psychology

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donotdestroy:

“Trust is the bedrock of social life at all levels, from romance and parenting to national government. Deception always undermines it. Because truth is so essential to the human enterprise, which relies on a shared view of reality, the default assumption most people have is that others are truthful in their communications and dealings. Most cultures have powerful social sanctions against lying.”

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donotdestroy:

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may pertain to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”

— Harry Frankfurt (On Bullshit, pp. 55-56)

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donotdestroy:

“Humans are prone to the principle of least effort, often known as the ‘path of least resistance,’ which means they’ll go for whatever option requires the least work. Hypocrisy allows you to appear principled without having to be so, which is much easier than adhering to strict principles.”

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donotdestroy:

“What’s so interesting is that we seem to intuitively understand that if we can get ourselves to believe something first, we’ll be more effective at getting others to believe it,” says William von Hippel, a psychologist at The University of Queensland, who co-authored the study. “So we process information in a biased fashion, we convince ourselves, and we convince others. The beauty is, those are the steps Trivers outlined—and they all lined up in one study.”

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donotdestroy:

4.2. Flexibility and Corruption

Since the Thai are not principle oriented, and with the high value for personal relationships, they also appear not to be strictly law-oriented. In practice, principles and laws are ever-adjustable to fit persons and situations. In other words, laws are rules laid out in papers; but what is wrong or right depends not on the rules, but instead on who the person is or whom the person knows. A prominent Thai businessman ironically described this phenomenon in a seminar: 

We Thai are not a society of law; we are a society of relationship…. It is not what a person has done that’s wrong; it’s who he is…. If he is your cousin, or your friend, then what he has done is not wrong. But if another person does the same thing, and it’s somebody you don’t like, then what he has done is wrong…

Source: S. KOMIN, Psychology of the Thai People: Values and Behavioral Patterns. Bangkok, Research Center, National Institute of Development Administration.

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donotdestroy:

Other signs include:

  • A sense of self-importance, exaggerating their achievements and talents
  • A preoccupation with fantasies of success, power, or brilliance
  • A belief that they’re more special or unique than others and should only associate with other high-status people
  • Envy of others or the belief that others are envious of them
  • Insisting they have the best of everything
  • Feeling they deserve privileges and special treatment

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donotdestroy:

One study of just this concept found that nearly half of people surveyed would rather make $50,000 in a world where the average salary is $25,000 than make $100,000 in a world where the average is $200,000; that is, they prioritized making more relative to other people rather than having a higher overall income. As the saying goes, “If you and I are being chased by a bear, I don’t have to outrun the bear; I just have to outrun you.”

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