When Truth Turns to Lies

“The strength and safety associated with groups can be a wellspring of innovation, justice, and compassionate social change. These same group aspects can lead to levels of hate and destruction that individuals cannot match.” R. Scott Tindale and Jeremy R. Winget, Loyola University Department of Psychology, Chicago

In the 2019 Palgrave Handbook of Deceptive Communication, Tindale and Winget suggest that individual and group behavior differences result from inherent differences in perspectives. An individual may view a decision as an ethical question that, in a group context, would be considered a strategic or common practice.

Group members motivated by self-preferences often impede the dissemination of accurate information or withhold information conducive to collective functioning. They may lie or spin information to their advantage. Two-thirds of the time, they prevail, even when a group majority prefers cooperation.

The natural inclination of groups to enhance and protect themselves can make them more ethical than individuals, but when a group faces a decision impacting group welfare, it is easier to defend and choose alternatives to the group advantage. Thus, the group may make decisions that an outsider would consider unethical, such as lying in a negotiation, failing to disclose relevant information, or violating agreements.

Generally greedier than individuals, groups fuel the competition and deception that drive organizational scandals such as Enron’s financial coverup, British Petroleum’s devastation of the Gulf of Mexico, and Volkswagen’s false emissions software. Corporate leaders carry the blame; however, corporate and government decisions are made not by an individual but by boards, executives, and legislative bodies, often aware that they are misleading and harming their stakeholders.

Except insofar as voters indicate their preferences at the ballot box, high levels of immunity exist at all levels of government. The power wielded in office and the support of government attorneys acting not in the best interest of the people who pay them but in the best interest of the governing body that appoints them shield officials from prosecution for negligence and dishonesty.

As psychotherapist Gina Biegel describes it, “When government officials get too complacent in their roles and dismiss ethical, moral, and value transgressions, rules and laws get broken. Accountability is further diminished if there aren’t appropriate checks and balances. Such shifts in one’s moral compass come at the expense of those individuals impacted by these bad-faith decisions and actions.

"An outsider might be better able to detect these dynamics occurring in systems because outsiders, unlike insiders, don’t fear retaliation or worry about being seen as different or in the minority and are able to take a step back to gain perspective. It is necessary that the public hold government officials to higher standards, otherwise they become almost their own sovereign state, blinded by greed, narcissism, and entitlement to do what they want, when they want, and how they want. Elected and appointed officials turning a blind eye to laws and ethics is in complete dissonance and counter to their purpose—to serve the people who put them in these positions in the first place.”

Group decision-making is especially risky when self-interest and ethics face off, or group members benefit financially. Tindale and Wingett find that a group's moral compass skews toward self-interest justified by the “good intent” of serving the group, even if defecting from prior agreements, bylaws, constitutions, laws, and campaign promises.

It Goes Way Back

Group behavior harks back to evolutionary adaptive pressures. Prehistoric humans depended on hunting and fending off predators together. Groups and their members who cooperated were more likely to survive. Societies with members who sacrifice for the in-group and shun or attack out-groups are more stable. These tendencies can be beneficial when communities share resources after a disaster. Supportive group actions like helping a neighbor or working late are perceived as ethical within and outside the group, serving a positive purpose.

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Even if they do not recognize that they are doing so, when individuals begin to identify as a group, they conform to accepted behavior, favoring options that protect or enhance group welfare. During the 2007-2008 financial crisis, highly profitable predatory bank lending, while not maliciously motivated, harmed borrowers and created havoc in the economy. The consequences were foreseeable.

Company executives may consider such behavior necessary and acceptable for survival. Ironically, despite group tendencies to be more dishonest than individuals, being part of a group magnifies negative emotions toward dishonest outsiders, motivating costly punishment to protect one’s group.

Although groups are not universally prone to unethical action, fear and greed are more prevalent in intergroup than interpersonal interactions. Groups self-protect by competing more, withdrawing more, and cooperating less than individuals and are more likely than individuals to be feared and distrusted.

Researchers find that for group economic advantage:

• 36% of university students lie,
• men lie more than women (55% to 38%, respectively),
• when expecting to be distrusted, groups lie even less than the composite of their individual members because honesty optimizes group outcomes,
• if groups know others will believe and obey their message, 82% lie to further self-interest and
• most report no qualms about deception.

How can groups serve the public interest if natural group tendency is self-serving?

Groups as Exemplars of Honesty

Redirecting sensitive decisions to an individual or establishing prosocial, information-based group norms promotes ethical decisions. Social identity research finds that conspicuous group membership produces conformity to group norms. Thus, a group identifying as honest and trustworthy supports the honest identity and is less financially driven.

Groups with shared preferences exceed individuals in problem-solving by sharing information and mutually reaching solutions with win-win tradeoffs and better integrated cooperative agreements. Knowledge-based solutions are the only group outcome in which information is processed in an unbiased manner, whereby one person with demonstrable or intellectually correct answers in a shared group conceptual system can prevail. When a decision is a judgment call, the majority opinion of the individuals in the group usually prevails.

The authors conclude that the benefits to society are vast if reinforcing the message of integrity and ethics influences group decisions.