Toward a Deeper Understanding of Prolific Lying: The more that people lied, the more they believed that others lied as well

Toward a Deeper Understanding of Prolific Lying: Building a Profile of Situation-Level and Individual-Level Characteristics. David M. Markowitz. Communication Research, July 4, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/00936502221097041

Abstract: Prior work suggests those who lie prolifically tend to be younger and self-identify as male compared to those who engage in everyday lying, but little research has developed an understanding of prolific lying beyond demographics. Study 1 (N = 775) replicated the prior demographic effects and assessed prolific lying through situation-level (e.g., opportunistic cheating) and individual-level characteristics (e.g., dispositional traits, general communication patterns) for white and big lies. For these two lie types, prolific lying associated with more opportunistic cheating, the use of fewer adjectives, and being high on psychopathy compared to everyday lying. Study 2 (N = 1,022) replicated these results and observed a deception consensus effect reported in other studies: the more that people deceived, the more they believed that others deceived as well. This piece develops a deeper theoretical understanding of prolific lying for white and big lies, combining evidence of situational, dispositional, and communication characteristics.

Keywords: lying, deception, prolific lying, automated text analysis, Dark Triad, deception consensus effect

The Effect of Labor Market Liberalization on Political Behavior and Free Market Norms: The kibbutz liberalization in the 1990s

The Effect of Labor Market Liberalization on Political Behavior and Free Market Norms. Ran Abramitzky, Netanel Ben-Porath, Shahar Lahad, Victor Lavy & Michal Palgi. NBER Working Paper 30186, Jun 2022. DOI 10.3386/w30186

Abstract: We study the effects of labor market liberalization on political behavior and attitudes towards free-market capitalism and socialism, exploiting a reform whereby the Israeli socialist communities called kibbutzim shifted from equal sharing to market-based wages. Our identification strategy relies on this reform's sharp and staggered implementation in different kibbutzim. We first examine changes in behavior associated with this labor market liberalization and document that the reform led to a shift in electoral voting patterns, resulting in decreased support for left-wing political parties and increased support for the center and right parties in national elections. Using annual survey data on attitudes over 25 years, we show that the reform led to increased support for free-market policies such as full privatization and differential wages. Moreover, it decreased support for socialist policies such as the joint ownership of production means. Yet, the reform increased support for the safety net to support weak members through mutual guarantee. These effects appear to be driven by an increase in living standards and work ethics that resulted from the reform. We conclude that introducing market-based wages led to a shift in attitudes towards a market economy with compassion, revealing a change in members’ support from their traditional democratic socialist model to a social democratic model.

Political Conservatives and Political Liberals Have Similar Views about the Goodness of Human Nature

Political Conservatives and Political Liberals Have Similar Views about the Goodness of Human Nature. Eric Schwitzgebel with Nika Chegenizadeh. Monday, July 04, 2022. schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2022/07/political-conservatives-and-political.html

Back in 2007, I hypothesized that political liberals would tend to have more positive views about the goodness of human nature than political conservatives. My thinking was grounded in a particular conception of what it is to say that "human nature is good". Drawing on Mengzi and Rousseau (and informed especially by P.J. Ivanhoe's reading of Mengzi), I argued that those who say human nature is good have a different conception of moral development than do those who say it is bad.

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Those who say human nature is bad have, in contrast, an outward-in model of moral development. On this view, what is universal to humans is self-interest. Morality is an artificial social construction. Any quiet voice of conscience we might have is the result of cultural learning. People regularly commit evil and feel perfectly fine about it. Moral development proceeds by being instructed to follow norms that at first feel alien and unpleasant -- being required to share your toys, for example. Eventually you can learn to conform whole-heartedly to socially constructed moral norms, but this is more a matter of coming to value what society values than building on any innate attraction to moral goodness.

Thus, a liberal style of caregiving, which emphasizes children exploring their own values, fits nicely with the view that human nature is good, while a conservative style of caregiving, which emphasizes conformity to externally imposed rules, fits nicely with the view that human nature is bad.

Data: Schwitzgebel, Eric. 2022. “Do Political Liberals Have More Optimistic Views about the Goodness of Human Nature?” OSF. June 27. osf.io/ys6nj