Data: Are there racial differences in honesty?

Jussie Smollett is just the most recent case of the common phenomenon of minorities orchestrating a hate hoax. This raises the more general question whether racial/ethnic/religious groups differ in how much they value honesty.  General Social Survey respondents (all living in America) were asked how much they prioritize various qualities in children.  One of the qualities is honesty.  Answers ranged from "most desirable" (5) to "least desirable (1)." 

I calculated means for various groups (N = 6,279):

Mean Honesty Score

Filipino  4.28
Japanese  4.25
Finnish  4.21
Portuguese  4.19
Dutch  4.15
Swiss  4.15
French Canadian  4.14
English/Welsh  4.12
Irish  4.12
Scotland  4.12
German  4.10
Chinese  4.08
Czech  4.08
French  4.08
Asian Indian  4.08 

Total Sample  4.08

Danish  4.06
Norwegian  4.05
Italian  4.02
Austrian  4.00
Lithuanian  3.97
Swedish  3.95
American Indian  3.92
Belgian  3.92
Polish  3.92
Spanish  3.92
Jewish  3.90
Hungarian  3.87
Russian  3.79
Romanian  3.79
Black  3.78
Mexican  3.76
West Indian  3.65
Greek  3.47

Certain minorities -- Jews, blacks, Mex-Ams, and West Indians -- have low honesty scores. The difference between the most honest (Filipinos) and least honest (Greeks) is close to one standard deviation, a very large difference.

There is a tendency for southern and eastern Europeans to value honesty less, while northwestern Europeans and Asians tend to have higher means (though there are exceptions).  (I didn't have enough cases of Muslims or Arabs to calculate estimates.)

Americans cannot handle much truth about race

I ran across this piece by Jared Taylor which argues that President Nixon believed in biological racial gaps among the races, but felt he must keep them secret. Taylor claims that Nixon believed in the use of "Noble Lies": telling lies that are good for society. Taylor thinks it's always destructive to tell lies, and telling blacks they are as capable as any group of rising to the top actually hurts society by making blacks resentful when they don't rise.

I would make one point: It is clear from the quotes that Nixon believed that social programs will be limited in how much they actually help blacks, so in this sense he did not think lying was good for society.

If I were Nixon, I would have talked about racial truths only to the extent that I could remain politically successful. Honest losers don't help anyone. I can't emphasize this enough. Race realists have a strong streak of social autism. You have to meet the American public where they are at. And in my view, at the moment -- even decades after Nixon -- they cannot handle much truth. Talk candidly, and you will be marginalized, and you will lose. Trump has shown about how far a very talented man can take the truth and still win. And he hasn't said much at all.

You don't lie for the good of society. You lie as much as you need to in order to win.

Readers might ask why a Christian would be okay with lying. I am with Machiavelli here.  He contended that Christian ethics should operate on a personal level, but when it comes to politics, saints ALWAYS LOSE. Politics is vicious. It's simply unavoidable.

Do smart people lie more?

In his new book The Folly of Fools, Robert Trivers hypothesizes that smart people are more likely to tell lies. This surprised me since I usually assume that intelligent people tend to act more prosocially. According to Trivers, if you compare across species, deception increases with intelligence. Better deception and manipulation require more mental ability.   

Add Health participants (teens and young adults) were given a vocabulary test and were asked how often they lie to their parents about their whereabouts. I looked at the correlation between the two questions: it is a tiny .07 (sample size = 6,168). For males, it is a bit stronger--.10--while it is .only .05 for females. So, there is a tendency for smarter youths to lie more frequently, but it is very weak.

Anecdotally, I can see that my smartest child is the most dishonest.  His lies are pretty clever for a 4 year old.  A few more years, and he'll probably outsmart his old man. I'd like to think that I can teach him to be more honest, but behavioral genetic research makes me less optimistic.

By they way, Trivers seems to think that bright people not only deceive more; they are also more likely to self-deceive, which is contrary to what most intelligent people think about themselves.

Do religious people lie?

This blog has shown over and over again that religious people tend to be better-behaved than secular folks. Is this due to a tendency among church attenders to exaggerate, perhaps because they care more about what others think of them?

The Add Health Study asked participants if they never get sad. A fully honest people would not answer that they never get sad. I calculated the percentages of those who agree or strongly agree with the statement (sample size = 3,667, whites only):

Percent agreeing that they never get sad

Never attends 15.1
Less than once a month 12.0
Between once a month and once a month 12.7
Once a week or more 13.3

Those who never go to church have the highest percentage of people not telling the truth, but none of the differences is statistically significant. There is no evidence here that religious people are prone to give socially desirable answers.

Blacks score highest on "lie scale"

A reader raised the question about racial differences in honest self-reporting. I ran across this study of 980 children with a mean age of eight. It found that black children score the highest on the "lie scale" (with questions like, "I never get angry"--obviously dishonest if you answer yes), while Hispanic children scored the highest on concerns about living up to others' expectations (the "social concerns scale"). Whites scored lowest on the lie scale. The black-white gap is 37 percent of one standard deviation--a moderate difference.