Lies and consequences

"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on." --Winston Churchill

Let’s get right to the point: the old cynic was right, people lie.

I witnessed a great instance of this as a research neophyte on a project involving credit card use. Our group of heavy credit users (those who consistently owe close to the maximum amount available on their credit line) went around the room cheerfully estimating the number of credit cards they owned at “two or three”. These men and women appeared to be very proper people of the type who brush their teeth regularly and teach their children to be good honest citizens. They all sternly claimed to dislike credit cards, use them only when strictly necessary, and pay their bills as promptly as possible.

Then the moderator tripped them up: she asked them to pull out their wallets and count the actual number of credit cards they found there. They all had at least seven (this was the eighties, by the way). Self-righteousness gave way to red-faced laughter. They turned it into a joke, competing to see who had told the biggest lie: one particularly elegant woman who counted twenty-some separate cards was proclaimed the winner.

So why do people lie in research studies? What’s in it for them?

It’s obvious from their embarrassed laughter that my credit-line maxers lied mainly to avoid embarrassment. Although the focus group I describe was completely confidential, although the others in the room were strangers there was no obvious reward for impressing, the participants lied to preserve an appearance of responsible frugality befitting their clean clothes. That appearance clearly mattered deeply to these people.

This kind of ''irrational" lying is a common problem for more than just researchers. A study of Mexicans applying for state assistance found that though applicants under-reported their ownership of cars and other items they feared would disqualify them, an act of rational self-interest, they also over-reported having items like toilets and concrete vs. dirt floors in their homes—to avoid embarrassment about their abject living conditions. In this case, their embarrassment could potentially cost them dearly. (1)

What does it all mean? In keeping with my project in this blog, the fact that other people lie isn’t where this is going. In order to learn from this, I need to turn the two-way mirror on myself.

Urk. Um. Shouldn’t I be doing something important, like flossing, which I do after every meal? Or practicing my flute (I do that every day, religiously).

To make this a little easier, I am going to employ the pronoun “we” here forth.

As social animals, we need to trust each other, which you might think would lead us to be honest. But we also need to look acceptable to each other, and one of the main reasons for that is also our need to trust. Disapproval threatens social bonds—you can’t really trust someone who disapproves of you to be kind or helpful to you. Honesty is the ironic casualty of this need for trust.

(I’m not speaking about intimate relationships here—family, friends. The need for intimacy is in part the need to be loved as we are, and that will generally lead us to be more truthful about ourselves to our intimates. It’s imperfect, of course, but it’s generally true, which is why researchers often get more truthful results if they interview people in the company of friends or family.)

When it comes to honesty, we need to search our own souls and be as empathic as possible with other people. If you were put on the spot, would you reveal behavior that is generally unacceptable? While I like to believe that in that situation I would simply refuse to answer a question, I doubt that I am being honest with myself. I’m one of those unfortunates who turn red and choke up when I say something that I know is untrue, but I compensate for this social deficit with some pretty nimble rationalization and self-censorship.

Truth be told, the social interactions we have are not based on honesty, but on trust. Can I believe strangers or acquaintances when they tell me I'm looking great, or that they enjoyed my presentation? Not really. If I want honesty, I'm going to have to turn to those who trust me enough to give me honest feedback. But I can enjoy the sensation of belonging and safety I experience because they felt a desire to put me at ease.

All this dishonesty isn't such a terrible problem. You just have to face it honestly.

(1) César Martinelli and Susan W. Parker; Deception and Misreporting in a Social Program; http://ideas.repec.org/p/cla/levrem/321307000000000120.html; First Version: June 2006; This Version: May 2007

Reasons to be cheerful

I recently had reason to check out a study on optimism done by a psychologist called Lisa Aspinwall back in 1996. The study compared how people deal with health risk and danger information, depending on their level of optimism. (1)

What it found may be counter-intuitive: the more optimistic people tend to be, the more attention they pay to that scary information about side effects and long-term risks. So your optimist isn't really some pie-in-the-sky, head-in-the-sand stereotype. Instead, they are people with the courage to face and deal with problems.

Here's how it works:

1) The optimist believes that problems are mostly solvable.
2) This leads her or him to seek information or resources that can help solve the problem.
3) Information leads to smarter actions, which create a more positive, successful outcome.
4) The initial optimistic tendency is confirmed and reinforced in a virtuous cycle.

I was mulling this over when considering whether to reduce my news consumption, which I have to admit is making me pretty jumpy, not to mention mad as hell. Since I'm an anxious type of person (see prior posts) I definitely don't count as an optimist.

But I wonder if despite my disposition, the optimist's strategy might help me to reduce anxiety even better than turning off the evening news. In general, I'll go out of my way to avoid even potentially unpleasant information (e.g., getting the right medical tests done on time). What if instead of avoiding the problem, I decided to face it square on and deal with it if it arises? What if I had more faith in my ability to cope well given the right information?

When you look at it this way, the optimist is a hard core realist, and anxious doubters like me are the ones with our heads in the sands. Hmmm.....

(1) Distinguishing Optimism from Denial: Optimistic Beliefs Predict Attention to Health Threats. Lisa G. Aspinwall and Susanne M. Brunhart; Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1996; 22; 993

Life, death, and doctors

I've been mulling over a recent project in which we interviewed people who are mainly old, and mainly very, very sick. As a fifty+ American, I have the usual anxieties over inevitable age-related illness and my no-doubt completely inadequate insurance coverage. So I'm hardly an objective observer!

Beyond sickness itself and the financial hell it entails, I'm concerned about the time when I will rely more on doctors than I do today. I've never gotten along very well with doctors, who seem to operate more like faith-healers than scientists much of the time. I know it's not their fault; diagnosis is frequently a guessing-game and if anything, all those expensive new diagnostic tests make the guessing more complicated. Unfortunately, knowing that doesn't help me to feel like a competent consumer of medical care; quite the opposite--I feel helpless and suspect that my wallet is being exploited.

Given my personal issues around health care, it was extraordinary to sit behind the mirror and watch a parade of very sick people talk about their medical care. These are folks with mutiple conditions which, in the words of one of them, are going to "get me", sooner rather than later. Most had already encountered Mr. D in the course of prior heart attacks or strokes.

I observed two very different attitudinal groups. (Bear in mind that this is not a quantitative result, just an observation, as most of these blog posts will be.) One group tended to display a faint little smile, sit back in the chair, talk matter-of-factly about symptoms and outcomes, and speak of their doctors with faith. Why didn't they have all the facts about their condition? "My doctor tries to protect me." Why didn't they even know the name of their condition? "Probably he/she said it, but I don't remember." Are they curious about new treatments? "If my doctor thinks I need it he/she will tell me."

The other (a minority) were the angry ones. They sat up straight and did not smile. They wanted to believe they could be cured, but they didn't trust anyone's help very much. So they focus on all of the things they can control, from healthy behaviors to internet searches. When they saw the information we had for them, they asked the key question: "Why didn't my doctor tell me this!!??" (I have to admit I felt a little sorry for the doctors when these respondents left the room.)

Probably--actually, almost definitely--the angry patient receives and will continue to receive better care than the accepting group. That's because they act like consumers of health care, not parishioners in the Temple of Health. They expect and demand clear, accurate information, and that helps them to make better lifestyle decisions as well as treatment decisions. This is the group I identify with.

But which group would I rather belong to? If it came down to a complete breakdown of my health--the accepting patients. For one thing, they are completely right. Probably their doctor is trying to protect them from information that will only make them anxious. Probably their doctor would tell them about any treatments that could really help them, with help defined a little more loosely. Their diseases are going to "get" them, sooner rather than later, no matter what treatment they receive. So "help" doesn't just mean treatment, it means acceptance; being emotionally and physically comfortable enough to enjoy the time you have left.

All of this leaves me with a question about life, appropriate to my middle-aged lifestage and anxiety-prone character: wouldn't it be better to learn to let go a little? To accept that death is part of the narrative that is Me? That it shouldn't in any way prevent me from enjoying the wonders of the universe I've been born into? Would I want to spend my waning days fighting with doctors? Really? Because there are much better things to do with my limited time.

Anger inspires you to work on problems. Acceptance can let you live well despite problems. There is a season for each of them; I hope that somewhere along the way I gain the wisdom to know when the seasons turn.

What's Important?

As an advertising strategist, I have a strange window on humanity--the two-way mirror of the focus group room. I sit on one side, in the dark. On the other side, people of all types, ages, sexes, sizes talk about ads and products. We ask whether the photo of the middle aged woman in this ad is "relevant". Or if the brochure we are planning to write is hefty enough to be "important". Thanks to trends and fashions, all of this learning is about as eternal and profound as dust in the wind.


Yet after twenty years lurking in the darkened back room, combing through surveys and dissecting research reports, it has finally occurred to me that I was searching for something that actually matters. No matter what I am researching, as a strategist I always want to understand what's important to people. And that's a profound question.


If you watch people's faces as they react and discuss ads (eew! yessss! *yawn*), you soon realize that people bring their full humanity to every decision, no matter how concrete or obvious their reasons are on the surface. Nonetheless, experts in advertising psychology have distilled the rich spectrum of human motivations down to short lists that include things like sex, self-esteem, self-preservation, and greed. Did I mention sex?


Maybe this is basically true, but it's also hopelessly reductionist. (It's easy to boil the soup until there's nothing but brown goop left, too, but you won't learn much about soup that way.) And from my personal point of view, it's sadly dismissive of the actual lives and concerns of all of the individual human beings I've been watching through the mirror all these years. What if you or I were on the other side of the mirror? Would we want our voices to be heard as the grunts and screeches of primitive impulse?


I've watched young people talk about buying their first car and though self-esteem was obviously a big part of that experience, so was everything from childhood memories to their dreams of having children of their own. I've watched older people in the last stages of crippling illness talk about how they manage their conditions and though they certainly still care about self-preservation, they could also teach every one of us about endurance, dignity, and humor.


So this blog isn't about the useful reductions and formulations common in my industry. It's about what I've actually learned about people throughout the years. It isn't scientific, because I am not a scientist. Call it a diary of revelations granted to me by my fellow beings; my personal antidote to the cynicism of the marketplace.