Spring Reading: "Self-Deception" by Herbert Fingarette

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 04/06/2015 - 20:00

I just read a classic work of philosophical psychology, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=oX0taPXw9CwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=f…; target="”_blank”">Self-Deception</a> (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), wherein Herbert Fingarette takes an interesting approach to a phenomenon common to politics, but which seems paradoxical and, therefore, difficult to understand. How can someone effectively lie to himself as well as to others (and is it still a lie)? How can someone know something and yet not know it, or believe something that he knows is not true? And what implications does self-deception have for government ethics? 
 
Failing to Spell Out 
When we engage with the world, Fingarette says, we only "spell out" to ourselves what we are doing when we have a special reason to. When there is a reason not to spell out to ourselves what we are doing, that is, when it is in our interest to avoid being explicitly conscious of what we are doing (e.g., when engaging in ethical misconduct), we often avoid spelling out. For example, someone may make an ad hominem remark (that is, a criticism of a person rather than of what the person is saying) without consciously realizing that she is doing anything other than making a legitimate criticism. 
 
Self-deception occurs when someone persistently avoids spelling out a particular kind of activity, such as taking gifts from restricted sources or using one's office to help family members. It is not that, each time, the official decides not to recognize what he is doing. It is, effectively, a "policy commitment," something generally avoided and, therefore, automatically not recognized each time it occurs. 
 
Cover Stories 
To cover the fact that one is avoiding full recognition of what one is doing, one generates a "cover-story" that consists of disguises and rationalizations. When inconsistencies appear, ingenuity is employed to elaborate one's story in order to protect its plausibility. For example, when an official participates in giving a contract to her brother, and someone calls this inappropriate, the official will insist that her brother's company was the best contractor for the job. If someone says she shouldn't have voted, the official will say that her vote wasn't the deciding vote and she needed to represent her constituents. If someone says that even if she did feel she had to vote, she didn't need to lobby her colleagues for her brother's benefit, she will say, "How else could they have learned how good his company was? I did a service to the city letting them know about my brother's skills and background." 
 
The cover-story can go on and on, and the self-deceptive official will do her best to elaborate answers that prevent her from seeing that she has not been dealing responsibly with her conflict and has instead used her office to give preferential treatment to her brother's company. And since the self-deceiver believes the cover-story, no matter how complex it gets, no matter how much ingenuity she brings to it, she can sound very sincere. In fact, part of her success lies in mistakenly taking the intensity of her feeling as a sign of the truth and importance of what she is saying, and feeling she is justified because she tells the world what she tells herself. 
 
Avowing and Personal Identity 
According to Fingarette, self-deception "turns upon the personal identity one accepts rather than the beliefs one has." This is one reason that it is more common to elected officials than to others. People who run for office tend to see themselves as good, likeable people. They may see themselves as clever, but not as dishonest or otherwise unethical. This makes it harder for them to "avow" their misconduct, that is, to identify themselves as someone who does such things. "Avowal" is an inner act. Someone who cannot avow his misconduct also has a problem avowing the fact that he cannot avow his misconduct. The failure to avow works at two levels and, therefore, is stronger and harder to deal with. It is, effectively, a disavowal of what ethicists call "moral agency," the ability to act ethically. Avowal of one's conduct is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for ethical action (it is not sufficient, because one may avow one's misconduct yet still engage in it, because misconduct is not inconsistent with one's self-image and one hopes to get away with the misconduct). 
 
What is most important with respect to government ethics is that a failure to avow is a failure to take responsibility. Since government ethics is about dealing responsibly with conflict of interest situations, someone who is self-deceived about their conduct is incapable of fulfilling the obligations of government ethics. This is especially true if ethics provisions are not clear, if there is no ethics training, and if government attorneys are permitted to provide ethics advice. Each of these provides wiggle room for someone who needs that room to preserve their view of the kind of person they believe they are. 
 
It's no accident that the first thing so many officials say when accused of ethical misconduct is, "You are questioning my integrity. I am a man of integrity." And, in fact, they are men and women of integrity. According to Fingarette, self-deception is a sign of integrity. It is an attempt by an individual to preserve his integrity. Someone without integrity will not go the same extent to defend his view of himself, especially to himself. When he defends himself, he is being hypocritical rather than fighting to feel good about himself. When an individual deceives himself, he "attempts to save his integrity at a price which amounts to surrendering, however indirectly, the very integrity he cherishes." Those who deceive themselves are to be pitied, but they undermine trust in government when they engage in ethical misconduct. 
 
It is because it is so distressing for individuals to avow actions inconsistent with their view of themselves, that officials accused of ethical misconduct will so powerfully defend themselves. This defensive reaction takes many forms, including anger, pride, self-pity, and self-righteous denial and return accusations. Often, these reactions are themselves disavowed. Sometimes, colleagues and subordinates may feel obligated to take part in or support these reactions. 
 
Taking Responsibility for One's Actions 
When someone has a fiduciary duty to put the public interest before personal interests, integrity is not an issue. And it is not an issue whether someone is deceiving himself and the public, or simply the public. 
 
But self-deception needs to be seen for what it is: not only a surrender of integrity, but also a failure to take responsibility for one's actions, for purely personal reasons. A government official has an obligation to avow everything he does. If he is incapable of doing this, he should resign from office and seek psychological counseling. Self-deception, as a frequent accompaniment of blind spots, should be discussed in ethics training, to help colleagues recognize it and, possibly, to help some officials recognize the problem in themselves (see <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/files/lgep1-0%20-%20Robert%20Wechsler.htm#Tra…; target="”_blank”">the section of my book</a> Local Government Ethics Programs on training about blind spots). 
 
Self-deception and public service are as incompatible as fraud and public service. And the results are the same, except for the fact that self-deception is more confusing. Instead of a crook getting caught doing something, a sincere individual who has done a great deal to obtain the respect of his community is caught doing the same thing. And the cover-ups that follow discovery of ethical misconduct can get even uglier when an official is fighting not only to stay in office, but also to defend his inaccurate view of himself as ethical. 
 
Government officials have an obligation to deal with their conflicts of interest in a responsible, professional manner. If they fail to seek advice because they believe they always act ethically, and they engage in ethical misconduct, they are not fulfilling their obligations, no matter how good their intentions may have been. 
 
Fingarette says that "the adult person" does not engage in conduct that goes against his beliefs about himself or, if he has already become involved, he abandons it. In other words, one does not create a conflict or, if one already exists, one withdraws from participation. That is the responsible, "adult" thing to do. If a government official fails to do the responsible thing, it doesn't matter if it is due to self-deception or corrupt intent. This is one way in which criminal enforcement of ethics violations is wrong and ineffective. 
 
The Obligations of Deliberation 
There is another kind of failure involved here: the failure to deliberate. In a democracy, every position an official takes should be explained, especially when requested. And the explanation should be honest. Otherwise, it is fraudulent, which is at least as bad as failing or refusing to explain. 
 
Another way of stating this obligation is that government officials are required to "spell out" what they are doing, to themselves, to their colleagues, and to the public. An official who fails to spell out and to avow what he is doing cannot fulfill his obligations. In other words, an official does not have the luxury of self-deception, at least with respect to public matters. But since individuals are not generally aware of their self-deception, it is difficult for them to do anything about it. 
 
A better way is to prevent the misconduct from occurring or, when it has occurred, to ensure that it is disclosed and dealt with responsibly. This way involves the creation of rules and procedures that focus on facts, for example, requiring officials to disclose their relationships and interests whenever a matter arises. Another requirement should be that anyone with a relationship or interest either withdraw from a matter or seek ethics advice from an independent ethics adviser. This both (1) makes it hard for an official to fail to deal with a conflict of interest and (2) makes enforcement easier, because the failure to disclose or seek advice is itself a violation. No other evidence or discussion of motive is necessary. Along with training, such rules and procedures will make self-deception much less of a government ethics problem. 
 
Of course, few such rules and procedures exist. Government officials effectively enable self-deception, adding another level to the problem. And it is an issue that they do not deliberate about publicly. 
 
Dealing with Self-Deception 
It is very difficult for the public to deal with this situation, as common as it is, especially in politics. If one responds to what a self-deceiving official says, he will often get more defensive and become angry. Or simply close the door and refuse to speak about it anymore. As Fingarette wrote, "Direct appeals to integrity and moral concern, evoking the motives of self-deception, strengthen the inclination to [self-deception] and are self-defeating." One will be playing on the self-deceiver's home field, where it is impossible to win. 
 
One may dream of getting someone to avow their misconduct, but in most cases it won't work. It's hard enough to do this in the non-confrontational setting of psychotherapy. It's important to recognize that what a self-deceiver lacks is not integrity, but insight and courage, that is, the courage to acknowledge and take responsibility for conduct inconsistent with his self-image. 
 
The best way to deal with it is to step back from the cover-story, especially from talk about intent and motive, and focus on the facts, on what Fingarette calls the individual's "engagement in the world" and whether what the individual says matches this engagement. For example, when the official who helps her brother get a contract goes on about his competence, one should ignore this and insist that there are rules against nepotism and against participation with a conflict of interest. Only the conflict of interest, and the official's handling of it, matters. All the rest is irrelevant. 
 
Conflicts of interest codes should similarly be focused on the facts, not on motives or excuses or anything else that is extraneous to the problem. The extraneous is used to falsely justify ethical misconduct. Similarly, it does not matter whether the official is in a state of self-deception and, therefore, believes what he says, or is trying to fool an ethics commission or the public in order not to be sanctioned for the misconduct. The misconduct is the same and the failure to seek ethics advice is the same. This message needs to be given to the public and the press, as well, so that it is understood that what the official is saying is self-serving and inappropriate. 
 
Robert Wechsler 
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics 
 
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Spring Reading: "Self-Deception" by Herbert Fingarette

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