The Hidden Status Game of Hypocrisy | Michael Hallsworth

23:37AJ Jacobs:You're a bit like, I don't care. Who cares if I'm a hypocrite? I can do what I want. I've got enough power to do that. And it's basically like you talk about principles with a bit of a sneer and say, yeah, but no one really cares about those. That's the world we want to avoid. We want to bumble around in the good worlds, which means not taking things to extremes.

23:59Michael Hallsworth:Many of us are in a work culture that espouses trust machine, really strives to have healthy accountability, but at the same time not judge every little act as hypocritical and then hold people back from flourishing. But unfortunately, it often slides into a purity regime without us even realizing it. And that has to go with the status games and the power dynamics that are at play in a corporate culture. And I think a lot of us try to believe that it's an even playing field or we'd love to believe that merit is the only way to get ahead. But unfortunately, a lot of these status and power plays are happening regardless of how much we strive to be a meritocracy.

24:44Michael Hallsworth:So what are some of those blind spots for those who might feel we're in a trust machine and not realize we're in a purity regime?

24:53AJ Jacobs:Part of the thing I talk about is that organizations are trying to do lots of different things at once. And that can mean you have some forms of inconsistency, partly because different parts of the organization are doing different things. organizations and businesses are really in a difficult position because they have to make a profit quite often listen to their shareholders but also they're under pressure from consumers to appear to be sticking to principles or having principles stepping in where we think that maybe governments or others are falling short and yet that kind of consistency is really, really unavoidable.

25:38AJ Jacobs:And so trust in companies has really declined over the last 25 years, partly because they've been trying to reconcile these different things. You can have the sustainability department saying, return and reuse your handbags, for example. Don't throw them away, we'll repair them. And yet you can have the store managers being told to chuck away the handbags because they're damaged. And that's exactly an example that we saw in the book. It's not like no one is, there's no kind of brain overall saying, I'm going to deceive people. It's just different parts of the organization having different instructions.

26:20AJ Jacobs:And so this goes to leaders as well. You then as a leader in an organization have to try and reconcile you're differing incentives and you're differing kind of priorities. So one thing that's really fascinating that came out in the book is you may think that not practicing what you preach is just a bad thing overall, but it actually matters what order you do it in. If you're a leader, this kind of makes a difference. So if you hear about somebody who, say, goes on the radio and announces that he's going to promote healthy living in his community, and then two weeks later you find that he's been just stuck on his couch eating pizza the whole time, it seems pretty hypocritical.

27:08AJ Jacobs:But if you do it the other way around, in terms of sequencing, he spent two weeks on the couch eating pizza, then he goes on the radio saying he's going to volunteer for healthy living, people think that's much less bad. They think that he's turned over a new leaf. And so if you're a leader and you've got a gap between where you are and where you want to be, you sort of should omit that gap first and then make the commitment. Whereas we really dislike it when we, if a company announces the vision and then tries to catch up on it. Because you seem to be deceptive and inconsistent and you don't know what you're talking about.

27:48and so that's a real kind of you know takeaway I think for for leaders getting a house in order

27:55AJ Jacobs:but the final thing I'd say is in an organization that's not always possible like you sometimes make an announcement in order to set an ambition to get there later and so I think also the consumers need to sometimes give companies a bit more of a break and say that judging if you just go in in straight way as a consumer say yeah but you don't do that yourself you shut down any opportunity for a company to get better and so i would say like you as a consumer give people a bit of time give company a bit of time to work out how it can live up to its ambitions but i'm conscious that's a really hard really hard thing to be saying because we love taking down companies we really hate corporate hypocrisy and so if i go around saying or you need to give them a bit of time to live up to their own goals.

28:49AJ Jacobs:That's not very attractive. We just want to destroy anything that looks inconsistent. So there are all these nuances here about how organizations have to handle this kind of gauntlet of hypocrisy accusations.

29:02Michael Hallsworth:When you want your spring break to feel like... And your kid's pool day to feel like... And your hotel bed to feel like... Ooh, and room service to feel like... Because at Hilton, hospitality feels like... Your cabana's ready.

29:22AJ Jacobs:Would you like fresh towels?

29:23Michael Hallsworth:It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton, for this day. We're leaving today and entering a world of Mickey Mouse waving, princess meeting and greeting. lightsaber clashing the twilight zone tower of terror dropping banshee flying space mountain launching galaxy rewinding galaxy rewinding fireworks igniting world of other worlds for whatever you love infinite worlds await at the most magical place on earth walt disney world resort. Well, I think that brings into clear view the power dynamics at play with hypocrisy. So we as humans have an inclination to tear down those that we see as the most powerful.

30:16Michael Hallsworth:And right now, corporations have that moniker of being the most powerful, while we will look away at the inconsistencies of those who are being taken advantage of, who have less power. So that power dynamic changes the way we view hypocrisy and the way that we react to hypocrisy in a lot of these scenarios.

30:35AJ Jacobs:In the framework I point out in the book, you think that companies get benefits from this inconsistency, and we don't like that. But also we think that they mean it. We think that corporations have greater intent because they're groups of individuals. Whereas we know that people can be unintentionally inconsistent. And, you know, if you go and say suddenly, oh, yeah, I've just realized what a hypocrite I've been. That's not a weird thing for someone to say because there is self-deception. There is the self-deception. There's a lack of awareness of this inconsistency. But we think with companies, they must mean it.

31:22AJ Jacobs:There must be someone in a boardroom somewhere deciding, oh, we're going to make a mug of our consumers here and hope they don't notice. And we really hate that. We hate being taken advantage of. We hate the intentional deception. There's evidence that we judge companies more harshly than individuals when they're being inconsistent. Studies have shown this. We have higher standards and we're more suspicious of their intentions. So that's a really difficult thing for companies to manage. We've got to make a profit. You're also under pressure to stay principles. And yet someone, you know, every time you set more of a principle, a higher bar, the evidence is that actually leads to more accusations rather than fewer.

32:06AJ Jacobs:You will never get to a state as a company where you can be so consistent that people will stop accusing you of hypocrisy.

32:14Michael Hallsworth:Many of us have the belief that consistency equals integrity. And because of that belief, it creates this blind spot for us in our reaction to hypocrisy. And I just want to make sure our listeners catch that because what you're saying is that demanding that total consistency from a leader or from a company is actually not a sign of high standards. It's a red flag.

32:36AJ Jacobs:I don't want to say that there are no leaders who are completely consistent. The problem is that it can also be a difficult position you get yourself into. If your whole brand as a leader is complete authenticity, and then you get into a leadership position where there are necessary compromises, what happens is you either destroy your brand or you make those compromises badly. um there was there's a an opposition leader in the uk called jeremy corbyn who was famously consistent his whole brand was authenticity that's why he became head of the party and it actually was his downfall as well because when he had to make some compromises he did it really badly and people saw through it and they thought he's destroyed his his core feature.

33:31AJ Jacobs:And so corporate leaders in particular have to deal with the fact that they're responding to contradictory demands by their consumers. This is where it comes back to the accusations all over again. Because as consumers, we want companies who maybe stand up for the values we believe in um but also we want cheap things to buy right and so we make inconsistent demands of companies yet we deny that we don't we don't notice ourselves or admit to ourselves that we're doing that and so we ourselves need to be more aware of the if you like hypocrisy in the demands we're putting on companies because as it is we put those inconsistent system demands on companies then when they try and do both those things, we call them out, not realizing it kind of came from us.

34:27Michael Hallsworth:And I think many of us believe that transparency is the antidote to hypocrisy. And we just need more transparency in order to root out all of these dishonest organizations and leaders. But in actuality, that creates more dishonesty.

34:44AJ Jacobs:yeah i give the example in in the book of this um this movie called the circle um which came out about eight years ago and in it um there's a movement for politicians to wear these kind of cameras um so every moment is recorded and this is uh this is a drive for complete transparency the idea that there won't be any more sort of hypocrisy um there won't be any more backroom deals because you'll see everything. Who can argue against that? Well, what happens is, unsurprisingly, it doesn't get rid of hypocrisy. It just means that the real deals take place elsewhere and all the meetings with the politicians become staged and you've got the staffers next door doing the real discussions.

35:34AJ Jacobs:The attempt to stamp out hypocrisy always fails because there's a quote that democracy is about disappointment. It's always about compromise and disappointment. So we're going to have some of that going on anyway. And we are putting inconsistent demands. We want politicians, for example, both to fight our corner and stand up for their principles, but also get things done. You hear all the time, we want bipartisanship. We want politicians to come together and solve our problems. Those two kind of things don't fit very well together. And so you end up with politicians trying to deal with both demands and their reward is we call them hypocrites.

36:21Michael Hallsworth:Another one from the book that's hard for us to wrap our heads around is the idea that often the ones who are hitting the hardest on hypocrisy are not pursuing justice, but they're actually pursuing status. And I think it feels good to us to feel, oh, it's just the pursuit of justice. And that's why we call it out and not recognize the status game at play.

36:43AJ Jacobs:The example I give in the book is a study about, you know, sweatshop labor. so using products made in exploitative conditions. We feel a righteous response to call out that kind of practice. But the researchers found something unsettling. They found that the people who are most enraged about this kind of thing, most eager to punish the companies, were actually the ones who felt guilty because they had bought the products themselves. So the ones who were making the most noise were the ones who had most to feel guilty about. So the outrage wasn't about justice. It was about restoring their self-image, distancing themselves from this practice and converting it into sort of righteous anger and then getting states as well.

37:38AJ Jacobs:it turns out that interestingly if a company has a scandal and is accused of being hypocritical it's actually the consumers who are the biggest fans who actually turn on you the most because they have most incentive to distance and indicate that they are not you know that that's not them so it's not like your most diehard fans will save you in fact they may um once they turn have the most strong reaction because they have the biggest incentive to say, that's not me.

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39:13Michael Hallsworth:I think what would be helpful now is going through the three dials, because I think now that we've recognized it's everywhere, we're encountering it no matter what our best efforts are or intentions are. How should we start to judge hypocrisy? Because what I'm fearful of and one of the biggest reasons I want to bring on the show is I found time and time again from our clients and from our show fans and just what's going on in pop culture right now is that we are using hypocrisy to shred relationships, to judge people in ways that remove trust, cut them out of our lives, say, I don't want to be dating you.

39:45Michael Hallsworth:I don't want to be friends with you in ways that I think are really detrimental to what we need as a society to have actual fulfilling relationships. And I think it's because we don't really know how to judge all the hypocrisy. It's being pointed out in every corner, in every facet, online dating, in the news. But yet we're encountering it and we don't have a good rubric to really measure, OK, what am I willing to tolerate and what is actually acceptable?

40:10AJ Jacobs:When we talk about hypocrisy, we kind of mean two things. One is, broadly speaking, looking better than you deserve. And that's the kind of thing we talked about. We call it sending false signals about your level of consistency, the extent to which you actually live up to that principle. The other one is what I call double standards hypocrisy, where you treat your group or yourself differently from another group or other people, but you don't admit that. You kind of say, oh, yeah, I actually have them the same and I believe in these principles, but actually you're doing yourself. favors. And if you think about it, if you listen to this, both those things are what we think of as democracy, but they're kind of different.

40:58AJ Jacobs:It's like the difference between a politician talking about family values and having an affair versus a supporter of that politician saying, that's all fine, who cares about an affair, but then ripping their opponent's pieces for doing the same thing. And so the double standards thing is the more toxic form. The reason for that is because it starts eroding the idea that we're all judged equally. You know, democracies in the U.S. and elsewhere are founded on this idea that everybody is that kind of equal under the rule of law. and you're treated the same if you're one sister and another sister.

41:50AJ Jacobs:If you think the rules don't apply to your side or you, and that's justified, then it kind of starts picking at the foundations that make society work. You start splintering. You start saying, that group is completely different from me. I'm in a different class and I deserve it. And therefore, the rules don't apply. And that gets into sort of disintegration of like the social contract, if you like. The other thing that's really toxic is deliberate deception for personal gain. Where you mean to do it and you are getting something clear, you know, clear benefit that we think is unjust. On the other hand, we should cut people slack if they're genuinely trying to be better but falling short.

42:49AJ Jacobs:Like a parent who's telling their kids not to smoke but privately struggling with their own addiction to nicotine. Or the person who preaches healthy eating and then eats a slice of birthday cake, right? the incentive is to say oh you can't look you're not perfect and you you you um you fell short and therefore i don't have to worry about the principle at stake you get that a lot with climate stuff it's like you find the exposure of a climate activist who took a flight once and that means we shouldn't care about the whole issue and that we have a lot of incentive of course to be like um someone else's hypocrisy means i don't have to bother and i keep my own inconsistencies are kind of excused and again i have to say like there are people who preach climate change and just don't give a damn and make the problem worse i'm not saying give a free pass to people because that is really annoying and it is like a problem but there is some form of inconsistency you have to think about the overall level of harm here.

44:02AJ Jacobs:And is this one that really matters? Or am I just calling it out because it's making me feel good and boosting my status? Because that's good for us individually, but collectively, that kind of relentless accusation leads to a worse world.

44:18Michael Hallsworth:So taking this to the personal level, what I found really interesting, and many of our show fans and listeners are looking to change themselves. They're into self-development, They're looking to grow. And this idea of induced hypocrisy, where actually acknowledging your own inconsistency creates more change than direct feedback or even punishment. How does that actually work in practice?

44:40AJ Jacobs:The last third of the book is all about solutions. And how can we, for example, be more consistent? Because that is part of the picture. Like some inconsistency is inevitable, but we can do better as well. So induced hypocrisy is this really interesting idea where it basically says, if you point out someone's hypocrisy or inconsistency, it can sort of shock them into change. But you have to do it the right way. So the idea is that you get someone to commit to a principle or idea in public. Say that, I believe that it's important not to look at your phone while driving. And you make that public statement and then you go to them in private and you say yeah but we know you look at your phone while driving you've you've done that um and the idea is that people go oh god you know i i you know i i don't want to be a hypocrite um i just made this big announcement about this i'm gonna have to change what i do in case i get called out or just because i don't want to be an inconsistent person the the thing is if you do that if you confront people in public it kind of backfires because they feel they have to defend their self-image and they go well actually no i'm not really a hypocrite because uh that that instance doesn't count or actually maybe i don't really care about this principle anyway maybe i'm fine with people using their phone driving because you're on the defensive right if you're doing in in in private um people are more receptive to having an off-ramp and like taking that off-ramp.

46:19AJ Jacobs:There's one study that shows it's actually better if you do this through technology, through sending a message rather than having someone sat there judging you.

46:26Michael Hallsworth:Right.

46:26AJ Jacobs:You find it easier to change and become more consistent. And so you have that moment of like, okay, I need to change. And if you can build on that, then it can be quite sustainable because you've triggered that feeling of hypocrisy and the result is behavioral change rather than just like saying, maybe I don't care about this anyway. So it can work. It's been shown in many different instances, but you've got to get it right in the way you apply it.

46:52Michael Hallsworth:We've all heard the old adage, fake it till you make it. But it feels hypocritical to fake it, to know that you're not quite who you say you are as you're working towards being that more confident person, more outgoing, more athletic, more healthy person. But yet it's actually shown that it can create behavior change in your life. and you talk about growing a face to fit the mask.

47:15AJ Jacobs:Yeah. So if you have a world in which not every inconsistency is jumped on, then that creates some space for people to become closer to their ideals and to actually get into patterns of behavior where they start believing what was initially an act. Because sometimes, you know, changes in behavior lead to those changes in attitude. You start looking at what you're doing and think, I'm the kind of person who does X. I'm the kind of person who goes for a run because I went for a run twice. And it starts scaffolding, like bootstrapping up into a new mode of doing things. One way this can kind of be helped is if you do what I call honest hypocrisy.

48:04AJ Jacobs:And this is an interesting idea where you basically say, I'm not perfect up front. like say i believe in this principle but i don't always do it myself and i'm gonna work towards it the reason this helps is because people don't call it out as hip-hop so much because you're not getting this benefit of seeming like great like a great person you're kind of like taking that off the table a bit um and you're saying i'm working towards it um like you know i don't uh like maybe i'm trying to eat less meat but i don't always i sometimes have a burger like i'm but I'm doing I'm working on a on a journey there um that again there's a danger here you don't want to do it in a way that seems complacent and you're just like yeah I'm not great at that but you know I'm basically a good person like I'm trying I'm doing and actually you're doing like very little or you don't want to seem it like you're saying oh yeah but those rules don't apply to me you know I don't always pay my taxes on time, but why should I?

49:09AJ Jacobs:Because paying taxes are idiots and I'm like, I'm a different, I'm in a different class here. I'm an entrepreneur and the rules shouldn't apply to me. People don't like that either because you're going in there with, um, your honest hypocrisy is becoming like a double standard and you're sort of saying I'm different and the rules don't apply to me. So it can backfire. But if you do it the right way and say, um, I believe in the principle, but I'm just not there yet. That takes hypocrisy accusations off the table and maybe have a more constructive conversation with people.

49:40Michael Hallsworth:You started the interview as you wrap here with this concept almost infecting you, like couldn't stop thinking about it, gnawing at you. As you went through the research and wrote the book, I'm curious to hear any personal changes or impacts it had on the way you view hypocrisy or deal with your own hypocrisy.

49:57AJ Jacobs:I do start thinking about, is this the kind of hypocrisy that I could defend and how would I do it? And it's been making me a bit more honest because it's not like, could someone think that it's hypocritical? They could for most things. The question is, what's the harm that's going on here? And also, do you know what has also happened? is now when I hear someone calling out hypocrisy, I think much more about, well, what are they getting out of this? Why? What's their agenda? Because it's a really powerful social status booster. And sometimes it is that they're actually completely justified. But I don't just immediately think that person calling out hypocrisy, they're a great person.

50:48AJ Jacobs:I also think about, well, what do they do? And what are they getting out? How are they feeling right now? And that's a change.

50:56Michael Hallsworth:yeah i think that's an interesting lens to look at both our own inconsistencies and how we manage them but then also the status game at play with pointing out other people's hypocrisies it's not

51:08AJ Jacobs:it's not completely innocent we tend to think that there's like hypocrites they're the bad people and the uh people calling out they're the good people they're like just waiting for justice and so on but actually the two are kind of linked and it's you know they're two halves of the same coin sometimes.

51:24Michael Hallsworth:Thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate the spirited conversation around hypocrisy. And I love the belief shifts in the book that I think many of us are wrestling with. And to hear how it's impacted you has been really incredible. How can our audience find out more about the book and the work you do?

51:39AJ Jacobs:Yeah, the book's called The Hypocrisy Trap. Something I really worked on was trying to get some solutions in there to make it more practical for people so they can apply it in their everyday lives. And they can go to the hypocrisy trap.com to find out more.

51:53Michael Hallsworth:Thank you, Michael.

51:54AJ Jacobs:Thank you.

51:55Michael Hallsworth:Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as we have. And now comes a part of the show where we showcase one of our X Factor members. Take it away, Daniel. My name is Daniel Bosing, and I'm a manufacturing engineer. My overall experience with the X Factor Accelerator program has been excellent due to effective teaching and a supportive community of like-minded individuals. Since joining, I've cultivated deeper connections with my friends, family, and colleagues by implementing the conversational techniques learned in the program. These deeper connections have made my life more fulfilling, both personally and professionally.

52:32Michael Hallsworth:I would recommend joining the X Factor Exciter program because the excellent teaching and consistent accountability ensure you will grow into the person that you want to become. Daniel, it was a pleasure working with you too, and good luck with all your future pursuits. If you've gotten value out of this or any of our podcasts, please head on over to your favorite podcast player and rate and review the show. It means the world to us and it helps others find the show. Go out there and have an amazing, amazing week.

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