Whistleblowers Think Far

Rita Handrich:

The “highly conscientious” … are more likely to work hard to achieve their goals [both personally and on behalf of their organization] and often have organizational abilities that help them succeed. In other words, these are the people actually doing the work to help the organization survive and thrive. Why, you might wonder, would those “organizational darlings” blow the whistle on negative practices or leadership failures in a group they so vigorously support? …

Conscientiousness is much more related to performance and our pursuit of goals than it is to conformity. And sometimes the conscientiousness is a commitment to principles that the hard worker can feel were betrayed by the conduct about which they blow the whistle. … The findings from two separate studies support [this]:

Highly conscientious group members with high-level construal (e.g., abstract or “far”) were more willing to articulate (in Study 1) and to express (in Study 2) criticism of the group, even when others did not.

In other words, they were more likely to not only formulate critical positions but more willing to also express them even when they knew other group members would not want to hear it.

(Those studies are here.) Interestingly, Rita mainly applies this to getting cross-examined witnesses to say what she wants them to say, without discussing if that is actually good for the legal system or world. Seems Rita is firmly in near mode here.

This seems another example of far mode being designed more for making good social impressions than good decisions. We might want other people to be whistle-blowers, especially people in other groups, and admire them abstractly, and so people want to give the impression that they’d be whistleblowers too should the occasion arise, at least to people outside their organization. But most people who actually become whistle-blowers suffer substantially because of it. People who actually do it probably suffer from the smart sincere syndrome, not realizing how much the rest of us are just hypocritically pretending to support them.