Asymmetries in perceptions of self and others' hypocrisy: Rethinking the meaning and perception of the construct.

Abstract

This article examines how people recall and describe instances of hypocrisy in their own and others' behaviour. N = 302 participants provided two written examples. The first example recalled a time when someone called the participant a hypocrite, while the other recalled an instance when the participant perceived someone else's behaviour as hypocritical. One goal of the study was to discover if real-world examples of hypocrisy reflect only mere inconsistency, consistent with the construct's narrow use in psychology, or if they contain other distinctive defining features. A typology was used to code the examples, based loosely on Crisp and Cowton's philosophical distinction between four forms of hypocrisy: direct inconsistency, pretence, blame, and complacency. A second goal was to uncover reliable actor-observer differences in perceptions of hypocrisy. Results indicated that the four forms occur in real-world examples of both self and others' hypocrisy. Interestingly, a new fifth form, indirect inconsistency, emerged from the data, adding nuance to the initial hypothesis. Finally, several actor-observer differences in perceptions of hypocrisy arose and are discussed. The results indicate that hypocrisy is a much more complicated phenomenon than previously considered and provide the impetus for new areas of research.