Unable to tell the truth or admit you're wrong?

You're not alone

The French minister for education upset people recently. Amélie, and presumably her husband, decided to place their children in an elite private school. The reason given being that in the public sector school they had previously attended she got ‘frustrated’ because too many hours of teaching were lost because teachers were absent and not replaced. Amélie mentioned this in public and, surprisingly, the people who work at the school got upset. Amélie then decided to apologise and said she was sorry to have upset some public sector teachers. An interesting apology, if it can be called such, Amélie didn’t say she was wrong, nor retract her statement, she simply excused herself after having upset some people.

It should be noted that you can’t really excuse yourself, normally you ask to be excused by the person or people you just pissed off.

Anyway ..

Along with an impressively long list of public figures Amélie wasn’t able to admit she was wrong, just that she upset some people. Politicians sometimes find themselves confronted with overwhelming evidence that what they did or are continuing to do is not good. An example of this is the austerity imposed in the UK by Cameron and Osborne when they were in government. There are people, competent, skilled and independent, called scientists who analyse what’s going on, look at the data, try to find causal relationships and so on. They spend their lives doing this and can get very good at it, Cameron got a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. This may mean that he is competent to talk about economics but would seem to indicate that he isn’t qualified to talk about things like public health.

British children who grew up during the austerity period are, on average, smaller that those who came before. Height is like a barometer for a number of public health issues, poor sleep quality, poverty, poor diet, illness, stress are things that negatively impact physical growth. Poverty, poor diet, illness and stress got much worse during the austerity period as public services, health spending were cut to ‘encourage economic growth’. Result? Waiting lists for medical services increased, more people dropped into food poverty and more people lost their homes.

An ongoing tragedy and the FACT is that British people got smaller. There must be a reason for this, the gradual increase in average height over the previous decades doesn’t suddenly reverse itself for no reason. Researchers find that it correlates to the austerity period and the impact of said period on people’s health and well-being. Denigrating the numerous studies pointing this out David (degree in philosophy, politics and economics) and George (degree in modern history) categorically deny that their austerity programme had a negative impact on the health and well-being of the British population.This despite all the research done by specialists (most of whom have Doctorates and a lot of experience in their fields) which show there is a strong causal link. Other studies show that the relatively high rate of deaths from Covid were also linked to the austerity policies. According to David and George these experts are wrong.

One reason for D and G flying in the face of the experts and the evidence might be that they are worried that others may see them as being incompetent. This theory would be ok if D and G are the sort of people who would be worried about this, they don’t seem to be. This might correlate to the fact that people coming from wealthy homes and elite educations tend to be less empathic than less well off people and so less worried about what people may think of them.

Perhaps it’s pride that stops people admitting they’re wrong? According to the dictionary pride means having an excessively high opinion of oneself and one’s abilities. This would seem to match with D and G who consider that their relatively uniformed opinions are more accurate than those of more expert people.

If we consider that D and G are educated and intelligent then this brings up the worrying question as to whether or not they are simply lying to save face. Lying at this level requires some pretty high level cognitive abilities, you need to have inhibitory control. This is an executive function that allows people to inhibit their impulses and select a behaviour that improves their chances of attaining a goal. Lying also means having a good working memory, you need to remember what you lied about in order to maintain the lie.

When someone first starts lying for personal gain their amygdala don’t like it and stimulate a negative feeling. As the liar develops their ‘skill’ the amygdala respond less and less and lying becomes easier and easier.

Unfortunately when someone lies their nose doesn’t get longer nor do their pants catch fire both of which would be noticeable.

A study showed that people with higher cognitive functions (capacity for logical reasoning, abstract/critical thinking and introspection) have a greater tendency to recognize and resist misinformation. If we assume that David and George, thanks to their family and education have higher cognitive functions then this would seem to mean that they know they were wrong but won’t admit it. It is also very worrying as their austerity policies negatively impacted the cognitive functions of a whole generation.

Despite what the Who said in their song we will get fooled again.

Being bombarded with lies makes it very difficult for us to understand what is really going on and then make appropriate choices, it’s difficult to be objective but the lying seems to be getting worse. For example this study seems to show that Republicans tend to increasingly base their opinions on unreliable sources. I quote “However, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the current dissemination of misinformation in political discourse is linked to an alternative understanding of truth and honesty that emphasizes invocation of subjective belief at the expense of reliance on evidence.”

It’s all ridiculous because people tend to see those who admit to messing up in a better light. We see them as friendlier, more agreeable, we feel closer to them and even feel that they are more competent not less. In a more prosocial world people would freely admit it if they messed up and lying for personal gain would simply stop happening as getting found out would hit the liar’s social standing like a sock full of custard. Crème anglaise for the French speakers and by the way we tend to feel that non-native language speakers are less trustworthy. What’s that about?