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From the Vault: Authenticity, Part 3
2025/4/8
Stuff To Blow Your Mind
J
Joe McCormick
R
Robert Lamb
Robert Lamb: 我对真诚这个概念很感兴趣，因为它是一个常用概念，但含义模糊，存在很多歧义。我们试图剖析真诚的不同用法，以及人们在使用这个概念时的含义。我们还研究了一项表明我们并不擅长感知他人真诚度的研究。在艺术和娱乐方面，真诚体现在对音乐家和其他艺术家的真实性的追求。我们讨论了奥森·威尔斯电影《假作真时真亦假》，以及艺术评论家沃尔特·本雅明提出的关于真诚的专门概念，以及它与几个世纪以来媒体技术变化的关系。我们还讨论了真诚与诚实之间的关系。诚实与真诚并非完全一致，一些说谎的人也可能被认为是真诚的。我们研究了一篇关于真诚与诚实之间复杂关系的论文，该论文认为真诚是指内在品质和感受的真实表达，内外一致。不真诚的表现包括言行与内心不符，或未能对外表达真实的自我。鲁索的例子说明了将真诚与不加掩饰的诚实等同起来的观点，但这是一种令人难以忍受的生活方式。真诚与诚实不同，完全的坦诚可能会伤害他人并导致疏离。将真诚与诚实等同起来，认为真诚就是时刻展现无畏的诚实。诚实是追求真诚的工具之一，但在特定情况下，人们会忽略或低估诚实的真诚性。人们认为在某些情况下，不诚实也可以是真诚的。人们在不诚实行为中表现出真诚，主要可以分为四类情况：对他人和自己都不诚实；为保护自身利益而说谎；为维护重要关系而说谎；为保护他人利益而说谎。某些情况下，真诚的含义并非指真实情感的表达，而是指在特定情境下被认为合理的举动。评估自身行为是否与真实自我一致，需要了解真实的自我并客观地观察自身行为，这都很困难。人们对自身道德评价存在偏差，且记忆会选择性地强化正面自我形象，这使得对真诚的研究变得困难。人们可能会为了维护真诚的自我形象而歪曲事实或感知。研究结果表明，人们对真诚的判断常常存在误导，不应过度依赖第一印象。判断他人的真诚度，应更注重客观行为记录而非主观感受。文化差异会影响人们对真诚的感知，例如德国人和中国人对真诚的判断标准不同。如果人们认为现行体制不合法，他们可能会将公然的谎言视为真诚的表现。人们倾向于将与自身偏见一致的言论视为真诚的，即使这些言论具有冒犯性。一致性模型认为，真诚的感知取决于新信息与现有认知的一致性。人们感知的真诚并非真实情感的直接表达，而是基于对个人既有认知的预测和一致性。
Joe McCormick: 一些说谎的人也可能被认为是真诚的。鲁索的例子说明了将真诚与不加掩饰的诚实等同起来的观点，但这是一种令人难以忍受的生活方式。真诚与诚实不同，完全的坦诚可能会伤害他人并导致疏离。
supporting_evidences
Robert Lamb: 'In part two of the series, we talked about authenticity in art and entertainment, what it means to look for authenticity in musical artists and other types of art.'
Joe McCormick: 'And an easy illustration of that is characters, both real and fictional, who are known to tell lies, but are often thought of as authentic.'
Robert Lamb: 'This will be complicated when we start introducing survey responses and how people actually use the idea of authenticity and how it relates to honesty and so forth.'
Robert Lamb: 'In other words, the inside matches the outside. Our outward behavior is consistent with our private inner feelings, thoughts, and character.'
Joe McCormick: 'And I got to say, that sounds absolutely insufferable.'
Joe McCormick: 'This is actually describing something different than honesty. Saying every thought that pops into your head, telling friends and family everything they do that bothers you, being honest, quote honest in the most brutal way as always, seems like a kind of nasty way to live.'
Robert Lamb: 'So anyway, to come back to this relationship between authenticity and honesty, from this example of Rousseau, you know, we see someone at least partially equating authenticity and honesty, assuming that to be authentic is the most honest way to live and that authenticity entails nonstop moment-to-moment displays of, quote, fearless honesty or brutal truth-telling.'
Robert Lamb: 'But the authors actually propose a counter hypothesis in this paper. They write that, quote, honesty is one of many tools in the pursuit of authenticity and that people will disregard or discount honesty as authentic under specific conditions.'
Robert Lamb: 'authentic dishonesty really did not generally seem to people like an impossible situation or an incoherent concept.'
Robert Lamb: 'Furthermore, and here's the interesting part, the authors say that the examples people gave of their own authentic dishonesty fell into basically four categories.'
Robert Lamb: 'So the first example is when the subject was dishonest with other people in a way that they were also not honest with themselves.'
Robert Lamb: 'Another one was, and you can understand this, somebody lying about psychiatric symptoms in order to get admitted to a psych ward to avoid being homeless.'
Robert Lamb: 'Another one was, and you can understand this, somebody lying about psychiatric symptoms in order to get admitted to a psych ward to avoid being homeless.'
Robert Lamb: 'When honesty would threaten the survival or well-being of someone else, dishonesty in the protection of other people.'
Robert Lamb: 'So in those cases, authenticity would seem to mean something different than what we than the way we've been using it.'
Robert Lamb: 'In order to evaluate whether your external behavior is consistent with your true self, you have to both know what your true self is and be able to objectively observe and analyze your external behavior.'
Robert Lamb: 'And then the experiment found that on average, people who rated themselves as more authentic on a self-assessment test were more likely to claim they saw the color change in line with whatever they thought an authentic person was supposed to see.'
Robert Lamb: 'So I want to pause briefly here before you lose all hope, because remember that studies like this are observing trends and tendencies on average in behavior, not like totalizing realities about all people all the time.'
Robert Lamb: 'So in other words, you know, I'd say it's probably not a good strategy to decide whether you trust someone with something important on the basis of whether they give off an authentic vibe or not.'
Robert Lamb: 'This experiment found that you You take a fictional character and you have them list either their likes and their dislikes or just their likes.'
Robert Lamb: 'So kind of interesting finding, like lies, flagrant lies can be perceived as authentic if you think the norms of the system under which you live is not legitimate.'
Robert Lamb: 'But but this is saying that there's a tendency for people to view expressions of prejudice and politically offensive language as authentic as long as they hold those same views.'
Robert Lamb: '
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Robert Lamb: 'So according to this model, people perceive authenticity as not the unvarnished expression of people's true inner feelings, but rather acting in a way that is predictable and consistent based on the image of that person that they already have in their head.'
Robert Lamb: 'Now, this is a big topic. Big topic to sort of dip our toes in a little bit here.'
Robert Lamb: 'You know, especially on this show, we tend to dismiss the idea of just like, OK, religion, is that is that fake or is that real?'
Robert Lamb: 'And I mean, obviously, that is a question you can ask, and it's fine to ask that question. But I think that it caused a lot of people to see questions of religion only on those terms, like, is the Bible literally true or something in the U.S. context, which I think is a sort of deranging lens of focus that really causes people to miss a lot of what religion means to people and the role it plays in their lives.'
Robert Lamb: 'So obviously the multiple meanings of authenticity and fakeness come into play here.'
Robert Lamb: 'So as Chidester points out, yeah, it's not so simple to really weigh in on authenticity and religion. Because even if this is, even if we agree with this and say, all right, to some degree, all religions are fake.'
Robert Lamb: 'So the author here, David Chydester, points to an extreme example of this.'
Robert Lamb: 'Now he gets into another obvious reality about all of this. Among the faithful, the religion you practice is often touted as the authentic one.'
Robert Lamb: 'And of course, this also includes the demonization of local religious traditions.'
Robert Lamb: 'And Chidester points to accounts that stolen relics were sometimes thought to be even more valued because the saint it was associated with could have been viewed as implicit in the theft.'
Robert Lamb: 'Now, eventually you get into the Enlightenment and the author points out here that you have two sort of contrasting ideals that emerge to determine authenticity, particularly with Christians and Christianity and Christian thought.'
Robert Lamb: 'And I believe we've talked about the hyper real religions on the show before.'
Robert Lamb: 'And as with most things in authenticity, it's hard to look at somebody else and judge whether, wait, do you really believe in the Jedi religion?'
Robert Lamb: 'So Tosig wrote, quote, defacement asks what happens when something precious is despoiled.'
Robert Lamb: 'So Alberts argues that, quote, fake religions produce sacrality in their connecting the body of the perceiver with the movements of concealment and revelation.'
Joe McCormick: 'I think a whole lot of conspiracy theory ideation begins as entertainment.'
Deep Dive
This chapter explores the complex relationship between honesty and authenticity, challenging the assumption that they are synonymous. It uses a study by Bailey and Iyengar to show that people can be authentically dishonest, particularly when honesty would threaten their needs, relationships, or the well-being of others.
- Honesty and authenticity are distinct concepts.
- People can be authentically dishonest in various situations.
- A coherence model suggests authenticity is about consistency with existing self-image.
Shownotes Transcript