Why Does the Public Story Change—and How Does Someone Come to Believe It?

Plain-language question: Someone admits in private, “I just want to win,” but tells an audience, “This is all about the rules.” Are they simply lying?

Paulhus distinguishes two forms of socially desirable responding: self-deception and impression management. Three studies tested the structure of widely used scales and compared anonymous with public responding. Scores on the scale that primarily reflected impression management increased more under public conditions. In other words, an audience changes how people present themselves, but respectable answers are not all the same kind of conscious deception. S12: Paulhus, 1984

Research on moral disengagement by Bandura and colleagues explains another layer. People can connect harm to a noble purpose, rename conduct with euphemisms, shift responsibility to a superior or group, minimize the consequences, and blame or devalue the victim, temporarily disengaging self-condemnation. Their multisource, cross-sectional study of adolescents found associations between moral disengagement and harmful conduct such as aggression and rule-breaking; the authors also explicitly cautioned against strong claims about causal direction from the path model. S13: Bandura et al., 1996

Where the evidence comes from: S12 studies scale structure and public versus anonymous response settings. S13 uses cross-sectional measures and a path model. The former supports the effect of audiences on self-presentation; the latter supports associations between several self-justifying mechanisms and harmful behavior. Neither lets us read someone’s true motive from a single sentence.

Illustrative example: While allocating resources in private, A says, “I’m taking it because I can.” At the press conference, A says, “Concentrating resources protects team stability.” B openly admits favoritism but describes the harmed party as “never qualified in the first place.” Their presentations differ, but both may be reducing their own sense of responsibility.

What this contributes to the project: M05, “Frontstage and Backstage,” should record who the audience is, which reputational risk the public account addresses, whether the same standard is still applied in private, and whether the character accepts consequences afterward. The Justification pole relies more heavily on normative framing, while the Disregard pole has less need for normative approval. But Justification does not mean actually following rules, and Disregard does not mean honesty. Moral disengagement is not exclusive to Justification: Disregard can also blame, dehumanize, or minimize harm.

What it does not show: The language of rules does not by itself prove hypocrisy, and blunt self-interest should not be praised as authenticity. Justification/Disregard describes a presentation strategy. Whether norms actually prevent or correct behavior is a separate question.