Is lying morally different from misleading? An empirical investigation
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Alex Wiegmann
Abstract
Consider the following case: Dennis is going to Paul’s party tonight. He has a long day of work ahead of him before that, but he is very excited and can’t wait to get there. Dennis’s annoying friend Rebecca comes up to him and starts talking about the party. Dennis is fairly sure that Rebecca won’t go unless she thinks he’s going, too. Rebecca: Are you going to Paul’s party? (1) Dennis: No, I’m not going to Paul’s party. (2) Dennis: I have to work. Rebecca comes to believe that Dennis is not going to Paul’s party. In (1), Dennis tricks Rebecca into a false belief by explicitly expressing a falsehood. By contrast, in (2) Dennis achieves his aim in a less direct way, namely by means of a conversational implicature. Cases of the first kind are usually described as cases of lying, while cases of the second kind are characterized as merely misleading. Philosophers have discussed such pairs of cases with regard to the question of whether lying is morally different from misleading. In this paper, we report the results of approaching this question empirically, by presenting 761 participants with ten matched cases of lying versus misleading in separate as well as joint evaluation designs. By and large, we found that cases of lying and misleading were judged to be morally on a par, to have roughly the same consequences for future trust, and to elicit roughly the same inferences about the speaker’s moral character. When asked what kind of deception participants would choose if they had to deceive another person, the clear majority preferred misleading over lying. We discuss the relevance of our findings for the philosophical debate about lying and misleading, and outline avenues for further empirical research.
Abstract
Consider the following case: Dennis is going to Paul’s party tonight. He has a long day of work ahead of him before that, but he is very excited and can’t wait to get there. Dennis’s annoying friend Rebecca comes up to him and starts talking about the party. Dennis is fairly sure that Rebecca won’t go unless she thinks he’s going, too. Rebecca: Are you going to Paul’s party? (1) Dennis: No, I’m not going to Paul’s party. (2) Dennis: I have to work. Rebecca comes to believe that Dennis is not going to Paul’s party. In (1), Dennis tricks Rebecca into a false belief by explicitly expressing a falsehood. By contrast, in (2) Dennis achieves his aim in a less direct way, namely by means of a conversational implicature. Cases of the first kind are usually described as cases of lying, while cases of the second kind are characterized as merely misleading. Philosophers have discussed such pairs of cases with regard to the question of whether lying is morally different from misleading. In this paper, we report the results of approaching this question empirically, by presenting 761 participants with ten matched cases of lying versus misleading in separate as well as joint evaluation designs. By and large, we found that cases of lying and misleading were judged to be morally on a par, to have roughly the same consequences for future trust, and to elicit roughly the same inferences about the speaker’s moral character. When asked what kind of deception participants would choose if they had to deceive another person, the clear majority preferred misleading over lying. We discuss the relevance of our findings for the philosophical debate about lying and misleading, and outline avenues for further empirical research.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents VII
- Introduction: On lying and disleading 1
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I Lies and deception: The landscape of falsehood
- Lying, deception, and related concepts: A conceptual map for ethics 15
- The morality of deception 41
- Kant tell an a priori lie 65
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II Lying, deception, and speaker commitment: Empirical evidence
- Is lying morally different from misleading? An empirical investigation 89
- “I was only quoting”: Shifting viewpoint and speaker commitment 113
- Memefying deception and deceptive memefication: Multimodal deception on social media 139
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III Puffery, bluffery, bullshit: How to not quite lie
- Bald-faced bullshit and authoritarian political speech: Making sense of Johnson and Trump 165
- Practice to deceive: A natural history of the legal bluff 195
- Just saying, just kidding: Liability for accountability-avoiding speech in ordinary conversation, politics and law 227
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IV Crossing the perjury threshold: Deceit and falsehood in the courtroom
- Perjury cases and the linguist 261
- Trickery and deceit: How the pragmatics of interrogation leads innocent people to confess – and factfinders to believe their confessions 289
- The context of mistrust: Perjury ascriptions in the courtroom 309
- What counts as a lie in and out of the courtroom? The effect of discourse genre on lie judgments 353
- Lies, deception, and bullshit in law 381
- Index 409
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents VII
- Introduction: On lying and disleading 1
-
I Lies and deception: The landscape of falsehood
- Lying, deception, and related concepts: A conceptual map for ethics 15
- The morality of deception 41
- Kant tell an a priori lie 65
-
II Lying, deception, and speaker commitment: Empirical evidence
- Is lying morally different from misleading? An empirical investigation 89
- “I was only quoting”: Shifting viewpoint and speaker commitment 113
- Memefying deception and deceptive memefication: Multimodal deception on social media 139
-
III Puffery, bluffery, bullshit: How to not quite lie
- Bald-faced bullshit and authoritarian political speech: Making sense of Johnson and Trump 165
- Practice to deceive: A natural history of the legal bluff 195
- Just saying, just kidding: Liability for accountability-avoiding speech in ordinary conversation, politics and law 227
-
IV Crossing the perjury threshold: Deceit and falsehood in the courtroom
- Perjury cases and the linguist 261
- Trickery and deceit: How the pragmatics of interrogation leads innocent people to confess – and factfinders to believe their confessions 289
- The context of mistrust: Perjury ascriptions in the courtroom 309
- What counts as a lie in and out of the courtroom? The effect of discourse genre on lie judgments 353
- Lies, deception, and bullshit in law 381
- Index 409
