they were more critical of it regardless of whether they were told it was true or false.
In other words, in today’s America, it doesn’t matter if someone is telling the truth or lying as long as the consumer agrees with what they are saying. Functionally, that’s a blank check for a politician or advertiser to say anything as long as it includes something the consumer wants to hear.
Unfortunately, this “culture of lying” has consequences. It affects where people want to live, work and spend their money.
As an Airbnb host, we’ve been getting an earful from foreign travelers who don’t want to live here as well as workers who are asking for transfer back to their home countries. We have a doctor who views the level of medical errors in the US as unacceptable and disgusting. We have the Irani who says that, if she becomes ill, she will return to Iran for treatment rather than seek treatment in the US. We have a mother from Europe who is leaving so her daughter won’t become “Americanized”. We have the black teacher who grew up in the US and now works in Saudi Arabia, and says that her quality of life is better there than it ever was in the US.
We have the realtor from Kansas who lives in an American enclave near Mexico City and has seen a 41% increase in sales to Americans moving south this year. Mexico claims that it has 2 million Yanquis living there, most undocumented immigrants. South Korea has close to 1 million Yankee civilians; there are other large pockets in UK, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica, Australia and other countries. The US Government itself is mum on the number of Americans leaving the country. (All of these numbers exclude military and government personnel stationed outside the US.)
A primary complaint among expats is that they want to escape what the US political culture has become. That brings us back to our topic — the moral acceptability of lying.
For some of us, lying remains unacceptable regardless of the excuse.
Sources:
- Allison B. Mueller, Linda J. Skitka. Liars, Damned Liars, and Zealots. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2017; 194855061772027 DOI: 10.1177/1948550617720272
- University of Illinois at Chicago. “We tolerate political lies for shared views, study suggests.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 3 August 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170803145640.htm>
There is inequality in the provision of healthcare in the US. We know that since we know that life expectancy is associated with wealth. However, an outright admission of prejudice is rare.
should strive to show just the qualities that Lincoln showed – his steadfastness in striving after the right and his infinite patience and forbearance with those who saw that right less clearly than he did; his earnest endeavor to do what was best, and yet his readiness to accept the best that was practicable when the ideal best was unattainable; his unceasing effort to cure what was evil, coupled with his refusal to make a bad situation worse by any ill-judged or ill-timed effort to make it better.”
site, but did not allow the troops to keep the gear or use it while doing the cleanup.