Evening Star Newspaper, April 10, 1932, Page 73

Dr. J. B. Maller of Columbia Univer- sity, tells of novel tests his research de- partment made in arriving at certain conclusions as to truth-telling. TEST YOUR VERACITY Here's the way to get a line on your truth-telling abilities: Take a situation such as fol- fows: Philip dropped and broke a phonograph record that was his father's favorite. He knew his father would feel badly about it. There are four things for Philip Jo do: 1. Tell his father what has happened. 2. Hide the record amd say wmothing it. 3. Tell father that he found the record brokew. #. Tell his father he had beem lookimg that record and couldw’t find it. In the Columbia tests 98 per oent answered No. 1. Read this page for further truth tests. Here's a new game to try on a room full of guests some rainy Spring evening. BY CAROL BIRD. OMEN lie with more facility than do men. But—women tell their white lies because of tact and out of consideration for the feelings of others, while men's honesty 1is ofttimes Prutally frank. Men are truthful at any cost, even at the price of nicking the other fellow’s tender sensibilities. Dr, J. B. Maller, research associate of Teach- ®rs' College, Columbia University, New York, arrived at this conclusion recently after sub- mitting 70 conflict problems to 517 graduate THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, APRIL 10, Are Men More Truthful Than W Scientific Investi- gation Conducted at Columbia Uni- versity, Howewver, Indicates That Women Are More Tactful WithT heir “Fibs> and More Considerate of the Feelings of Others. students in education. The problems involved situations of ccnflict between such principles as honesty and loyalty, truthfulness and courtesy, and so on, and the purpose of the study was to determine the extent to which American educe- tors agree with one another in situations in- volving conflicting social ideals. Dr. Maller sought to obtain the opinion of educators as to the correct solutions in those confusing and sometimes embarrassing situations. These problems, according to Dr. Maller, are often similar to the legal cases which are re- ported in the “Dissenting Opinions of Justice Holmes.” Each problem was so framed that it called for one of four solutions; an answer of truthful- ness; one based on consideration for other people’s feelings; one involving no particular conflict; the fourth a white lie. And, judging from the results of the study or survey, Diog- enes, the Greek cynic, could throw away his lantern if he were growling about looking for an honest man these days. The woods appear to be full of them. In fact, judging from the re- sponses, it would seem that most men are, at least theoretically, honest. Women are the glib liars, even on principle. HIS is a sample of the kind of problem which was presented to the young educa- tors of Teachers’ College, the “frontier think- ers,” as Dr. Maller terms them: Here is Great Garbo's interpretation of Mata Hari, famous German spy who was an expert at getting military secrets from men. T'his is Dore’s painting of the biblical version of Ananias being stricken dead for lying about a sum of money. 1932, “John had a new teacher. He thought she was one of the best teachers he ever had, but for some reason he did not like her. The prin- cipal asked him one day how he liked his new teacher. John said: ‘The teacher is fine and 1 like her very much’; ‘The teacher is all rignt, but I don't like her’; ‘I don’t like her, I guess she is no good’; ‘She is dne of the best teachers I ever had.’” The group was asked to check the answer they considered proper. Said Dr. Maller, sum- ming up the answers to this stickler: “The majority of men considered item two, ‘The teacher is all right, but I don't like her,’ as the best answer. Sixty per cent of them picked as the most satisfactory this completely truthful reply. “The majority of women, however, 63.8 per cent, chose item four, ‘She is one of the best teachers I ever had,’ notwithstanding the fact that this response mvolved the withholding of truth. “This tendency of women to be tactful and considerate of others, although sacrificing truth in the process, was apparent in the answers to many of the other problems, a be- havior quite consistent with- feminine emotions and reactions. The men’s solutions tended to be honest and blunt, sometimes even brutally so, for the men apparently did not seek the easiest way out of a ticklish situation. “There was, for example, this prcblem which particularly proves this point: ‘When Ben's teacher gave him back his test paper he found that she had made an error in the basis of marking so that every one in the class had a mark 10 points higher than it should have been.’ The answers to be checked were: ‘He called the teacher’s attention to the error and so lowered every one’s mark.’ ‘He did not say anything about it ‘He asked the other mem- bers of the class what they thought they ought to do’ ‘He told her that his mark was 10 points too high, without saying anything about the others.” g “Answer No. one, ‘He called the teacher’s attention to the error and so lowered every one’s mark,” was chosen as the correct solution by 62.8 per cent of the men and by only 33.2 per cent of the women. The fourth answer, ‘He told her that his mark was 10 points too high, without saying anything about the others,” was preferred by three times as many women as men. In each of these problems and in most of the others the men gave preference to a frank statement of the truth, while in the opinion of the women consideration of others was given preference over truth-telling. 11" THE tendency on the part of the women to preler the response to which the truth is either partly or wholly withheld revealed itself frequently. Take, for example, this sit- uation: ‘Milton’s mother bought him a book for $3 and tolid him to tell his father it cost $1. His father asked him later how much his book cost’ Here wre the answers asked: ‘Milton told him it cost $1’ ‘Milton told him it cost $3.' ‘Milton refused to tell’ ‘Milton told him it cest $3, but that mother had said to tell him it cost $1. “ ‘Miiton refused to tell,’ was preferred among women more frequently than among men. This inclination of men to prefer the response of truth-telling was evident in problems where such a statement might be considered brutally frank. “One of the major aims in this recent study was to determine the consensus of opinion among graduate students in education as to what constitutes right and wrcng in these prob- lems of conflict. Now, if all educators agreed as to the correct solution to each problem, the extent of agreement would have been 100 per cent. But, in reality, the extent of agreement was on an average cnly 60 per cent, indicating a great diversity of opinion. The agreement differed for the different problems, depending upon the complexity of the conflict, but therg was not a single problem concerning which there was 100 per cent agreement among tHe educators as to what constitutes right and wrong. “However, here is an example of the few items which showed, at least, high agreement: ‘Philip dropped and broke a phonograph record that was his father’s favorite. He knew his father would feel badly about it ‘He told his father what had happened.’ ‘He hid the rece ord and didn’t say anything abcut it.” ‘He told his father that he had found the record broken.’ ‘He told his father he had been looking for that record himself, but couldn’t find it.’ “There was in this problem 98 per cent agreement that the best answer is: ‘He told his father what had happened.’ Apparently the factor of sparing the father's feelings was not considered sufficient reason for withholding the truth. i HoNl interesting feature brought to Nght in the study was the fact that a marked difference in extent of agreement was revealed when the 517 ‘judges’ were classified into 5 groups according to their major interests: Edue cational, psychology, school administration, teachers of special subject matter, teachers of religious education and philosophy of educa= tion. The percentages of agreement within each of these 5 groups were philosophy, 51 per cent; psychology, 56 per cent; religious education, 64 per cent; teachers, 69 per cent; administration, 73 per cent. Thus it appears that among school administrators and among teachers there is a greater extent of agreement as to what constitutes right and wrong than among psychologists and philosophers. “The percentage of agreement was computed separately for the men and women. The 306 women who answered the problems showed a slightly greater agreement among themselves as to the correct solutions than the 211 men.” Dr. Maller, when discussing conflicting social ideals and their bearing upon character edu= cation, matters which inspired his recent sure vey, said: “One of the outstanding characteristics of modern educational theory is that it considers the concepts of right and wrong as dynamic rather than static. A principle may be valid under one set of circumstances and meaninge less under changed conditions. There was & time when the teaching of ideals and prine ciples differed little from the teaching of any other subject of instruction. Moral concepts Continued on Seventeenth Page 4