Pangs of conscience

The torments of conscience are directly related only to the feelings of the deceiver, and not to the legal definition of guilt or innocence. In addition, they also need to be distinguished from feelings of guilt about the content of lies. Suppose Ronnie in “Boy Winslow” really stole a postal order. He would feel guilty for his theft, condemning himself for what he had done. And if Ronnie had hidden his theft from his father, he would also feel guilty for lying, that is, suffering from remorse. And there is no need, feeling guilty about the content of the lie, to feel at the same time and remorse. Suppose Ronnie robbed a boy who had tricked him into a school competition. In this case, he most likely would not have felt any guilt for his theft from such a vile classmate; this might have seemed to him a well-deserved revenge. But at the same time he could feel guilty for having deceived a teacher or father. Mary, a patient in a psychiatric clinic, did not feel guilty about her suicidal plans, but felt guilty for deceiving the doctor.
As well as the fear of exposure, remorse can be of varying intensity. They can be very weak or, on the contrary, so strong that deception will not succeed, because the feeling of guilt will provoke a leak of information or will give any other signs of deception. Excessive guilt leads to painful experiences that undermine the sufferer’s most fundamental sense, self-esteem. The mere desire to get rid of such cruel feelings can push for recognition, regardless of the subsequent punishment. Sometimes even the punishment may be exactly what a person seems necessary for the release of painful guilt feelings.
When deciding to lie for the first time, people often don’t assume how much later they will suffer from remorse. They may not predict how the victim’s gratitude for their apparent help will affect them. Or do not anticipate their feelings at the sight of charges of their wrongdoing someone else. Typically, such scenes and cause remorse, although for some it is just a seasoning that makes a pot of lies really tasty. We will discuss this reaction, defined by me as a delight of cheating, below. Another reason that liars underestimate the importance of remorse is that the failure of a single deception becomes apparent only after some time, when it suddenly becomes obvious that now the lie must be repeated again and again, overgrown with new and new details, at least so that the initial deception is not revealed.
There is also a close connection with guilt and a feeling of shame, but for him there is one key qualitative difference. For remorse, the public is not needed, in this case the person is his own judge. Not so with shame. A sense of shame requires disapproval or ridicule from others. If there is no one who knows about the atrocity, then there will be no shame. And remorse may still arise. Of course, both of these feelings may be present. But the difference between shame and remorse of conscience is very important, because these two emotions can break a person. The desire to relieve guilt encourages recognition, and the desire to avoid a humiliating sense of shame prevents it.
Suppose Ronnie stole money and felt extremely guilty for doing this, and besides, he began to torment his conscience because he hid his crime. Ronnie might have a need for recognition, a desire to get rid of the torments of conscience. And only shame in front of his father could stop him. To avoid this, the father, as you remember, promised in the event of confession not to punish him. The less Ronnie was afraid of punishment, the less his fear of exposure, but his father also needed to reduce his sense of shame. And he tried to do it, promising to forgive the boy. But he could have further reduced the possibility of shame, thereby increasing the likelihood of confession if he used something similar to what I described several pages above, citing as an example the investigator who tried to squeeze the confession into murder from the suspect during the interrogation. Father could say to Ronnie: “I’m quite able to understand even theft. Perhaps I myself would have done the same if I were you; all this is understandable, the temptation is so great. In addition, everyone makes mistakes in his life and sometimes does not immediately realize that he was wrong. And you can't always help yourself. ” Although, of course, a respectable English father is not able to openly admit this and, unlike the investigator, does not want to lie in order to achieve confession.
In the case of lies, some people are especially prone to shame and remorse. And first of all, those who since childhood have been accustomed to consider a lie to be one of the most terrible sins. Those who were brought up, not condemning a lie in itself, but simply instilling a sense of guilt for everything, afterwards they only look for opportunities to increase this feeling of guilt and shamelessly put it on public display. Unfortunately, individuals prone to this kind of sensation have been studied too little. However, not much more is known about their direct opposite - about people who generally do not feel guilty for lying.
Columnist Jack Anderson in a newspaper article expressing distrust of Mel Weinberg, the main witness of the FBI prosecution in the Ebskam case, presented him as a liar who has neither shame nor conscience. Anderson described Weinberg's reaction to the discovery of his adultery, which the latter had been hiding for fourteen years: “When Mel suddenly heard about this, he only shrugged in response to Mary’s demand for explanation. “So I am exposed,” he said. “I always told you that I am the greatest liar in the world.” Then he sat comfortably in his favorite chair, ordered some Chinese food and asked Mary to give him a manicure ” ^[44] .
The absence of guilt or shame is considered a sign of psychopathy only if it applies to all or almost all areas of life. (Obviously, on the basis of a newspaper report only, no one will make such a diagnosis.) There are also disagreements between specialists and the fact that the result is a lack of guilt or shame - a result of the education or any factors of a biological order. However, everyone agrees that if something is capable of betraying a psychopath, then there is no feeling of guilt or fear of exposure.
In addition, special remorse will not be in the event that the cheater does not share the social values ​​of his victim. People feel less guilty to those who, in their opinion, do not live as they should. Lovelace, hiding her treachery from a frigid wife, may not feel any guilt behind her at all. A revolutionary or terrorist rarely suffers remorse, deceiving state representatives. Also, the spy will not suffer conscience due to the fact that it misleads its victim. One former CIA agent wittily remarked: “If you clear the espionage from the husk of crackling phrases, then it turns out that the work of the intelligence officer consists in betraying the people who trusted him” ^[45] .
When I advised security officials who were catching people involved in the murder of high-level government officials, I couldn’t focus them on remorse making consciences help to find liars. Assassins may be afraid of being caught if they are not professionals, but they are unlikely to ever feel guilty about their cause. Professional criminals do not feel any guilt behind them, deceiving the enemy. Their work is based on this, and this explains why diplomats or intelligence officers do not feel guilty for misleading those who do not share their social values. In such cases, the liar believes that he is doing a good, useful act from his point of view.
In most of these examples, lies are socially permissible — each of these people acts within the framework of certain social norms that legitimize their deception. In such cases, there is practically no guilt, as the victim of deception professes other values. But sometimes it is legal deception and those whose values ​​coincide with the values ​​of the cheater. Doctors may have no remorse about the fact that they are cheating patients, if they are sure that this is done for the benefit of the latter. The offer to the patient is a placebo (tablets of simple sugar, externally likened to real drugs) - an old, time-honored medical deception. If such a trick brings the patient relief or, finally, satisfies his desire to take exactly these pills, which, when applied in reality, can also harm, such a lie, according to many doctors, is justified. The Hippocratic Oath says nothing about honesty to the patient, it is simply assumed that the doctor should do only what can help the patient ^[46] .
A priest who conceals the confession made by a criminal during confession from the police, even in the case of a clear lie on the direct question of the policeman, should not have any remorse about conscience. His vow allows him such a hoax. He does not derive any benefit from this deception for himself; it is only profitable for the criminal; the crime may remain unsolved. Students of medical college, hiding their true feelings, did not feel any remorse. The deception was permitted due to the explanation that the nurse should be able to hide her feelings while working in order to alleviate the suffering of the patient.
But often, the liars may not realize or do not recognize that deception, which at first glance seems to be a lie in salvation, is beneficial to them. For example, one senior vice president of a national insurance company believes that the truth can be cruel if another person’s self-esteem suffers: “Sometimes it’s not so easy to tell a guy straight in the face:“ no chairman will leave you " ^[47] .
Would it not be better to spare his feelings? And at the same time yours? Indeed, it is not really “so easy” to say such a thing to this “guy” right in the face, because you can come across his possible protest, especially if he thinks that this is just a personal opinion. In this case, the lie spares both. But some may say that lying to a guy is harmful because it deprives him of valuable information, albeit unpleasant, but necessary in order to improve his business skills or reorient himself and look for some other work. Similarly, one can agree with the opinion that a doctor who gives a placebo, although it is an altruist, also benefits from lies. He gets rid of the patient's possible disappointment that there is no cure for his illness, or anger if the patient finds out that the doctor gives a placebo, probably considering the patient to be just a hypochondriac, and not sick. In addition, it is still a question of whether a lie is really beneficial for the patient or is it still harmful to him.
Nevertheless, there are indisputable examples of altruistic liars: a priest hiding the criminal’s confession, rescuers who did not tell the wounded boy that his parents had died under the wreckage of an airplane. In these cases, the liar does not derive any benefit. And if a liar does not see any benefit for himself in his lie, he, most likely, will not feel remorse.
When a lie is allowed, even a selfish deception may not cause remorse. Poker players do not suffer conscience for the fact that they are bluffing. This is also true of trades, wherever they go - on the bazaar, on Wall Street or in the nearest office of a real estate agency. An article on lies says: “Perhaps the most popular lie formula is the phrase: this is my final offer. Such a language is not only allowed in the business world, it is expected ... During public sales, no one assumes that all the cards will be laid out on the table from the very beginning. ” ^[48]
A homeowner who asks for his home is more expensive than what it actually costs will not feel guilty if it receives the required price. His lies are allowed. Because participants expect from each other exactly disinformation, and not the truth; There are no lies in trading and poker. The very nature of these situations suggests that none of the participants will be true. Show your cards and call the minimum price only fools.
Remorse is most likely in cases where a lie is not allowed. And the conscience is tormented most severely by a liar in cases where a preliminary agreement was reached not to lie to each other - the victim trusts the liar without assuming that she is led by the nose. In such opportunistic frauds, remorse intensifies if the victim suffers at least as much as the liar wins. A teenager who hides marijuana from his parents may not feel any guilt behind him if he sees in his parents only fools mumbling about the dangers of drugs, while he is well aware from his own experience that they are not right. If he also considers them hypocrites because they drink heavy alcoholic beverages, and he is not allowed to use even soft drugs, then the chances that he will be seriously tormented by conscience are even less. However, although a teenager does not agree with his parents about marijuana, if he is really attached to them and worries about them, he may feel ashamed if he reveals lies. For the emergence of shame, however, requires some respect for those who disapprove; otherwise, such disapproval causes only anger or contempt, and not shame.
Liars have much less remorse when their objects are impersonal or unfamiliar. The buyer, hiding from the controller at the exit that he paid for his purchase less than what it costs, feels less guilty if he sees this controller for the first time. If this controller is the owner of the store or a member of his family (meaning a small family shop), then deceiving him, the buyer will feel more guilty than if it happened in any of the supermarkets. When a victim of deception is anonymous, it is much easier to indulge all sorts of fantasies that reduce one’s own guilt, for example, to imagine that it doesn’t hurt her at all and perhaps no one even discovers anything; or even better, that she herself deserved it or wants to be deceived herself ^[49] .
The interdependence of remorse and fear of exposure is far from unequivocal. Fear of exposure is very strong and with very weak remorse of conscience. When deception is sanctioned, the remorse of conscience is usually small, but the sanctioning of deception usually increases the stakes and, accordingly, the fear of exposure. In our experiment with nurses, sanctioning lies was of great importance to them, and they experienced a strong fear of revealing with weak remorse of conscience. An entrepreneur who deceives his employee, hiding suspicions from him in order to grab his hand once, is likely to also have a strong fear of exposure and very weak remorse.
On the other hand, the same factors that increase the remorse of conscience, can reduce the fear of exposure. A liar may feel guilty, misleading a gullible victim, but he will not have much reason to fear that he will be exposed, because the victim himself does not even admit the thought of this. Of course, it is possible to suffer from the torments of conscience and at the same time be very afraid of being caught or almost not feeling either one or the other - it all depends on the specific situation, as well as on the identity of the liar and the verifier.
Some people literally bathe in remorse of conscience. Sometimes they even specifically lie in order to suffer this way. Most, on the contrary, find these sensations so unpleasant that they are glad to any opportunity to get rid of them. There are many ways to justify deception. It can be counted revenge for injustice. Or you can quite sincerely think that the one whom you cheat is a scoundrel and a scoundrel and does not deserve honesty. "The boss was so stingy that he never rewarded me for all the things I did for him, so I grabbed something from his pocket." In addition, if the victim of deception was too trusting, a liar may find that she herself is to blame for everything.
Two other excuses, weakening the remorse of conscience, were mentioned earlier. One of them is a noble goal or a so-called production necessity, recall Nixon, who explained his lies by the need to preserve fasting. Another is a peculiar desire to protect the victim of fraud from trouble.Sometimes a liar can go so far as to claim that the victim even wants to be deceived. If the deceived, despite the knowledge of the true state of affairs, contributes to obvious lie, pretends that he does not suspect anything, then there is no lie and the liar is free from any responsibility. Thus, the sincere agreement of the victim with deception, despite the fact that there is a clearly deceptive discrepancy between the facts and the behavior of the liar, helps the liar. Because the one who does not want to be deceived, in this case it is necessary to suspect something and try to uncover the deception.
An interesting example of the victim’s possible deception with deception is contained in the above story (see Chapter 1 “Lies. Information Leakage and Some Other Signs of Deception”) about Robert Lacy. I borrowed this story from Robert Daily’s book Prince of the City. The true story of a policeman who knew too much ", which was the film. The author claims to be a true description of how Lacey helped the federal prosecutor obtain evidence of corruption among police officers and lawyers. When Lacey enlisted on this job, he was asked if he had committed any crimes. He admitted to three. Those whom he later exposed exposed asserted that Lacey had committed a much larger number of crimes; and since he lied about his own criminal past, he, he says, should not be trusted in the testimony against them.But these allegations were not confirmed by anything, and many people were convicted on the basis of Lacy’s testimony. Alan Dershovits, a lawyer who defended one of the convicts on the basis of Lacy’s testimony, described his conversation with him after the trial - the latter confessed to him that he had actually committed a much larger number of crimes.
“I [Dershowitz] told him [Lacey] that it is hard to believe that Shaw [the federal prosecutor] did not know about other Lacey crimes before the trial of Rosner [defendant Dershowitz]. “Of course, he didn’t doubt that I had committed much more crimes,” Lacy said. “He knew that. Mike (Shaw) was no fool.”
- But in that case, how could he sit here and calmly look at how you, as a witness, lie to you !? - I asked.
“But he wasn’t absolutely sure that I’m lying,” Lacy replied. “He, of course, suspected it and probably believed it; but I asked him not to pressure me, and he obeyed. I told him: “three crimes”, - Lacy showed me three fingers and smiled broadly, - and he accepted that. Prosecutors buy false witnesses every day, Alan. You know, ” ^[50] .
Soon, Dershowitz learned that this Lacy confession also turned out to be a lie. The bailiff, who was present at Lacey’s first meeting with the federal prosecutor, told Dershowitz that Lacey immediately confessed to more than three crimes. But the federal prosecutor supported Lacey in silencing him with the full truth in order to maintain his credibility as a witness — the jury can believe a police officer who has committed three crimes, but a police officer who has committed many of them - never. Thus, Lacy lied to Dershovits and when he said that the prosecutor was only a voluntary victim, thereby concealing that they simply conspired. In addition, cautious Lacey secretly made and kept a tape recording of his confession to the prosecutor, so he could be sure that the prosecutor would always remain loyal to him,protecting him from any kind of prosecutions.
Now it does not matter for us what is true and what is false in this whole story, but Lacy's talk with Alan Dershowitz is a brilliant example of how voluntary sacrifice, which deception is beneficial, can make it easier for a liar to achieve his own. However, the deceived may unite with deceivers for more worthy reasons. Often a person voluntarily becomes a victim of deception out of politeness. So, the hostess accompanies the outgoing guest too early, without asking him specifically about the reasons for leaving. To comply with decency and respect for the feelings of the hostess, some more or less plausible excuse is sufficient. In such cases, the victim not only voluntarily deceives, she even welcomes such deception. And I do not include in my definition of lies a distortion of truth out of politeness or for the sake of etiquette.
The relationship of lovers is another example of this kind of deception, in which both sides, together, support each other's lies. Shakespeare wrote:

When you swear to me that you are all completely Serve as a model worthy of truth, I believe, even though I see how you lie, Imagine me as a blind youth. Flattered by the fact that I can still Seem young truth in spite of, I lie to myself in my vanity, And both of us are far from the truth. You will not tell me that she lied to me again, And I don’t recognize my age. Trust imaginary holds love, And old age, loving, ashamed of years. I lie to you, you lie unwittingly to me, And it seems we are completely satisfied! [51]

Of course, not all love lies are so kindhearted, and not all the victims of these lies are wanted to be deceived. In no case can one judge the interest in deceiving the victim himself by the evidence of the deceiver; for him, in any case, it is preferable to declare the voluntariness of the victim, because it reduces the feeling of guilt. After all, if the victim suspected at least something, she was already half pulled off the hook.
Involuntary victims, in order to avoid payment for disclosing deception, may eventually become voluntary. Imagine the position of a government official who suddenly suspected that the lover he trusted so much and told so much about his work was a spy. The recruitment officer may sometimes become a voluntary victim of a job seeker scammer and take him to the state rather than admit his erroneous conclusion. Robert Wolstetter describes many examples of how national leaders became voluntary victims of deception by opponents - the case of Chamberlain is no exception. "In all these examples of deceptions that lasted for many years, in ignoring all the growing and clearly contradictory evidence,A very important role is played by a carefully cherished hope for the good faith of the potential adversary and for the common interests that both sides supposedly have. ... The enemy only has to slightly push the victim, while the latter is inclined to turn away from those actions that can be regarded as mere tediousness. ”^[52] .
Summarizing all the above, we can say that the remorse of conscience is intensified in those cases when:

• the victim is deceived against her will;
• deception is very selfish; the victim does not derive any benefit from the deception, but loses as much or even more than the liar gains;
• deception is not permitted, and the situation presupposes honesty;
• the liar had not practiced deception for a long time;
• the liar and the victim adhere to the same social values;
• the liar is personally acquainted with the victim;
• the victim is hard to blame for negative qualities or excessive gullibility;
• the victim has reason to suspect deception, or, conversely, the liar himself would not like to be a deceiver.