Analysis of a Survey by Jan Bicicchi

As children, most of us were probably taught the basic lessons of life. Our families tried to instill in us a sense of right and wrong, good versus bad. One of the first lessons we were taught was that of honesty. A related concept of honesty is truth. Truth is a concept we understand as children but eventually learn to manipulate as adults.

The dictionary states that honesty "implies a refusal to lie, steal or deceive in any way." However, formal definitions of both truth and honesty contain similar phrases, that is, adherence to or dealing with facts. The terms may or may not be interchangeable, but they are similar in that their foundations are rooted in fact. Telling the truth usually means dealing with the consequences. Sometimes this moment of reckoning is instantaneous. Lying has its consequences as well, but for the most part, these can be postponed to a later date and time. I presume this is one of the reasons why we lie in the first place. As adults, I believe that the vast majority of us have twisted or stretched the truth at one time another in order to serve ourselves better. Is this right or wrong? This line of thought triggered contemplation on one of life's mysteries--is honesty truly the best policy?

Many of my friends and colleagues were aware that I had been coping with a situation where people were lying to me. In my case, the consequences were devastating and these people knew I had been extremely hurt and angry. However, in related conversations regarding these circumstances, I was astounded to learn that not everyone shared my opinion that lying was wrong. I had a difficult time accepting this notion but these people insisted that there were times when it was better not to tell the truth. My interest was piqued. I was curious to see how other people felt about lying and its consequences. The only way to accomplish this was to survey various people and track their responses.

My initial topic of choice for this survey was lying. Though I decided on my topic easily, I soon discovered that it was difficult to formulate related questions in a way that would make them easy to answer. Hard as I tried, I could not develop a sentence structure that was functional or a question that was non-threatening. After being stymied in one direction, I decided to try another. I rearranged the thought pattern and came up with an idea that would work. Instead of asking about lying, I decided to ask about honesty. The question I chose to pose to my respondents was "Is honesty always the best policy?".

Before undertaking this survey, I considered what I thought would be the most likely outcome. I predicted the following results: 1) Negative responses by men would outnumber negative responses by women; 2) Older persons would be more likely to respond in the affirmative than younger persons; 3) Persons with deep religious convictions would answer in the affirmative; and 4) Female respondents would be more reflective prior to responding than men.

Some of the predictions were predicated on my knowledge of the target pool of respondents. I planned on asking many of my colleagues to participate in the survey as they are quite a divergent group. It should be noted that the term colleague refers to employees in general as opposed to only those in my department. I interviewed employees from other areas that I happened to see in the hallway as well as those from our offices in New York. I live in the suburbs of a large Midwestern city and commute via train to work. This gave me the opportunity to survey people that I did not know well at all. Some of these people included my shuttle bus driver, a hairdresser, the colleague of a friend, a railroad employee, and someone I literally bumped into at the train station.

Most of the respondents were Caucasian. Out of the thirty interviewees, the only minorities I was able to contact were one Hispanic, one African American, two Asians and two persons of Philippine descent. While this added to the mix of people, the sample size of non-Caucasians was too small to provide any discernible pattern in the responses.

Upon concluding the survey, the results turned out to be mildly surprising. The complete breakdown is shown below. (The table is omitted from this paper.)

Overall, more respondents felt that honesty was not necessarily the best policy. Of the seventeen persons who said no or maybe, many qualified their answer by explaining that each situation had to be judged on its own merits. Several people said that total honesty often times causes pain and they would not want to intentionally hurt someone. In those instances, these people felt that white lies were acceptable. The examples most often cited here were related to lying about your opinions of someone's hairstyle or appearance. Most persons who replied maybe appeared to do so as an alternative to saying no. Much of their commentary began by sounding hesitant and negative. After some debate with themselves, they settled upon maybe using the explanations given by those who had said no. Additionally, several persons replied that they would rather withhold information in a given situation as opposed to being totally honest or telling a lie. For instance, my friend's husband has been a diabetic since age 13. Recently, his kidneys began to fail. Because his mother has been so overly protective of him, they opted not to tell his parents about the severity of his illness until he was hospitalized. The reason, my friend explained, was that his mother would have driven him crazy and made a bad situation worse. They felt it was better to remain silent.

Conversely, those who replied in the affirmative felt that honesty was the only path. As one older gentleman explained, not telling the truth from the start only causes more difficulties down the road. Furthermore, another man told me that when you lie, you had better have a very good memory. His point was that if you cannot keep track of your lies, eventually they will catch up to you.

There was one point on which all parties agreed. Everyone acknowledged that regardless if you were dealing with the truth or a white lie, what was said and how it was said was extremely important.

The biggest surprise for me in tabulating these results was the fact that more men answered my question in the affirmative than did women. Within the overall male category, all of the men over age 50 answered yes without hesitation. The younger men were almost evenly split in their responses but were more pensive. I can only attribute the reaction of the older men to an upbringing in a different type of environment.

My question generated a good deal of discussion amongst the younger men. As I listened or participated in these conversations, I began to see a common thread. It seemed that most of these younger men would have preferred to answer yes to my question. However, their remarks indicated that honesty can sometimes demand a costly price. We concluded that in order for honesty to be fully effective and appreciated, it needed to be complemented by another trait, maturity. Not everyone is mature enough to cope with the demands of honesty. The maturity or immaturity of someone could mean the difference between realization and acceptance of a situation or ignorance and rejection.

In regard to the female respondents, only one was over 50 years of age. The women, regardless of the category breakdown, appeared to be more reluctant to use honesty without first questioning the consequences. Most of the women I asked answered no or maybe without hesitation but they were quick to qualify this response with an explanation.

I was successful with two of my four predictions. My prediction regarding those persons with strong religious ties proved to be accurate. All three of these men felt strongly that honesty was critical to any relationship or situation. As subsequent conversation with these gentlemen revealed, religious beliefs can be all encompassing--issues are often black and white with little or no gray area.

As for my remaining prognostications, only the affirmative response of the older men was on target. My assumption that women would say yes to my question more than men proved to be incorrect. Additionally, the men proved to be more reflective prior to answering the question. Many of them mumbled their thoughts out loud or took several moments to respond. This reaction was not at all what I had anticipated. I figured that the men would not take this issue as seriously. Instead all the men, young and old, took their time and thought about their answer. I had fully expected that the women would respond with a resounding yes to the case for honesty. This, perhaps, was due to my bias against the male race given my own situation.

One of the things I had hoped to accomplish from this survey was to provide a question that would make people stop and think. I believe I can say that I achieved this goal. I was impressed that everyone I spoke with not only answered my question, but most took additional time to provide me with examples to support their response. As for myself, I began to see that being honest is not as cut and dried as it may seem. There are many intangibles within a given situation that must be taken into account. It is my own opinion that honesty is the best option provided it is put forth with tact and consideration. However, I realize that there may be something to the respondents' contention that each situation is different and should be judged accordingly.

There was one other item which I found intriguing. The day after I conducted this survey, several of the men who participated approached me and inquired about the results. I explained the reasons I had undertaken the project and told them my predictions. When I mentioned my prediction that men over 50 would respond yes, they were amazed. They thought that men over 50 would say no. Their reasoning was that, being older, these men would be more cynical. This is something I had not even considered.

While this survey proved to be interesting, I do not believe that it is a valid representation of any one group or viewpoint. In order to do this, I feel the sample size would need to be much larger and include a wider cross-section of the population. I also think that the survey should contain more questions. If I had to do it again, I would add questions geared toward honesty/lying in specific instances or relationships. The difficulty here would be in making the questions as non-threatening as possible. If a respondent felt uncomfortable with the survey, the results could be skewed. I also feel that additional queries would provide the data necessary to make more thought provoking assumptions and analysis. Nevertheless, I found that conducting this survey was an educational experience and one I would not mind repeating.

I feel that truth and honesty are closely intertwined. I believe that if you are honest, whether it be with yourself or another person, the truth will come out. I discovered through this survey that things are sometimes not as obvious as they may seem. More importantly, I saw that honesty is something that often must be measured and weighed before being presented. Though I prefer honesty to lies, I can understand how it could throw equilibrium out of balance.