Thou shall not lie…

Overall, more than 25% of the participants involved claimed that lying was unethical 91-99% of the time and 7% believe that lying was unethical 100% of the time. Also, in total, more than 85% of participates believed that at lying is unethical at least half of the time.

One participants noted that although “lying is never ethical it is sometimes necessary”. To some extent I agree with this statement. If future research were to be done on this topic, it would be interesting to compare “ethical” behavior with behaviors of “necessity.”

Now for the final question…Do we hold others to the same standard of ethical behavior and lying as we hold ourselves?

The first 100 respondents of the survey responded accordingly:

  • Over 60% claimed to hold themselves to a higher ethical standard than they hold others, nearly 10% of which claimed they always hold themselves to a higher standard than others in their ethical behavior.
  • Over 30% claimed to hold themselves to the same ethical standard that they hold others
  • Less than 10% claimed to hold them themselves to a lower ethical standard than they hold others

According to the sample, it can be concluded that most people hold higher standards for themselves and expect less of others. Therefore, we are more likely to expect unethical behaviors (such as lying) from others than engage in unethical behaviors (such as lying) ourselves.

To what extent is this true? Is your behavior more ethical than those around you, or do most people simply have a personal bias?

monkey

Conclusions

  • Lying and ethical behaviors are topics that cannot be universally defined. Personal, cultural, situational, and other factors influence each individual’s perception of these terms.
  • Although there is a relationship between lying and ethical behavior, it is not clear. There are various situations in which something is considered either more of a lie or more of an unethical behavior.
  • Ambiguity, vagueness, nonverbal cues, and silence can all be defined as a lie or unethical behavior-however, various factors also vary this drastically.
  • We hold higher expectations for ourselves than we hold for others in regards to ethical behavior

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