Hugh Massie: Welcome everybody. I'm Hugh Massey, the executive chairman and founder of DNA Behavior International. And today I'm delighted to be hosting another Behavioral Economics Today podcast. And we're going to be going through a very interesting subject. I don't think it's the normal one that we associate with behavioral economics, but it's extremely important to decision making. And what the thing we try to do with these podcasts to highlight practical applications of where psychology and economic decision making come together and bring new thoughts to the table, ideas. And today I'm delighted to have Michael Halsworth to be our guest to talk about the hypocrisy trap. And Michael is a co-founder of the Behavioural Insights Group. He's based in New York, although he's got a very English accent. And so he speaks proper English. I'm trying to, being Australian. And he's a behavioural scientist and worked on this area of hypocrisy. which I'm finding ⁓ fascinating, personally challenging, business-wise challenging, all sorts of situations are hitting my head all the time about it as I've been reflecting on it the past weeks. So welcome, Michael.
Michael: Thanks Hugh, it's great to be with you. Yes, my accent has not changed yet. It's been eight years in the US now. Probably won't for the future.
Hugh Massie: Hey. Having been 20 years in the US, I don't think your accent is going to change. ⁓ But so why don't we just start out by talking a little bit about your career background and how you got to writing the book about the hypocrisy trap and the research that you did on that and what prompted you.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah, I am the chief favourable scientist at the Payroll Insights team, as you mentioned. I wrote a with my colleague, Elizabeth Kirkman, in 2020, which was an introduction to Payroll Insights. And then I'd been thinking about maybe writing another one. And in particular, just before the book came out, I read an article that was all about how people have really inconsistent views about marriage. A lot of people in the US, ⁓ particularly on the left of politics, say marriage isn't that important, for example. But actually, when it comes to it, those same people are generally married. So what they're doing in their own behavior is quite different from the opinions they're expressing. And that just stuck in my mind. ⁓
Hugh Massie: Yep.
Michael: then COVID happened and a lot of other things got in the way. But for some reason, that concept never really left me thinking about hypocrisy and how hypocrisy might actually be a much broader and more interesting concept than we tend to think. We know that hypocrisy is kind of common to our everyday lives. If you go out to someone in the street and mention this topic, they'll probably come up with an example of how hypocrisy really annoys them. And yet, often we kind dismiss it as a fairly simple thing we understand. And I became increasingly convinced that there was more to it than that. And actually we were using it in ways that we didn't fully understand and that were driving a lot of kind of anger in society as well. So I tried to explore that topic when I realized that no one else had written a book on this topic. And yet it was such a common theme in people's lives and kind of unexplained as well.
Hugh Massie: Yeah, think hypocrisy is is used a lot as a tool by people to ⁓ get their own point of view across, but they haven't necessarily thought out ⁓ what they're what they're criticizing and in a way they're opening themselves up to to a whole lot of trouble and criticism personally, because they haven't ⁓ thought out ⁓ why they might be taking somebody else on and that, you know, who's to say your values in something are more right than somebody else's or your own positions. And I think that as I've been reflecting on what, you know, on all of this myself, like obviously you had, you know, we all can be called a hypocrite some way, I think, in circumstances, because none of us as a human perfect and it's maybe it's the scale of it, it's the type of it, hypocrisy, which we'll unpack here. So do you want to, Michael, just talk a little bit more about what hypocrisy actually means?
Michael: Yeah, sure. And let me just pick up on something you just said, Hugh. You talked about the benefits. And I think it's important to start by saying that accusations of hypocrisy are not ⁓ an, how do I put this? They're not almost an innocent thing. We often have this view that there are the people who are the accusers and there are the hypocrites and there's the good side and the bad side. And one thing that I
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: bring out in the book is that often people accusing others of hypocrisy are doing it to benefit themselves in some way. It is good way of claiming status quite quickly with very little effort. And a lot of the time people making those accusations are kind of putting standards on other people that they may not lift up to themselves, particularly criticizing politicians. Now, I just want to say like that is not true all the time. Obviously, there are instances
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: where calling out hypocrisy is the right thing to do. We do it to try and maintain trust to sort of punish people who are being deceptive. So I'm not going full kind of contrarian here. In the book, I explained that there are real harms from hypocrisy as well. But the point I try to make is that unrestrained accusations of hypocrisy about every little thing actually cause a problem for us overall.
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: And so you asked me what hypocrisy is, the simplest definition I'm going to give is that it's the name we give to an inconsistency we dislike. And therefore it's a judgment. I try and say it's not really a thing that exists in society out there. It's a judgment we make about others. And I try and break it down in the book saying what drives the kind of anger in that judgment. I say that there are some building blocks. One is the level of inconsistency and we judge different kinds of inconsistency differently, whether it's, know, not practicing what you preach, maybe the classic definition. whether it's saying one thing to one person and then saying another thing to another person, being kind of two-faced in a way. Then there's the kind of benefit you get from that inconsistency, whether it's feeling good about yourself, feeling better than you deserve to. Because interestingly, hypocrisy, people judge things as hypocritical even if we don't say them out loud, even if we just feel good about ourselves, feel smug.
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: in way that we don't deserve. But also it can be social benefits, looking better than you deserve, getting a kind of status you don't deserve. Because the key here is we think those benefits are unjustified in some way. And therefore we get really angry when it turns out people didn't deserve all the credit we gave them. And there's a final thing that ⁓ I just want to say here is that we kind of mean two things ⁓ when we say hypocrisy. And I tried to bring that out in the book. One is kind of thing I just mentioned, which is looking a bit better than you deserve to. It's kind of false signals that you're a really consistent principle person. And that can be more or less good or bad. Sometimes I think we should let it go. The other kind is what I call double standards hypocrisy. And that's where you apply different rules for yourself.
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: or your group compared to another person or another group, but you pretend that's not the case. And I think that that kind of hypocrisy is more toxic. It contains the seeds of more kind of societal breakdown, and it's one we should tolerate less. So that in a kind of nutshell is some of the main factors with hypocrisy.
Hugh Massie: So in a way, there's a little bit of a continuum there, I think, in terms of what you're trying, you're putting the spotlight on, but, you know, there's the, I think the double standards one is the hypocrisy that we don't need to tolerate as you use the word toxic. I think that's not as much in a way the nuance also that you're trying to bring out here in the book. you know, that because at that one, it's unacceptable. But it's the way there's the shades of gray, perhaps, or how someone just perceives the situation. And maybe you should just be standing back a little bit. I've been sort of thinking of the word wisdom through all of this a lot more to, in a way, not judge a book by its cover, have a little bit more of a reflective thought about what's going on.
Michael: Yeah.
Hugh Massie: underneath that might be driving the situation and that you use an interesting word when you define that Michael inconsistent standards that a person might dislike and I sort of picked up on that word dislike we tend to pick up on the hypocrisy when we dislike it. And probably because our values have been challenged or we don't like the person and we're looking for a way to hang them or, you know, make a gain in some way. But but it's definitely inconsistent standards. then the dislike, I think, an interesting add on that sort of brings out the emotion that's in the situation that's involved in it the situation.
Michael: So I think picking up on your wisdom point, it's an interesting way to go because if we reflect, we don't always dislike hypocrites. There's some kind of hypocrisy we kind of like or we tolerate. And in the book, I kind of bring this out. let me give a couple of examples. One is where someone is actually behaving more virtuously than we think, even though it's inconsistent with a public image. And you might think this is a kind of contrived example and do people go around pretending to be worse than they are? Well, they might do if they are trying to have a reputation as being like a rebel or maverick or free thinker or someone who rejects moral standards. ⁓ I give in the book the example of ⁓ one of the founders of the Ashley Madison website, which was used to conduct ⁓ extramarital affairs. And in a study where people were told that, you know, actually the guy was
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: Even though he wrote a book saying cheaters prosper, that infidelity was good. If he was actually ⁓ faithful to his own wife, people thought he was really hypocritical, but actually a better person. And I think also of maybe art gallery owners who are part of the say upper middle-class elite. And yet ⁓ they often have to say things like they really ⁓ value very transgressive pieces of art because they're so great because even though they actually contradict the standards that they themselves clearly uphold by being these upper middle class citizens, because that's a different kind of status. know, art gets status through challenging norms. So you can actually be more virtuous and more hypocritical. also know that we have to ⁓ trade-offs in our lives between different kinds of values. You may have principles ⁓ that you try and uphold and you're very ⁓ in favor of and you talk about a lot. Say you've recently become a vegetarian and you're like, is absolutely the right thing to do. And then you go and ⁓ visit a relative who ⁓ know about this and has cooked this kind of... ⁓
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: famous dish she always cooks, your elderly grandmother and what do you do? If you're really consistent and not hypocritical, say, get this away from me, I don't eat that, I'm gonna reject it. Or you can kind of, as a hypocrite, kind of pick at the vegetables a bit and say it's lovely and you don't hurt your relative. Most people say that's actually the better thing to do. So I'm gonna go through many examples, I give more in the book. There are often these trade-offs. And they're often, it's not as simple as we think, because it's not always about virtue.
Hugh Massie: I think in that situation, it's, you know, the food situation, it's about, that's about social politeness and you're putting that value ahead of ⁓ what you want to choose to eat. But again, as you're saying, it's a trade off. It's the same, think, Michael, with the art gallery situation, which I thought was interesting that, you you come from a, you're in a certain social upper middle class set. ⁓ potentially conservative in your own views, but then people want to see art that is more edgy or crossing different social lines to what you personally agree with. But you might take the stance that your art gallery is also about promoting ⁓ these themes because it's good for the community overall to have a balanced view even though you don't agree. And I think there's some of the tensions that you're bringing out here but someone might say to the art gallery owner you're being a hypocrite because you're not standing up for what you deeply, at a deeper level believe, but and you're making money from something that's more liberal. I think what you're alluding to ⁓
Michael: Yeah I think also the social, what I'm getting at is even more hypocritical in a way because I think often more transgressive works of art are prized to have social status because they are challenging the conventions. And people will sort of say, oh yeah, I agree with like wonderful trans, yeah, it's really asking questions, but. that what they actually do is quite in conflict with that. They're just saying it because they're praising it because it gets them social status as well as looking like they know about art. So yeah, think my main point there is that people often think that hypocrisy is about morality and virtue. And I tried to make the point in the book that actually at root it's about status and claims to consistency to get you status of various kinds. ⁓ I think that's a big difference because the traditional understanding of hypocrisy, and I explain why in the book, the history of this, that Jesus, for example, was very against hypocrites. And so there was a big religious co-opting of the concept through Christianity and a few of the other religions. It started out as a secular concept in Greek theater. like he basically was just an actor, became more religiously tinted and then it became more secular later as people began to see it more as like you can, you know, maybe deceive other people in society, nothing to do with religion, or indeed you can deceive yourself. Self-deception can be a big part of hypocrisy as well. Rather than being like a consciously deceptive person who's you know, trying to fake their faith, for example. And there is a link to like behavioral economics here strongly because a lot of the time we're talking about inconsistency between words and actions, how you can be more consistent with your intentions, for example. That all comes out in the last part of the book where I talk about solutions and how you can sort of live up to your goals more effectively. So yeah, I found it really fascinating combination of
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: science and the philosophy and the literature going on here.
Hugh Massie: I'm glad you mentioned the behavioral economics part there because I was about to. And just I think to keep our listeners who are used to more behavioral, you know, what they would perceive as sort of business topics, to keep them coming along here that we are talking about psychology and we are talking about decision making that potentially also have financial impacts. here and people are bringing biases to the table in they perceive a situation. ⁓ as humans, know, it's part of what I do in my work is we're all different ⁓ ⁓ will bring different, you know, ⁓ biases to the table or look at the optics of situation differently, just because we're different and that drives ⁓ different decision making, but I think then how we express our thoughts ⁓ around this and how we label people potentially as hypocrites is also ⁓ problematic when people are actually trying to, I think as you've been pointing out, trying to do the right thing. ⁓ you know, a lot of cases, not always, but they are ⁓ everyone ⁓ labeled a hypocrite, I think is ⁓ setting out to do the wrong thing.
Michael: No, that's right. And I think all the things that we know about from behavioral science in terms of the things that can get in the way of achieving your goals ⁓ definitely apply here. I think that we should maybe be more tolerant of the kind of hypocrisy that is trying to seem a bit better than you deserve if it's not really harming people so much.
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: ⁓ and if you're striving for something better. ⁓ So, you know, for example, a parent who says to his or her children, don't smoke while struggling with their own habit secretly and trying to give up. Now they're hypocrites because they're smoking and they're telling their child not to, but the intention and the direction travel is good. I think That's something we should also extend to companies sometimes. I say one of the most popular parts of the book in some way will be the idea that sometimes companies are kind of forced to communicate ambitions ahead of time before they actually fulfill them. And I kind of talk about corporations a lot in the book as well because we put them in a really difficult position. We want companies to have principles. In fact, we want
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: increasingly lead them to take stances on issues. And yet they're confronted by the need to make a profit. And also at the same time, our own attitudes to companies are inconsistent. We want them to, we want to feel good while buying the products, also not to pay that much. And so we love taking down corporate hypocrisy because, you know, all the corporate signaling can be so insufferable and we think you're just doing it to make money and so on. And actually sometimes comments can be signaling to themselves. They can actually, stating ambition, which they don't completely fulfill, but they kind of talk themselves into action. And so I think we need to give companies sometimes a bit of grace to see whether they follow through on that rather than immediately jumping on any announcement and saying, look, but what about this? You're not completely consistent. ⁓ I give in the book some examples.
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: of how if you do that, everyone loses. You don't allow companies the space to actually develop. And I also talk about how companies can talk about their achievements in a less insufferable way that opens them up less to accusations of hypocrisy, pointing out that it's a step on a journey, saying actually weirdly that if they're doing something that benefits, say, the environment or something like that, saying that you're doing it
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: because it benefits your business, actually makes people less likely to accuse you of hypocrisy. You can admit mixed motives and actually that works out better. So I give the example of Starbucks reducing plastic straws and stuff. The way they communicated it was not saying we're just doing it for the environment, we're doing it because you'll get your drink quicker and it saves us money as well.
Hugh Massie: I think the positive of that is that they were being honest. And they weren't trying to act like Puritans totally. And, and of course you then if you're trying to act like a Puritan, you get your, you get, you know, you're putting yourself on a pedestal and it's easy to get knocked down. And, and it may not be realistic to achieve. the goal fully either. So it seems like in a way being honest is an important ⁓ part of this journey. ⁓ If you are, let's say, wanting to go on the journey of being environmentally clean or sound and meet ⁓ UN's EDG standards on that. It is an idiot or you want like I help businesses try to be client centered and that being the pinnacle of what they do. But you're going to face situations along the way where you can't be that or on day one, you can't be that. You've got to build towards that ideal and make a series of decisions. Or the marketplace just does things to you. You know, you're trying to build a client centered wealth management firm. but the stock market crashes. What do you do? that potentially is going to be facing a lot of firms yet, but at some point in the next few years. But I think that's what you're alluding to is, you know, these kinds of situations where circumstances can change on you, or you set an ideal ahead of time, because you want to manifest that reality and head on that path, but you can't do it all at once.
Michael: Yeah Yeah, and there's so much going on here. mean, this is really, really relevant to corporations. The consumer reaction to hypocrisy, perceived hypocrisy is kind of brutal. So there are studies showing that ⁓ if a company, for example, is found to be polluting a lake, people will recommend more jail time and higher fines for executives if the company prior
Hugh Massie: Yep.
Michael: had made a prior commitment to the environment. The action's the same, it's just the feeling of undermining trust means that you think it should be punished ⁓ more. there's a effect as well. So it's not that ⁓ by making ⁓ more promises ⁓ you will escape In fact, more promises make, the greater scrutiny you're under, the evidence suggests, there's a ratcheting effect. And so, if we want a world in which companies don't completely abandon any attempt to, I don't know, in basic terms, do something better, then we need to find a way of both tempering our criticisms towards companies and just focusing on when there is like really maligned deception, a bit like...
Hugh Massie: Yep.
Michael: when Volkswagen was making all the promises that it was incredibly environmentally friendly and was faking its emission results, resulting in widespread health effects and so on, despite winning sustainability awards. mean, that's the kind of thing that's corporate fraud and has been prosecuted versus attempts where you're trying to say, here's our goal and intention. Here's what happens. here's how we'll know if we're slightly off track, we're gonna monitor it and we're gonna make claims that are linked to our business, but not over claiming. Then I think you actually get away with a lot more and you open up more space in terms of what you can actually achieve. But I show that even companies like Patagonia, have made, know, maybe the biggest attempts to be in some ways,
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: sustainable and put their money where the mouth is, they still get accused of being hypocrites because you can never do enough. ⁓ There's always that intention, you're making a profit to say, yeah, but you don't really believe it. So I think that is the ⁓ big conundrum for companies right now. They've got these conflicting pressures from consumers and they've got the looming threat of hypocrisy accusations in the background. And let me say one final thing that's kind of interesting. ⁓ If you are shown or accused to be hypocritical as a company, not only does it have all kinds of bad effects to your businesses, the evidence is the people who are your biggest fans will actually turn on you the most. They're the ones who had their identity most closely bound to your company have the greatest incentive to distance themselves and so actually will turn you quickest.
Hugh Massie: Yep.
Michael: And then this comes back to the interesting dynamic of accusations that there's some evidence around how accusations can actually be guilt relieving. So one experiment found that if a company was shown to be producing clothes in sweatshop conditions, the people who criticized it most were the ones who actually bought products ⁓ that came from sweatshops because By the act of criticizing, they wanted to feel better about themselves and signal that they weren't like that and they felt the greatest need to. So the consumer psychology here is super interesting.
Hugh Massie: Yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely, you know, very, very powerful, you know, these situations, as you're alluding to, and I think that's why I brought up wisdom before. Because wisdom is hard when you get emotional about something, or you've had your ideals. ⁓ When you think you've had your ideals monkeyed with, ⁓ or being compromised, you know, you turn when it's a natural thing to do, but think what we're also asking people to do here to manage hypocrisy is maybe to stand back a little bit and look at the facts, what's going on, be a little bit more objective or understanding of changing circumstances. Because some of what I've been thinking about through this is regulatory change as well that goes on that just suddenly puts a company in a different place where they... can't act on all of the ideals or a court decision or as anthropic has been challenged with in the past week or so, the US government taking a rightly or wrongly, let's not make judgment calls on them or anthropic, but they're about what's happened. that might cause a change of business approach for anthropic potentially. or in some people's mind, a change of business approach because they don't understand what the pronouncements or objectives around governance are.
Michael: Yeah, that's right. And I think ⁓ the big question underlying all of this is how do principles translate into action? And what's the evidence that they aren't translating? And what standards do we apply? And so I actually talk about this in the book, particularly in the domain of politics, because I think that's where the accusations are. ⁓ Yeah. And so.
Hugh Massie: ⁓ are the most. Well and religion, I would add that too but politics a lot I think.
Michael: Yep. Yeah, and so I sort of try and say how that process of translation or realizing your values and practice is really hard in democracies as well, because there are multiple different actors, you have different power bases and so on, and you have to in some way be a little bit inconsistent. think a good example is ⁓ how Obama did the Affordable Care Act. because he said that he wasn't completely realizing his ambitions. And he wasn't achieving healthcare for all. ⁓ He said there were a ton of compromises, but he presented the policy as like a starter home, not like a finished kind of products, which you could then fix over time. So he wasn't going out there and claiming that he'd done it all. Um, and I think that's a, that's a more defensible position. If you can do it, you just have to be careful. You don't seem to be the kind of person who is always making too many compromises and will always abandon the principles. But again, we see this tension coming out because we as voters both want a politician to have principles, be very clear, not give that much nuance because that doesn't go down that well, because then it looks mealy-mouthed. But at the same time, we want them to get things done and If there's opposition, and particularly in the US, talk about bipartisanship. People love bipartisanship. But they don't seem to realise that that can be in conflict with being unyielding in your principles.
Hugh Massie: Yeah, I think, and you know, and I've been reflecting on it a fair bit that, you know, with politics, certainly in the United States is really a choice between two parties or two sides. And there's a there's a lot of gray in between. And where do you fit? And I would look at it and say, economically, I've always been a fiscal conservative, ⁓ rationalist. Should we cut down government spending? Absolutely. But the other side that flips in me is, and one can say it's a contradiction, but where's compassion sit in here as well? And I'm a big believer in, and I think I've learned this out of the leadership work I've done is the balance of results and relationships. I think... Where's how can the message be delivered more compassionately, even if the result is hard? And that's, you know, that's a challenge. And who do you support in all of that? ⁓ You know, at the end of the day, and when you've only got when you've only got two parties and you know, there's obviously a lot more factors involved in that because there's ⁓ things at work and religious principles or whatever. There's many parts ⁓ that make it ⁓ difficult and for someone to tie a completely consistent line. ⁓ And I think it's true in companies too, as we've been alluding to.
Michael: Yes, there's pressure to be clear and consistent in what you believe. We tend to like people who have clear values, even if we disagree with them. That's one of the most interesting things I found in the context of this book. I don't talk about it so much in the book, but it came out in the research when I read through around this topic. If you get a... a picture of another person, sorry, you get a description of another person. You like that person less if they don't really back up their own views, even though if you disagree with those views, you prefer someone where you know where they stand. And I think that dynamic can be true for leaders as well. But then leaders have a choice to make as well because...
Hugh Massie: Yes.
Michael: there is a kind of insurance policy against hypocrisy accusations, which is to say that you're doing things for pragmatic reasons, like you're making pragmatic decisions. If you say that rather than saying that you're doing it out of principle, then people are much more willing to forgive you when you shift because you're being pragmatic. So I think almost the test becomes as a leader, what's the mix? the optimal mix between signaling that you believe in things and that you're gonna work to try and achieve them in practice with all the compromises that that brings without shading too much into the pragmatism of I'm just doing it because it's pragmatic. Even though that pragmatic side of things means that you will be, you'll have less risk of hypocrisy accusation later.
Hugh Massie: Yeah. Yeah, I think it is a question of clarity of values sticking up for your values. And that's what I I don't really mind. You know, which side of the fence people go on if they if they if they're clear about themselves and what they stand for. But I think what we're also bringing up is circumstances can change where you've got to make a decision for the greater good. ⁓ But you need to be able to explain that and be given room to explain that. ⁓ But that doesn't mean you should just choose when you're going to flip over either. I think that's also what you're saying in there, I believe.
Michael: Yeah, and I think ⁓ this also touches on the idea of authentic leadership, because you might think that hypocrisy is the opposite of authentic leadership, right? Where you sort of just show your elements of your true self. And I think there was an interesting book came out recently that talks about this in length in terms of against authenticity at work, which is something I touch on in the book, in the sense that we need to be a bit sophisticated here. It is true that hypocritical leaders undermine employee trust, motivation and performance. There's all this evidence. And yet there are some nuances here because we also know at some level that leaders have to make pragmatic compromises they don't fully reveal to leaders. for example, part of what we want leaders to do is navigate ambiguity for us as employees. And if they're doing that, ⁓ we don't want them to communicate all the time to them that I'm really worried about getting this bridging funding. And if we don't go, you know, maybe we'll have to let people go. We just want them to maybe in that instance, project confidence and then we'll find out if the bad thing happens. And I think we know that at some level, cause you're being inauthentic in a shallow sense of like maybe ⁓ slightly sending false signals, but you're doing it to remain to a deeper principle of being respectful and caring for your employees.
Hugh Massie: Well, I think that's you're in there with the tension of transparency on one side, you're promoting the principle that I'm a transparent leader, and I'll keep you informed of everything, versus I care about everybody's well being. And I want to keep, you know, a balanced, happy, calm workplace. But if you get too transparent, in that type of situation, where it's now high risk. you're potentially tipping over the workplace and which one's more, which one's more important and which one are you going to get forgiven for at the end of the day? That's and that I think this is where we're talking a lot about trade-offs, decision making, and this is where the behavioral economics comes into play. And there will be leaders there that Talk about transparency really being very important. I've got an open door policy, come and ask me any question. But the moment you step near their front door, they push you away or the energy is just so cold. You don't want to walk in there and share an idea. And that's when it becomes a problem. And then you get the inauthentic leadership. And we're really talking very fine line here. We're talking a trust balance, I think Michael as well. ⁓ And trust is brittle. And it's probably some of this is about how do you openly confront this on a day in day out basis? How do you be more consistent on the big things more often than the little things? It's sort of like playing a game of golf, which I do. How can you be generally consistent with your shots 80 % of the time and make sure the mistakes aren't too bad, right? ⁓ To take you out of the game. And they're the decision frameworks, being back to behavioral economics, we're talking about ⁓ all the time, I think.
Michael: Absolutely. And one thing I do in the book, the hypocrisy trap, which I think is valuable, is that I try to show to people who are having to make these trade-offs and these decisions, what are the factors that really dial up or dial down the outrage, that really trigger people or not. And there is evidence about this. We know this from different studies. and I try to sort of map out ⁓ the factors which you want to avoid and the kind of the triggers that dial up or down that outrage. And that's what one real ⁓ hope I have for the book is that people can look at it and think, okay, yeah, no, actually that chimes with what I found. That thing does really drive us crazy. So let's avoid that one. Let's mitigate that risk because There will always be accusations of hypocrisy. And you could argue that in a world of social media and increasing digital traces, what you have is more material to work with. You can always point out some level of inconsistency. And one thing I haven't talked about with you, and I'll just say briefly, is there is this trap, which is if your accusations get out of control, people start thinking the concept is meaningless. They think if everything is hypocrisy, then nothing is, and it can't be used as a tool to increase trust anymore. You don't care anymore. You can just think, well, so what if I'm a hypocrite? Am I strong enough to do this? In which case, I'm just gonna do it. You can also have the opposite problem where accusations get out of control and they create this kind of ratcheting effect of, know, people search for hypocrisy everywhere. even the slightest form of inconsistency is pounced on and denounced. That in some sense is the logic of the French Revolution, the range of terrorists, like let's search out for the hypocrites who don't really believe. And in the end, everyone gets accused. ⁓ And that's also really bad because you get people not venturing to do anything better because they're worried about the gap between their ambitions and reality. And so what I'm trying to say is like accusations of hypocrisy. benefit us in an individual way, they make us feel good, they make us look good. But overall, if we overuse them, everyone loses. So there's a kind of moderation argument, which is not a one weird trick here. It's kind of an uncomfortable truth that ⁓ we can never stamp out hypocrisy completely, but neither should we tolerate it completely.
Hugh Massie: I think that's the wisdom in all of this ⁓ the balanced approach. And I think you use the term in there, ⁓ you know, in inducing right behaviors, ⁓ induced hypocrisy to, ⁓ to in a sort of in more of a gentle way, but hopefully also a direct way to show somebody supportively. ⁓
Michael: Exactly. Yes, induced hypocrisy.
Hugh Massie: you've said this before, and you're saying this now and there's a gap. Let's look at why that's the case and help them learn from the path that they're taking or the decision that they might be about to go and make or what they've done ⁓ previously so that they could so that you can make it a growth opportunity rather than a destruction opportunity. ⁓ I think it's a big part of what you've said in the book. the framework that you're providing. ⁓ to me, Michael, this is why this is not just behavioural economics. I think this is a what you've written in the hypocrisy trap is fundamental for training leaders.
Michael: I think so. And that's one thing I was really trying to get at. There's like a societal level angle here, but also just in fundamental decisions people have to make in running their organizations. There's a, there's a science of understanding what inconsistencies are tolerated and which are pounced on. And you ignore that at your peril, I think, as a leader. So I was just trying to make some practical improvements here.
Hugh Massie: Yeah. Yep. So just to wrap up, is there anything else that you'd like to say about the hypocrisy trap ⁓ that we haven't covered today? Or any sort of final piece of Michael Hall's worth wisdom that you'd like to provide?
Michael: Yeah, so I suppose I just end by saying when people hear the hypocrisy trap, they think the trap is the trap of being more hypocritical. And that is part of the book. I am trying to find ways to make us more consistent, right? But the truth is there is a level of inconsistency that is just inevitable in human life, partly because of the way ⁓ our brains work. And I talk about the end, the behavioral science angle on all this of inconsistency. And so then the question becomes, what do we actually tolerate and what do we ⁓ clamp down on? And the trap is getting that wrong. The trap is getting the accusations wrong. And so I believe people were thinking about what level of inconsistency they also practice in their everyday lives. And when they see someone else being accused of hypocrisy, they don't just focus on the hypocrite, they also think about the accuser. and the dynamic that's going on there. I think that may be a key that helps you understand how hypocrisy really works in society.
Hugh Massie: Yeah, thank you. I think this has been a fantastic conversation, very thought provoking. It certainly has been for me just thinking about this a lot more in the past few weeks since I, you know, since we first connected, you know, some weeks ago. and then having the discussion today, reading the book, studying this a lot more. think there's so much here to learn and I really appreciate you bringing this forward Michael and having the guts to do it.
Michael: Thanks, it was fun. I really enjoyed writing it and I've really enjoyed talking about it. So thank you for the invite.
Hugh Massie: That's a pleasure.
Michael: Thanks Hugh, it's great to be with you. Yes, my accent has not changed yet. It's been eight years in the US now. Probably won't for the future.
Hugh Massie: Hey. Having been 20 years in the US, I don't think your accent is going to change. ⁓ But so why don't we just start out by talking a little bit about your career background and how you got to writing the book about the hypocrisy trap and the research that you did on that and what prompted you.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah, I am the chief favourable scientist at the Payroll Insights team, as you mentioned. I wrote a with my colleague, Elizabeth Kirkman, in 2020, which was an introduction to Payroll Insights. And then I'd been thinking about maybe writing another one. And in particular, just before the book came out, I read an article that was all about how people have really inconsistent views about marriage. A lot of people in the US, ⁓ particularly on the left of politics, say marriage isn't that important, for example. But actually, when it comes to it, those same people are generally married. So what they're doing in their own behavior is quite different from the opinions they're expressing. And that just stuck in my mind. ⁓
Hugh Massie: Yep.
Michael: then COVID happened and a lot of other things got in the way. But for some reason, that concept never really left me thinking about hypocrisy and how hypocrisy might actually be a much broader and more interesting concept than we tend to think. We know that hypocrisy is kind of common to our everyday lives. If you go out to someone in the street and mention this topic, they'll probably come up with an example of how hypocrisy really annoys them. And yet, often we kind dismiss it as a fairly simple thing we understand. And I became increasingly convinced that there was more to it than that. And actually we were using it in ways that we didn't fully understand and that were driving a lot of kind of anger in society as well. So I tried to explore that topic when I realized that no one else had written a book on this topic. And yet it was such a common theme in people's lives and kind of unexplained as well.
Hugh Massie: Yeah, think hypocrisy is is used a lot as a tool by people to ⁓ get their own point of view across, but they haven't necessarily thought out ⁓ what they're what they're criticizing and in a way they're opening themselves up to to a whole lot of trouble and criticism personally, because they haven't ⁓ thought out ⁓ why they might be taking somebody else on and that, you know, who's to say your values in something are more right than somebody else's or your own positions. And I think that as I've been reflecting on what, you know, on all of this myself, like obviously you had, you know, we all can be called a hypocrite some way, I think, in circumstances, because none of us as a human perfect and it's maybe it's the scale of it, it's the type of it, hypocrisy, which we'll unpack here. So do you want to, Michael, just talk a little bit more about what hypocrisy actually means?
Michael: Yeah, sure. And let me just pick up on something you just said, Hugh. You talked about the benefits. And I think it's important to start by saying that accusations of hypocrisy are not ⁓ an, how do I put this? They're not almost an innocent thing. We often have this view that there are the people who are the accusers and there are the hypocrites and there's the good side and the bad side. And one thing that I
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: bring out in the book is that often people accusing others of hypocrisy are doing it to benefit themselves in some way. It is good way of claiming status quite quickly with very little effort. And a lot of the time people making those accusations are kind of putting standards on other people that they may not lift up to themselves, particularly criticizing politicians. Now, I just want to say like that is not true all the time. Obviously, there are instances
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: where calling out hypocrisy is the right thing to do. We do it to try and maintain trust to sort of punish people who are being deceptive. So I'm not going full kind of contrarian here. In the book, I explained that there are real harms from hypocrisy as well. But the point I try to make is that unrestrained accusations of hypocrisy about every little thing actually cause a problem for us overall.
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: And so you asked me what hypocrisy is, the simplest definition I'm going to give is that it's the name we give to an inconsistency we dislike. And therefore it's a judgment. I try and say it's not really a thing that exists in society out there. It's a judgment we make about others. And I try and break it down in the book saying what drives the kind of anger in that judgment. I say that there are some building blocks. One is the level of inconsistency and we judge different kinds of inconsistency differently, whether it's, know, not practicing what you preach, maybe the classic definition. whether it's saying one thing to one person and then saying another thing to another person, being kind of two-faced in a way. Then there's the kind of benefit you get from that inconsistency, whether it's feeling good about yourself, feeling better than you deserve to. Because interestingly, hypocrisy, people judge things as hypocritical even if we don't say them out loud, even if we just feel good about ourselves, feel smug.
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: in way that we don't deserve. But also it can be social benefits, looking better than you deserve, getting a kind of status you don't deserve. Because the key here is we think those benefits are unjustified in some way. And therefore we get really angry when it turns out people didn't deserve all the credit we gave them. And there's a final thing that ⁓ I just want to say here is that we kind of mean two things ⁓ when we say hypocrisy. And I tried to bring that out in the book. One is kind of thing I just mentioned, which is looking a bit better than you deserve to. It's kind of false signals that you're a really consistent principle person. And that can be more or less good or bad. Sometimes I think we should let it go. The other kind is what I call double standards hypocrisy. And that's where you apply different rules for yourself.
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: or your group compared to another person or another group, but you pretend that's not the case. And I think that that kind of hypocrisy is more toxic. It contains the seeds of more kind of societal breakdown, and it's one we should tolerate less. So that in a kind of nutshell is some of the main factors with hypocrisy.
Hugh Massie: So in a way, there's a little bit of a continuum there, I think, in terms of what you're trying, you're putting the spotlight on, but, you know, there's the, I think the double standards one is the hypocrisy that we don't need to tolerate as you use the word toxic. I think that's not as much in a way the nuance also that you're trying to bring out here in the book. you know, that because at that one, it's unacceptable. But it's the way there's the shades of gray, perhaps, or how someone just perceives the situation. And maybe you should just be standing back a little bit. I've been sort of thinking of the word wisdom through all of this a lot more to, in a way, not judge a book by its cover, have a little bit more of a reflective thought about what's going on.
Michael: Yeah.
Hugh Massie: underneath that might be driving the situation and that you use an interesting word when you define that Michael inconsistent standards that a person might dislike and I sort of picked up on that word dislike we tend to pick up on the hypocrisy when we dislike it. And probably because our values have been challenged or we don't like the person and we're looking for a way to hang them or, you know, make a gain in some way. But but it's definitely inconsistent standards. then the dislike, I think, an interesting add on that sort of brings out the emotion that's in the situation that's involved in it the situation.
Michael: So I think picking up on your wisdom point, it's an interesting way to go because if we reflect, we don't always dislike hypocrites. There's some kind of hypocrisy we kind of like or we tolerate. And in the book, I kind of bring this out. let me give a couple of examples. One is where someone is actually behaving more virtuously than we think, even though it's inconsistent with a public image. And you might think this is a kind of contrived example and do people go around pretending to be worse than they are? Well, they might do if they are trying to have a reputation as being like a rebel or maverick or free thinker or someone who rejects moral standards. ⁓ I give in the book the example of ⁓ one of the founders of the Ashley Madison website, which was used to conduct ⁓ extramarital affairs. And in a study where people were told that, you know, actually the guy was
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: Even though he wrote a book saying cheaters prosper, that infidelity was good. If he was actually ⁓ faithful to his own wife, people thought he was really hypocritical, but actually a better person. And I think also of maybe art gallery owners who are part of the say upper middle-class elite. And yet ⁓ they often have to say things like they really ⁓ value very transgressive pieces of art because they're so great because even though they actually contradict the standards that they themselves clearly uphold by being these upper middle class citizens, because that's a different kind of status. know, art gets status through challenging norms. So you can actually be more virtuous and more hypocritical. also know that we have to ⁓ trade-offs in our lives between different kinds of values. You may have principles ⁓ that you try and uphold and you're very ⁓ in favor of and you talk about a lot. Say you've recently become a vegetarian and you're like, is absolutely the right thing to do. And then you go and ⁓ visit a relative who ⁓ know about this and has cooked this kind of... ⁓
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: famous dish she always cooks, your elderly grandmother and what do you do? If you're really consistent and not hypocritical, say, get this away from me, I don't eat that, I'm gonna reject it. Or you can kind of, as a hypocrite, kind of pick at the vegetables a bit and say it's lovely and you don't hurt your relative. Most people say that's actually the better thing to do. So I'm gonna go through many examples, I give more in the book. There are often these trade-offs. And they're often, it's not as simple as we think, because it's not always about virtue.
Hugh Massie: I think in that situation, it's, you know, the food situation, it's about, that's about social politeness and you're putting that value ahead of ⁓ what you want to choose to eat. But again, as you're saying, it's a trade off. It's the same, think, Michael, with the art gallery situation, which I thought was interesting that, you you come from a, you're in a certain social upper middle class set. ⁓ potentially conservative in your own views, but then people want to see art that is more edgy or crossing different social lines to what you personally agree with. But you might take the stance that your art gallery is also about promoting ⁓ these themes because it's good for the community overall to have a balanced view even though you don't agree. And I think there's some of the tensions that you're bringing out here but someone might say to the art gallery owner you're being a hypocrite because you're not standing up for what you deeply, at a deeper level believe, but and you're making money from something that's more liberal. I think what you're alluding to ⁓
Michael: Yeah I think also the social, what I'm getting at is even more hypocritical in a way because I think often more transgressive works of art are prized to have social status because they are challenging the conventions. And people will sort of say, oh yeah, I agree with like wonderful trans, yeah, it's really asking questions, but. that what they actually do is quite in conflict with that. They're just saying it because they're praising it because it gets them social status as well as looking like they know about art. So yeah, think my main point there is that people often think that hypocrisy is about morality and virtue. And I tried to make the point in the book that actually at root it's about status and claims to consistency to get you status of various kinds. ⁓ I think that's a big difference because the traditional understanding of hypocrisy, and I explain why in the book, the history of this, that Jesus, for example, was very against hypocrites. And so there was a big religious co-opting of the concept through Christianity and a few of the other religions. It started out as a secular concept in Greek theater. like he basically was just an actor, became more religiously tinted and then it became more secular later as people began to see it more as like you can, you know, maybe deceive other people in society, nothing to do with religion, or indeed you can deceive yourself. Self-deception can be a big part of hypocrisy as well. Rather than being like a consciously deceptive person who's you know, trying to fake their faith, for example. And there is a link to like behavioral economics here strongly because a lot of the time we're talking about inconsistency between words and actions, how you can be more consistent with your intentions, for example. That all comes out in the last part of the book where I talk about solutions and how you can sort of live up to your goals more effectively. So yeah, I found it really fascinating combination of
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: science and the philosophy and the literature going on here.
Hugh Massie: I'm glad you mentioned the behavioral economics part there because I was about to. And just I think to keep our listeners who are used to more behavioral, you know, what they would perceive as sort of business topics, to keep them coming along here that we are talking about psychology and we are talking about decision making that potentially also have financial impacts. here and people are bringing biases to the table in they perceive a situation. ⁓ as humans, know, it's part of what I do in my work is we're all different ⁓ ⁓ will bring different, you know, ⁓ biases to the table or look at the optics of situation differently, just because we're different and that drives ⁓ different decision making, but I think then how we express our thoughts ⁓ around this and how we label people potentially as hypocrites is also ⁓ problematic when people are actually trying to, I think as you've been pointing out, trying to do the right thing. ⁓ you know, a lot of cases, not always, but they are ⁓ everyone ⁓ labeled a hypocrite, I think is ⁓ setting out to do the wrong thing.
Michael: No, that's right. And I think all the things that we know about from behavioral science in terms of the things that can get in the way of achieving your goals ⁓ definitely apply here. I think that we should maybe be more tolerant of the kind of hypocrisy that is trying to seem a bit better than you deserve if it's not really harming people so much.
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: ⁓ and if you're striving for something better. ⁓ So, you know, for example, a parent who says to his or her children, don't smoke while struggling with their own habit secretly and trying to give up. Now they're hypocrites because they're smoking and they're telling their child not to, but the intention and the direction travel is good. I think That's something we should also extend to companies sometimes. I say one of the most popular parts of the book in some way will be the idea that sometimes companies are kind of forced to communicate ambitions ahead of time before they actually fulfill them. And I kind of talk about corporations a lot in the book as well because we put them in a really difficult position. We want companies to have principles. In fact, we want
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: increasingly lead them to take stances on issues. And yet they're confronted by the need to make a profit. And also at the same time, our own attitudes to companies are inconsistent. We want them to, we want to feel good while buying the products, also not to pay that much. And so we love taking down corporate hypocrisy because, you know, all the corporate signaling can be so insufferable and we think you're just doing it to make money and so on. And actually sometimes comments can be signaling to themselves. They can actually, stating ambition, which they don't completely fulfill, but they kind of talk themselves into action. And so I think we need to give companies sometimes a bit of grace to see whether they follow through on that rather than immediately jumping on any announcement and saying, look, but what about this? You're not completely consistent. ⁓ I give in the book some examples.
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: of how if you do that, everyone loses. You don't allow companies the space to actually develop. And I also talk about how companies can talk about their achievements in a less insufferable way that opens them up less to accusations of hypocrisy, pointing out that it's a step on a journey, saying actually weirdly that if they're doing something that benefits, say, the environment or something like that, saying that you're doing it
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: because it benefits your business, actually makes people less likely to accuse you of hypocrisy. You can admit mixed motives and actually that works out better. So I give the example of Starbucks reducing plastic straws and stuff. The way they communicated it was not saying we're just doing it for the environment, we're doing it because you'll get your drink quicker and it saves us money as well.
Hugh Massie: I think the positive of that is that they were being honest. And they weren't trying to act like Puritans totally. And, and of course you then if you're trying to act like a Puritan, you get your, you get, you know, you're putting yourself on a pedestal and it's easy to get knocked down. And, and it may not be realistic to achieve. the goal fully either. So it seems like in a way being honest is an important ⁓ part of this journey. ⁓ If you are, let's say, wanting to go on the journey of being environmentally clean or sound and meet ⁓ UN's EDG standards on that. It is an idiot or you want like I help businesses try to be client centered and that being the pinnacle of what they do. But you're going to face situations along the way where you can't be that or on day one, you can't be that. You've got to build towards that ideal and make a series of decisions. Or the marketplace just does things to you. You know, you're trying to build a client centered wealth management firm. but the stock market crashes. What do you do? that potentially is going to be facing a lot of firms yet, but at some point in the next few years. But I think that's what you're alluding to is, you know, these kinds of situations where circumstances can change on you, or you set an ideal ahead of time, because you want to manifest that reality and head on that path, but you can't do it all at once.
Michael: Yeah Yeah, and there's so much going on here. mean, this is really, really relevant to corporations. The consumer reaction to hypocrisy, perceived hypocrisy is kind of brutal. So there are studies showing that ⁓ if a company, for example, is found to be polluting a lake, people will recommend more jail time and higher fines for executives if the company prior
Hugh Massie: Yep.
Michael: had made a prior commitment to the environment. The action's the same, it's just the feeling of undermining trust means that you think it should be punished ⁓ more. there's a effect as well. So it's not that ⁓ by making ⁓ more promises ⁓ you will escape In fact, more promises make, the greater scrutiny you're under, the evidence suggests, there's a ratcheting effect. And so, if we want a world in which companies don't completely abandon any attempt to, I don't know, in basic terms, do something better, then we need to find a way of both tempering our criticisms towards companies and just focusing on when there is like really maligned deception, a bit like...
Hugh Massie: Yep.
Michael: when Volkswagen was making all the promises that it was incredibly environmentally friendly and was faking its emission results, resulting in widespread health effects and so on, despite winning sustainability awards. mean, that's the kind of thing that's corporate fraud and has been prosecuted versus attempts where you're trying to say, here's our goal and intention. Here's what happens. here's how we'll know if we're slightly off track, we're gonna monitor it and we're gonna make claims that are linked to our business, but not over claiming. Then I think you actually get away with a lot more and you open up more space in terms of what you can actually achieve. But I show that even companies like Patagonia, have made, know, maybe the biggest attempts to be in some ways,
Hugh Massie: Yeah.
Michael: sustainable and put their money where the mouth is, they still get accused of being hypocrites because you can never do enough. ⁓ There's always that intention, you're making a profit to say, yeah, but you don't really believe it. So I think that is the ⁓ big conundrum for companies right now. They've got these conflicting pressures from consumers and they've got the looming threat of hypocrisy accusations in the background. And let me say one final thing that's kind of interesting. ⁓ If you are shown or accused to be hypocritical as a company, not only does it have all kinds of bad effects to your businesses, the evidence is the people who are your biggest fans will actually turn on you the most. They're the ones who had their identity most closely bound to your company have the greatest incentive to distance themselves and so actually will turn you quickest.
Hugh Massie: Yep.
Michael: And then this comes back to the interesting dynamic of accusations that there's some evidence around how accusations can actually be guilt relieving. So one experiment found that if a company was shown to be producing clothes in sweatshop conditions, the people who criticized it most were the ones who actually bought products ⁓ that came from sweatshops because By the act of criticizing, they wanted to feel better about themselves and signal that they weren't like that and they felt the greatest need to. So the consumer psychology here is super interesting.
Hugh Massie: Yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely, you know, very, very powerful, you know, these situations, as you're alluding to, and I think that's why I brought up wisdom before. Because wisdom is hard when you get emotional about something, or you've had your ideals. ⁓ When you think you've had your ideals monkeyed with, ⁓ or being compromised, you know, you turn when it's a natural thing to do, but think what we're also asking people to do here to manage hypocrisy is maybe to stand back a little bit and look at the facts, what's going on, be a little bit more objective or understanding of changing circumstances. Because some of what I've been thinking about through this is regulatory change as well that goes on that just suddenly puts a company in a different place where they... can't act on all of the ideals or a court decision or as anthropic has been challenged with in the past week or so, the US government taking a rightly or wrongly, let's not make judgment calls on them or anthropic, but they're about what's happened. that might cause a change of business approach for anthropic potentially. or in some people's mind, a change of business approach because they don't understand what the pronouncements or objectives around governance are.
Michael: Yeah, that's right. And I think ⁓ the big question underlying all of this is how do principles translate into action? And what's the evidence that they aren't translating? And what standards do we apply? And so I actually talk about this in the book, particularly in the domain of politics, because I think that's where the accusations are. ⁓ Yeah. And so.
Hugh Massie: ⁓ are the most. Well and religion, I would add that too but politics a lot I think.
Michael: Yep. Yeah, and so I sort of try and say how that process of translation or realizing your values and practice is really hard in democracies as well, because there are multiple different actors, you have different power bases and so on, and you have to in some way be a little bit inconsistent. think a good example is ⁓ how Obama did the Affordable Care Act. because he said that he wasn't completely realizing his ambitions. And he wasn't achieving healthcare for all. ⁓ He said there were a ton of compromises, but he presented the policy as like a starter home, not like a finished kind of products, which you could then fix over time. So he wasn't going out there and claiming that he'd done it all. Um, and I think that's a, that's a more defensible position. If you can do it, you just have to be careful. You don't seem to be the kind of person who is always making too many compromises and will always abandon the principles. But again, we see this tension coming out because we as voters both want a politician to have principles, be very clear, not give that much nuance because that doesn't go down that well, because then it looks mealy-mouthed. But at the same time, we want them to get things done and If there's opposition, and particularly in the US, talk about bipartisanship. People love bipartisanship. But they don't seem to realise that that can be in conflict with being unyielding in your principles.
Hugh Massie: Yeah, I think, and you know, and I've been reflecting on it a fair bit that, you know, with politics, certainly in the United States is really a choice between two parties or two sides. And there's a there's a lot of gray in between. And where do you fit? And I would look at it and say, economically, I've always been a fiscal conservative, ⁓ rationalist. Should we cut down government spending? Absolutely. But the other side that flips in me is, and one can say it's a contradiction, but where's compassion sit in here as well? And I'm a big believer in, and I think I've learned this out of the leadership work I've done is the balance of results and relationships. I think... Where's how can the message be delivered more compassionately, even if the result is hard? And that's, you know, that's a challenge. And who do you support in all of that? ⁓ You know, at the end of the day, and when you've only got when you've only got two parties and you know, there's obviously a lot more factors involved in that because there's ⁓ things at work and religious principles or whatever. There's many parts ⁓ that make it ⁓ difficult and for someone to tie a completely consistent line. ⁓ And I think it's true in companies too, as we've been alluding to.
Michael: Yes, there's pressure to be clear and consistent in what you believe. We tend to like people who have clear values, even if we disagree with them. That's one of the most interesting things I found in the context of this book. I don't talk about it so much in the book, but it came out in the research when I read through around this topic. If you get a... a picture of another person, sorry, you get a description of another person. You like that person less if they don't really back up their own views, even though if you disagree with those views, you prefer someone where you know where they stand. And I think that dynamic can be true for leaders as well. But then leaders have a choice to make as well because...
Hugh Massie: Yes.
Michael: there is a kind of insurance policy against hypocrisy accusations, which is to say that you're doing things for pragmatic reasons, like you're making pragmatic decisions. If you say that rather than saying that you're doing it out of principle, then people are much more willing to forgive you when you shift because you're being pragmatic. So I think almost the test becomes as a leader, what's the mix? the optimal mix between signaling that you believe in things and that you're gonna work to try and achieve them in practice with all the compromises that that brings without shading too much into the pragmatism of I'm just doing it because it's pragmatic. Even though that pragmatic side of things means that you will be, you'll have less risk of hypocrisy accusation later.
Hugh Massie: Yeah. Yeah, I think it is a question of clarity of values sticking up for your values. And that's what I I don't really mind. You know, which side of the fence people go on if they if they if they're clear about themselves and what they stand for. But I think what we're also bringing up is circumstances can change where you've got to make a decision for the greater good. ⁓ But you need to be able to explain that and be given room to explain that. ⁓ But that doesn't mean you should just choose when you're going to flip over either. I think that's also what you're saying in there, I believe.
Michael: Yeah, and I think ⁓ this also touches on the idea of authentic leadership, because you might think that hypocrisy is the opposite of authentic leadership, right? Where you sort of just show your elements of your true self. And I think there was an interesting book came out recently that talks about this in length in terms of against authenticity at work, which is something I touch on in the book, in the sense that we need to be a bit sophisticated here. It is true that hypocritical leaders undermine employee trust, motivation and performance. There's all this evidence. And yet there are some nuances here because we also know at some level that leaders have to make pragmatic compromises they don't fully reveal to leaders. for example, part of what we want leaders to do is navigate ambiguity for us as employees. And if they're doing that, ⁓ we don't want them to communicate all the time to them that I'm really worried about getting this bridging funding. And if we don't go, you know, maybe we'll have to let people go. We just want them to maybe in that instance, project confidence and then we'll find out if the bad thing happens. And I think we know that at some level, cause you're being inauthentic in a shallow sense of like maybe ⁓ slightly sending false signals, but you're doing it to remain to a deeper principle of being respectful and caring for your employees.
Hugh Massie: Well, I think that's you're in there with the tension of transparency on one side, you're promoting the principle that I'm a transparent leader, and I'll keep you informed of everything, versus I care about everybody's well being. And I want to keep, you know, a balanced, happy, calm workplace. But if you get too transparent, in that type of situation, where it's now high risk. you're potentially tipping over the workplace and which one's more, which one's more important and which one are you going to get forgiven for at the end of the day? That's and that I think this is where we're talking a lot about trade-offs, decision making, and this is where the behavioral economics comes into play. And there will be leaders there that Talk about transparency really being very important. I've got an open door policy, come and ask me any question. But the moment you step near their front door, they push you away or the energy is just so cold. You don't want to walk in there and share an idea. And that's when it becomes a problem. And then you get the inauthentic leadership. And we're really talking very fine line here. We're talking a trust balance, I think Michael as well. ⁓ And trust is brittle. And it's probably some of this is about how do you openly confront this on a day in day out basis? How do you be more consistent on the big things more often than the little things? It's sort of like playing a game of golf, which I do. How can you be generally consistent with your shots 80 % of the time and make sure the mistakes aren't too bad, right? ⁓ To take you out of the game. And they're the decision frameworks, being back to behavioral economics, we're talking about ⁓ all the time, I think.
Michael: Absolutely. And one thing I do in the book, the hypocrisy trap, which I think is valuable, is that I try to show to people who are having to make these trade-offs and these decisions, what are the factors that really dial up or dial down the outrage, that really trigger people or not. And there is evidence about this. We know this from different studies. and I try to sort of map out ⁓ the factors which you want to avoid and the kind of the triggers that dial up or down that outrage. And that's what one real ⁓ hope I have for the book is that people can look at it and think, okay, yeah, no, actually that chimes with what I found. That thing does really drive us crazy. So let's avoid that one. Let's mitigate that risk because There will always be accusations of hypocrisy. And you could argue that in a world of social media and increasing digital traces, what you have is more material to work with. You can always point out some level of inconsistency. And one thing I haven't talked about with you, and I'll just say briefly, is there is this trap, which is if your accusations get out of control, people start thinking the concept is meaningless. They think if everything is hypocrisy, then nothing is, and it can't be used as a tool to increase trust anymore. You don't care anymore. You can just think, well, so what if I'm a hypocrite? Am I strong enough to do this? In which case, I'm just gonna do it. You can also have the opposite problem where accusations get out of control and they create this kind of ratcheting effect of, know, people search for hypocrisy everywhere. even the slightest form of inconsistency is pounced on and denounced. That in some sense is the logic of the French Revolution, the range of terrorists, like let's search out for the hypocrites who don't really believe. And in the end, everyone gets accused. ⁓ And that's also really bad because you get people not venturing to do anything better because they're worried about the gap between their ambitions and reality. And so what I'm trying to say is like accusations of hypocrisy. benefit us in an individual way, they make us feel good, they make us look good. But overall, if we overuse them, everyone loses. So there's a kind of moderation argument, which is not a one weird trick here. It's kind of an uncomfortable truth that ⁓ we can never stamp out hypocrisy completely, but neither should we tolerate it completely.
Hugh Massie: I think that's the wisdom in all of this ⁓ the balanced approach. And I think you use the term in there, ⁓ you know, in inducing right behaviors, ⁓ induced hypocrisy to, ⁓ to in a sort of in more of a gentle way, but hopefully also a direct way to show somebody supportively. ⁓
Michael: Exactly. Yes, induced hypocrisy.
Hugh Massie: you've said this before, and you're saying this now and there's a gap. Let's look at why that's the case and help them learn from the path that they're taking or the decision that they might be about to go and make or what they've done ⁓ previously so that they could so that you can make it a growth opportunity rather than a destruction opportunity. ⁓ I think it's a big part of what you've said in the book. the framework that you're providing. ⁓ to me, Michael, this is why this is not just behavioural economics. I think this is a what you've written in the hypocrisy trap is fundamental for training leaders.
Michael: I think so. And that's one thing I was really trying to get at. There's like a societal level angle here, but also just in fundamental decisions people have to make in running their organizations. There's a, there's a science of understanding what inconsistencies are tolerated and which are pounced on. And you ignore that at your peril, I think, as a leader. So I was just trying to make some practical improvements here.
Hugh Massie: Yeah. Yep. So just to wrap up, is there anything else that you'd like to say about the hypocrisy trap ⁓ that we haven't covered today? Or any sort of final piece of Michael Hall's worth wisdom that you'd like to provide?
Michael: Yeah, so I suppose I just end by saying when people hear the hypocrisy trap, they think the trap is the trap of being more hypocritical. And that is part of the book. I am trying to find ways to make us more consistent, right? But the truth is there is a level of inconsistency that is just inevitable in human life, partly because of the way ⁓ our brains work. And I talk about the end, the behavioral science angle on all this of inconsistency. And so then the question becomes, what do we actually tolerate and what do we ⁓ clamp down on? And the trap is getting that wrong. The trap is getting the accusations wrong. And so I believe people were thinking about what level of inconsistency they also practice in their everyday lives. And when they see someone else being accused of hypocrisy, they don't just focus on the hypocrite, they also think about the accuser. and the dynamic that's going on there. I think that may be a key that helps you understand how hypocrisy really works in society.
Hugh Massie: Yeah, thank you. I think this has been a fantastic conversation, very thought provoking. It certainly has been for me just thinking about this a lot more in the past few weeks since I, you know, since we first connected, you know, some weeks ago. and then having the discussion today, reading the book, studying this a lot more. think there's so much here to learn and I really appreciate you bringing this forward Michael and having the guts to do it.
Michael: Thanks, it was fun. I really enjoyed writing it and I've really enjoyed talking about it. So thank you for the invite.
Hugh Massie: That's a pleasure.
