I agree that in some cases, including the homophobic parents example, lying can be justified. Even in significantly more mild cases, I can see lying as occasionally consequently the better course of action, even if you take into account the chance of the lie being found out and trust being lost/hurt to other people due to being lied to.
However, correct me if I am wrong but you seem to be arguing something much stronger than this? From my read this article promotes at least accepting, maybe even encouraging, using white lies as a way to ease potentially uncomfortable social situations. I’d guess some of the other commenters (particularly Alicorn) have a similar read, and that’s prompting some strong reactions. While white lie culture may be common, and going against the grain (e.g. replying that you’re not particularly keen on some item of clothing when asked by an acquaintance) may go against our social instincts, refusing to say you don’t like things in many situations disallows useful opinion giving in all similar situations. If I want to get a second opinion on something, I want to ask someone who will give me information. If no matter their true opinion, they’ll give some mild nicity/white lie to spare my feelings, I’m not going to learn much. If every time someone asks if their friends if their new hair cut suits them their friends must say yes, that person is both never going to learn they have a haircut few people like and maybe more importantly they’re going to start automatically downgrading similar praise, quite correctly, because “people saying my haircut is nice” has zero correlation to the haircut being nice.
I accept that many, maybe even a significant majority of, people do just look for compliments or niceties some of the time. I accept that giving them those compliments rather than honesty may be better for their self-esteem in the short term. However, I have found that so long as I present myself as direct but gentle from the start and don’t hide honesty from someone then spring it on them at a bad moment, a vast majority of even those compliment seekers at least respect gentle honesty and many of them find it refreshing. Perhaps this is in part due to my social group being unusually tolerant, and this strategy would fail elsewhere.
On the other side, I prefer people to be honest with me and attempt to self-modify towards being someone who would, in all but the most convoluted situations, prefer in the long term to be told the truth in response to all serious questions. I do this specifically so I can appear to be a person who it is better to tell the truth to in effectively every case, because I want to be able to reliably get true opinions. This is something I have never had a negative reaction to once explained, and has been the gateway to many interesting conversations.
Due to these working well for me and the large advantages of being able to communicate openly with greatly reduced fear of unintended offence provided by a general near-universal policy of honesty, I remain very skeptical of the idea that the habit of looking for reassurance at the expense of honest advice or opinions is something to be respected or encouraged (especially in rationalist circles where truth-seeking is prized).
Last note: I see the saying the truth but bending the meaning to be polite as signaling to someone that you don’t quite mean what you’re saying subtly enough that if (and only if) they care about your true opinion enough to pay attention to what you say and ask a followup question you’ll tell them the full story. If they were just looking for a generic nicity, they either won’t notice your slightly careful wording, or should not request information they do not want. This is useful for people who may have reason to want your true opinion, and as a way of avoiding getting into the habit of telling white lies. It’s rarely hard to avoid the question or skip over it even if you can’t come up with a convincing not-lie, so long as you don’t get too obviously caught up in debating internally what to say or how to avoid offense first.
I accept that many, maybe even a significant majority of, people do just look for compliments or niceties some of the time. I accept that giving them those compliments rather than honesty may be better for their self-esteem in the short term.
If someone asks you for how their haircut looks like and you think he’s just finishing for a compliment you don’t have to lie. There probably something about the person that’s worth complimenting and if you compliment them on some other thing they will also be happy.
If you tell them: “I think the core of your beauty doesn’t lie in your haircut but in the strength of your character, few people would complain.” Someone who’s specifically fishing for a compliment might even be much more impressed than if you would have said: “The haircut looks nice.”
You don’t impress people by giving them the default compliments they look for. Of course to give honest compliments that are deeper than the ones for which people are fishing you have to think deeply about what you appreciate about other people.
That may solve the problem that it becomes impossible to pay genuine compliments, but it doesn’t solve the problem that it’s impossible to get honest feedback.
If you ask me about your haircut and I give you a compliment about something unrelated to your haircut you have to choices. If you are fishing for a compliment you will accept the compliment. If you are seeking for honest feedback you can ask again: “Please tell me what you really think about my haircut.”
Instead of trying to answer the question at the top level but think about why they are asking. With training you can also learn to read people to understand what they want. You will make mistakes of sometimes giving someone who seeks honest feedback a compliment and something giving honest feedback to someone who’s seeking a compliment but reading people is a skill that you can learn.
You get bonus points if it’s implicitly obvious for the other person if you treat their question as a request for a compliment or as a request for honest feedback. It signals that you understand them on a deeper level.
In today’s world there something special about the person who gets that they are asked for making a compliment to lift someone mood and then makes an effort to give a really great compliment.
I admit that I’m not the best person at giving compliments but when I see someone who’s good at it, that’s impressive. The social advantages that a skill like that provides are much bigger than the benefits you get by telling people white lies.
Telling white lies is easy. If you don’t have much social skill it might be your best move in a social situation. If you however put the effort into developing skills you can make much better moves.
If you ask me about your haircut and I give you a compliment about something unrelated to your haircut you have to choices. If you are fishing for a compliment you will accept the compliment.
I’m disinclined to believe without further experience that everybody would be completely blinded by the new compliment and forget about the fact that one’s evading the question kind of implicates something about what one thinks about the haircut in particular… But then I can’t simulate people who fish for compliments with utterances that look like requests for feedback anyway. I find this practise supremely annoying and, most of all, completely alien. I can’t imagine enjoying a compliment that I would elicit in such a way, it would feel totally ridiculous. So maybe you’re simply right about this kind of people.
Curiously, it somehow didn’t occur to me at all that one could, of course, simply ask a second time when one wants honest feedback and is faced with an evasive compliment. Although I suspect in practice there is an incentive for people to just default back to lying because finding a substitute-compliment might not be easy for them, or they might just forget. So while that system would work from the perspective of both compliment-fishers and feedback-desirers, it requires rather costly cooperation on the part of the people being asked.
With training you can also learn to read people to understand what they want.
Not within certain practical constraints. As an introvert who is not constantly submerged in the social world, I strongly suspect that I am never going to get enough data points to learn to read people really well, because the data are so freaking noisy.
Telling white lies is easy.
For some people, it’s actually psychologically costly, because they have a habit to break when they do so. Paying honest compliments is much easier for me.
it requires rather costly cooperation on the part of the people being asked.
It costs mental effort. Over time practicing that effort develops better social awareness.
It doesn’t cost you money, status or time that you can’t allocate to other tasks.
I’m disinclined to believe without further experience that everybody would be completely blinded by the new compliment and forget about the fact that one’s evading the question kind of implicates something about what one thinks about the haircut in particular…
The point isn’t to blind them. The point is to give them what they are really asking for. They are not asking for an opinion of their haircut, they are asking you for a compliment.
It’s not wrong for you to treat them as having asked for a compliment. Being explicit about the fact that they asked you for a compliment is bad manners but implicitly acknowledging it isn’t.
It completely okay that they know, that you know, that they didn’t want honest feedback. Especially with a woman who really only wants a compliment that shows that you get it in contrast to other men who don’t. It much better than when the woman thinks that you don’t understand her.
Not within certain practical constraints.
When it comes to telling whether people are fishing for compliment or seeking honest feedback, it might seem complicated at first but it’s not asking for the moon.
To learn it you could make the policy of never giving a person who seems to be asking for a compliment the compliment they are looking for. Then you observe their reactions. If they are delighted that you gave them a compliment you were right.
On the other hand if they seem to be annoyed that you evaded their question, you were wrong.
Of course at the beginning you will make mistakes from time to time. Those mistakes allow you to learn. At the moment you don’t try to identify people who are fishing for compliments and that means there’s no learning process with feedback.
Paying honest compliments is much easier for me.
In that case, practice telling more of them. When you do look at the reaction of the other person. If it makes them smile, you win. If it doesn’t you lose. With practice you will get better at reading people to find compliments that make them smile.
MIstakes of telling compliments that don’t move the other person very much are cheap.
Additionally if you are known as a person who gives a lot of compliments the honest feedback that you give will annoy people less because you already have fulfilled your social duty of showing that you care about other people as far as the compliment department goes.
I think introverts often think too much of “what’s the social custom and how can I follow it?” or go down the extreme of pickup artistry but too seldom go the middle way of finding nonstandard behavior that’s completely socially acceptable.
It’s not wrong for you to treat them as having asked for a compliment. Being explicit about the fact that they asked you for a compliment is bad manners but implicitly acknowledging it isn’t. It completely okay that they know, that you know, that they didn’t want honest feedback.
I have to admit that this baffles me, but I’ll take your word for it.
When it comes to telling whether people are fishing for compliment or seeking honest feedback, it might seem complicated at first but it’s not asking for the moon.
Even if we’re talking about that particular aspect, it’s kind of hard and I’m not exactly being showered with data. I don’t actually experience that many people asking for a compliment, do you? Come to think of it, the whole thing may not be as big of an issue. (I know why I have such a strong emotional aversive reaction to it nonetheless.)
I think introverts often think too much of “what’s the social custom and how can I follow it?” or go down the extreme of pickup artistry but too seldom go the middle way of finding nonstandard behavior that’s completely socially acceptable.
I don’t actually experience that many people asking for a compliment, do you?
At the moment not that much. Most of the people with whom a have longer social interactions don’t operate at that level. Few masks but direct talk about psychological needs. Lots of physical contact regardless of the gender of the person I’m interacting with.
On the other hand I know that those interactions are not representative of “normal culture”.
I think I’m basically doing exactly that.
Good. I was not asserting that you aren’t. I don’t know yourself well enough for that.
Last note: I see the saying the truth but bending the meaning to be polite as signaling to someone that you don’t quite mean what you’re saying subtly enough that if (and only if) they care about your true opinion enough to pay attention to what you say and ask a followup question you’ll tell them the full story. If they were just looking for a generic nicity, they either won’t notice your slightly careful wording, or should not request information they do not want. This is useful for people who may have reason to want your true opinion, and as a way of avoiding getting into the habit of telling white lies.
I think this is a great point. By verbally giving positive feedback, and nonverbally giving lukewarm feedback, you are not necessarily lying, because your communication is not just your words. If someone wants you to give a comprehensive critique, they can ask for it explicitly. This way, the people who want encouragement can get it, and the people who want critique can get it.
To me, the most intelligent default is that I consider a request for feedback to be a request for encouragement, but people can always override this default by explicitly asking me for a critique.
I agree with that being a useful default with most people, and reliable with even those who you don’t know well enough to figure out how they’d react to criticism.
I’d put a bit more emphasis on how putting a white lie into the initial encouragement can cause issues though. If you’ve said something generally encouraging or picked out some positive, but not actually said anything which you think of as untrue then if they do explicitly ask for a critique then you can give them your opinions and suggestions in full. If you used what you hoped would be a white lie then you must either contradict your previous encouragement or withhold parts of your opinion even if the person genuinely requests it and wants feedback, both of which seem like bad options.
I agree that in some cases, including the homophobic parents example, lying can be justified. Even in significantly more mild cases, I can see lying as occasionally consequently the better course of action, even if you take into account the chance of the lie being found out and trust being lost/hurt to other people due to being lied to.
However, correct me if I am wrong but you seem to be arguing something much stronger than this? From my read this article promotes at least accepting, maybe even encouraging, using white lies as a way to ease potentially uncomfortable social situations. I’d guess some of the other commenters (particularly Alicorn) have a similar read, and that’s prompting some strong reactions. While white lie culture may be common, and going against the grain (e.g. replying that you’re not particularly keen on some item of clothing when asked by an acquaintance) may go against our social instincts, refusing to say you don’t like things in many situations disallows useful opinion giving in all similar situations. If I want to get a second opinion on something, I want to ask someone who will give me information. If no matter their true opinion, they’ll give some mild nicity/white lie to spare my feelings, I’m not going to learn much. If every time someone asks if their friends if their new hair cut suits them their friends must say yes, that person is both never going to learn they have a haircut few people like and maybe more importantly they’re going to start automatically downgrading similar praise, quite correctly, because “people saying my haircut is nice” has zero correlation to the haircut being nice.
I accept that many, maybe even a significant majority of, people do just look for compliments or niceties some of the time. I accept that giving them those compliments rather than honesty may be better for their self-esteem in the short term. However, I have found that so long as I present myself as direct but gentle from the start and don’t hide honesty from someone then spring it on them at a bad moment, a vast majority of even those compliment seekers at least respect gentle honesty and many of them find it refreshing. Perhaps this is in part due to my social group being unusually tolerant, and this strategy would fail elsewhere.
On the other side, I prefer people to be honest with me and attempt to self-modify towards being someone who would, in all but the most convoluted situations, prefer in the long term to be told the truth in response to all serious questions. I do this specifically so I can appear to be a person who it is better to tell the truth to in effectively every case, because I want to be able to reliably get true opinions. This is something I have never had a negative reaction to once explained, and has been the gateway to many interesting conversations.
Due to these working well for me and the large advantages of being able to communicate openly with greatly reduced fear of unintended offence provided by a general near-universal policy of honesty, I remain very skeptical of the idea that the habit of looking for reassurance at the expense of honest advice or opinions is something to be respected or encouraged (especially in rationalist circles where truth-seeking is prized).
Last note: I see the saying the truth but bending the meaning to be polite as signaling to someone that you don’t quite mean what you’re saying subtly enough that if (and only if) they care about your true opinion enough to pay attention to what you say and ask a followup question you’ll tell them the full story. If they were just looking for a generic nicity, they either won’t notice your slightly careful wording, or should not request information they do not want. This is useful for people who may have reason to want your true opinion, and as a way of avoiding getting into the habit of telling white lies. It’s rarely hard to avoid the question or skip over it even if you can’t come up with a convincing not-lie, so long as you don’t get too obviously caught up in debating internally what to say or how to avoid offense first.
If someone asks you for how their haircut looks like and you think he’s just finishing for a compliment you don’t have to lie. There probably something about the person that’s worth complimenting and if you compliment them on some other thing they will also be happy.
If you tell them: “I think the core of your beauty doesn’t lie in your haircut but in the strength of your character, few people would complain.” Someone who’s specifically fishing for a compliment might even be much more impressed than if you would have said: “The haircut looks nice.”
You don’t impress people by giving them the default compliments they look for. Of course to give honest compliments that are deeper than the ones for which people are fishing you have to think deeply about what you appreciate about other people.
As a tactical matter, it’s also useful to consider what they appreciate about themselves.
That may solve the problem that it becomes impossible to pay genuine compliments, but it doesn’t solve the problem that it’s impossible to get honest feedback.
If you ask me about your haircut and I give you a compliment about something unrelated to your haircut you have to choices. If you are fishing for a compliment you will accept the compliment. If you are seeking for honest feedback you can ask again: “Please tell me what you really think about my haircut.”
Instead of trying to answer the question at the top level but think about why they are asking. With training you can also learn to read people to understand what they want. You will make mistakes of sometimes giving someone who seeks honest feedback a compliment and something giving honest feedback to someone who’s seeking a compliment but reading people is a skill that you can learn.
You get bonus points if it’s implicitly obvious for the other person if you treat their question as a request for a compliment or as a request for honest feedback. It signals that you understand them on a deeper level.
In today’s world there something special about the person who gets that they are asked for making a compliment to lift someone mood and then makes an effort to give a really great compliment.
I admit that I’m not the best person at giving compliments but when I see someone who’s good at it, that’s impressive. The social advantages that a skill like that provides are much bigger than the benefits you get by telling people white lies.
Telling white lies is easy. If you don’t have much social skill it might be your best move in a social situation. If you however put the effort into developing skills you can make much better moves.
I’m disinclined to believe without further experience that everybody would be completely blinded by the new compliment and forget about the fact that one’s evading the question kind of implicates something about what one thinks about the haircut in particular… But then I can’t simulate people who fish for compliments with utterances that look like requests for feedback anyway. I find this practise supremely annoying and, most of all, completely alien. I can’t imagine enjoying a compliment that I would elicit in such a way, it would feel totally ridiculous. So maybe you’re simply right about this kind of people.
Curiously, it somehow didn’t occur to me at all that one could, of course, simply ask a second time when one wants honest feedback and is faced with an evasive compliment. Although I suspect in practice there is an incentive for people to just default back to lying because finding a substitute-compliment might not be easy for them, or they might just forget. So while that system would work from the perspective of both compliment-fishers and feedback-desirers, it requires rather costly cooperation on the part of the people being asked.
Not within certain practical constraints. As an introvert who is not constantly submerged in the social world, I strongly suspect that I am never going to get enough data points to learn to read people really well, because the data are so freaking noisy.
For some people, it’s actually psychologically costly, because they have a habit to break when they do so. Paying honest compliments is much easier for me.
It costs mental effort. Over time practicing that effort develops better social awareness. It doesn’t cost you money, status or time that you can’t allocate to other tasks.
The point isn’t to blind them. The point is to give them what they are really asking for. They are not asking for an opinion of their haircut, they are asking you for a compliment.
It’s not wrong for you to treat them as having asked for a compliment. Being explicit about the fact that they asked you for a compliment is bad manners but implicitly acknowledging it isn’t.
It completely okay that they know, that you know, that they didn’t want honest feedback. Especially with a woman who really only wants a compliment that shows that you get it in contrast to other men who don’t. It much better than when the woman thinks that you don’t understand her.
When it comes to telling whether people are fishing for compliment or seeking honest feedback, it might seem complicated at first but it’s not asking for the moon.
To learn it you could make the policy of never giving a person who seems to be asking for a compliment the compliment they are looking for. Then you observe their reactions. If they are delighted that you gave them a compliment you were right.
On the other hand if they seem to be annoyed that you evaded their question, you were wrong.
Of course at the beginning you will make mistakes from time to time. Those mistakes allow you to learn. At the moment you don’t try to identify people who are fishing for compliments and that means there’s no learning process with feedback.
In that case, practice telling more of them. When you do look at the reaction of the other person. If it makes them smile, you win. If it doesn’t you lose. With practice you will get better at reading people to find compliments that make them smile.
MIstakes of telling compliments that don’t move the other person very much are cheap. Additionally if you are known as a person who gives a lot of compliments the honest feedback that you give will annoy people less because you already have fulfilled your social duty of showing that you care about other people as far as the compliment department goes.
I think introverts often think too much of “what’s the social custom and how can I follow it?” or go down the extreme of pickup artistry but too seldom go the middle way of finding nonstandard behavior that’s completely socially acceptable.
I have to admit that this baffles me, but I’ll take your word for it.
Even if we’re talking about that particular aspect, it’s kind of hard and I’m not exactly being showered with data. I don’t actually experience that many people asking for a compliment, do you? Come to think of it, the whole thing may not be as big of an issue. (I know why I have such a strong emotional aversive reaction to it nonetheless.)
I think I’m basically doing exactly that.
At the moment not that much. Most of the people with whom a have longer social interactions don’t operate at that level. Few masks but direct talk about psychological needs. Lots of physical contact regardless of the gender of the person I’m interacting with.
On the other hand I know that those interactions are not representative of “normal culture”.
Good. I was not asserting that you aren’t. I don’t know yourself well enough for that.
I think this is a great point. By verbally giving positive feedback, and nonverbally giving lukewarm feedback, you are not necessarily lying, because your communication is not just your words. If someone wants you to give a comprehensive critique, they can ask for it explicitly. This way, the people who want encouragement can get it, and the people who want critique can get it.
To me, the most intelligent default is that I consider a request for feedback to be a request for encouragement, but people can always override this default by explicitly asking me for a critique.
I agree with that being a useful default with most people, and reliable with even those who you don’t know well enough to figure out how they’d react to criticism.
I’d put a bit more emphasis on how putting a white lie into the initial encouragement can cause issues though. If you’ve said something generally encouraging or picked out some positive, but not actually said anything which you think of as untrue then if they do explicitly ask for a critique then you can give them your opinions and suggestions in full. If you used what you hoped would be a white lie then you must either contradict your previous encouragement or withhold parts of your opinion even if the person genuinely requests it and wants feedback, both of which seem like bad options.