We scarcely need research to tell us that integrity is vital to everyday social life, to “good governance”, to political function – though there is much out there documenting this fact (Huberts, 2018). If we can’t trust our leaders, the people with power, what meaning democracy?
Equally, the honesty and moral responsibility that define integrity are essential to everyday personal life: without the trust that such things provide, coherent social life is impossible. Reputations and knowing who to trust really matters, and this is underlined across many, many species, from chimpanzees (Goodall, 1999) to octopuses (Godfrey-Smith, 2017).
The need for integrity as a basis for trust is far, far more important than is generally recognised. A reduction of integrity in the young would have dark consequences indeed. Are our young less honest, less morally responsible than previous generations? It is hard to know, the research is not there. But many fear that integrity is increasingly rare.
The role of social media?
Dishonesty is common. We all tell lies, beginning in early childhood and peaking in adolescence and early adult life. Surveys for the UK Higher Education Degree Datacheck find that one in three graduate job-seekers give importantly false information on their CVs. And a major survey found that 75% of teenagers tell an average of three lies a day (Debey et al, 2015).
Many blame social media for this lack of integrity in the young. Indeed, “online” does feel as if it is more anonymous and more protected from consequence than face-to-face: young and old, and we are more disinhibited online in what we say (Suler, 2004).
Adolescent profiles on social media are often “spun” (Bortree, 2005), exaggerating or directly misrepresenting reality, reflecting the social pressure to impress rather than presenting “the real me”. Perhaps such editing is wise: social media are a rich arena for slander and cyber-bullying (Qing Li, 2007).
However, it is far from clear that social media are really the basis of any decline in integrity in the young. For all their exaggerations, distortions and omissions, teenage social profiles are seldom very far from reality (Bortree, 2005) – and after all, we tend to be economical with the truth in “real life” too.
Equally, while social media may support delinquent tendencies in those already disposed to such, there is no evidence that online activity fosters or increases delinquent behaviour in those not already disposed to it (George & Odgers, 2015): online behaviour and attitudes are typically very consistent with offline behaviours and attitudes.
And though cyber-bullying offers a new channel for spite, the evidence is that this medium seldom creates new victims: 96% of the teenage victims of cyber-bullying are also being bullied by the very same oppressors in face-to-face ways (Wolke et al, 2017).
A changing society
More plausible is the notion that it is changes in society itself which might undermine the development of integrity in the young. Chat shows today may host “celebrities” who reveal acts of dishonesty or dishonour that would once have ended their careers but are now the stuff of entertainment.
More strikingly, public life has changed: where once politicians and public figures enmeshed in scandals about flagrant lies, dishonesty, or law-breaking and the like immediately “fell on their swords”, today they may simply deny inconvenient truths or dismiss them as “fake news”, striving to brazen out the most extraordinary things without apparent shame or embarrassment – as, for example, with the events of the January 2020 Capitol attack in America or “party-gate” in Downing Street.
Sometimes there will be an eventual reckoning for these figures, sometimes they get away with it. But where once such issues of integrity would have been swiftly resolved, today these may drag out for days, weeks, months or even years…
Changing standards
Of course, some change of standards of behaviour, some change of social condemnation for “bad behaviour” is not a bad thing. But has society reached a stage where a lack of integrity per se is acceptable? To put this another way: while we want to encourage the young to be tolerant in numerous areas of historic prejudice, should we accept tolerance of the lack of ethical responsibility, the dishonesty and distortions of the truth that define poor integrity? The answer is surely that we should not. Tolerating endless “alternative truths” or a collapse of moral responsibility – even relatively small collapses in integrity – will wholly undermine both political and general social function.
Who and what we trust can have radical effects on society, as both the alternate realities promulgated in the USA in the past year, and the prevalence of mistaken anti-vaccine messages show. Integrity really, really matters. We believe the people, the information sources we trust. And if those people and sources are not founded on the honesty and moral responsibility that defines integrity, our trust will be misplaced.
Encouraging a commitment to integrity in the young
So, how can we foster integrity in the young, in our Brave New World? This is a complex question. How to foster integrity in the individual? And more broadly, how to help the young judge who and what to trust?
Providing strong role models
Traditionally the young have learned the norms of integrity from role models (Kochanska & Aksan, 2006). As noted, there are some public figures who are anything but role models for integrity. The protracted storms around such public figures, the lengthy time we wait to see who is shamed and who is vindicated surely confuses the bounds of integrity for the young. And the trouble is, these scandals are so very, very newsworthy…
There are, of course, “local” role models of integrity, in teachers, families, neighbourhoods. There is as yet no research as to how far such local role models can counter the impact of a poor example from prominent public figures. But other research suggests answers (Thornton & Gliga, 2020). Conscience and moral behaviour spring from emotional attachments to others, and from the desire to be judged positively by those others, (Kochanska & Aksan, 2006; Kochanska & Murray, 2000). It seems very likely, therefore, that the example set, and the expectations projected by those we care about in our family, school or neighbourhood can play a powerful role in setting the values that underlie integrity.
Talk about the issues
Integrity requires moral understanding. This develops through the teenage years, from a naïve perspective to (hopefully) a more insightful and coherent view in late adolescence (Kohlberg, 1976; Thornton & Gliga, 2020). This development takes time and involves the broadening of understanding of the implications and impact of particular moral values. More than moral understanding, integrity needs a commitment to live up to moral values, through the guiding action of conscience (Thornton & Gliga, 2020).
The development of moral understanding and conscience is associated with the experience of discussing values and moral standards and the consequences of failings in those areas (Kochanska et al, 1996; Thornton & Gliga, 2020). Adult styles that directly encourage the development of clear values and moral standards in authoritative rather than authoritarian ways are the most successful.
Classroom discussion in these areas can help to foster the development of both moral reasoning and personal conscience. For example, discussions focused on specific moral issues of direct relevance in young lives (such as bullying, cheating, lying, falsifying social profiles and other online issues) and the consequence of failures of integrity in these areas, both discovered and undiscovered, may be very helpful in this context.
Such discussions are also a foundation for exploring the more general and abstract issue of why integrity matters, why reputation matters in public life.
Applying moral standards
A strong conscience is no good if one does not apply it. Research shows that those who act with the greatest integrity, those we identify as “saints” and moral exemplars, are those whose life decisions are very actively guided by the moral principles they hope to live up to (Matsuba & Walker, 2004; Monroe, 2006; Reimer & Wade-Stein, 2004).
For such individuals, integrity is a key guiding force in everyday behaviour to a far greater extent than it is for the average person. Encouraging every teenager to become a moral exemplar is a high ambition! But even relatively small shifts toward better activation of conscience may produce better integrity.
Ancient wisdom suggests a powerful technique in this area: encourage individuals to reflect, at the end of each day, on what they have done and what they have failed to do as that relates to their own moral standards, and the consequences of those behaviours.
Such an “examination of conscience” has been recommended by virtually all the major religions of the world. The aim is not to wallow in guilt for failures, but to commit to doing better – as moral exemplars do. The late Sidney Poitier’s aim was to be a better person tomorrow than he was today – and that is an aspiration that would grace us all.
Evaluating truth
The greatest challenge in fostering integrity in the young in our “post-truth” world is the problem of how to help them judge what sources of information to trust.
Science can sometimes provide the answer– but only for those who understand that science is progressive: changing views do not discredit science. Depressingly few adults understand this. Could we help the young to “get it” by discussing historic episodes where new evidence helped science to progress? Or everyday episodes in their lives (or in detective films?) where opinion changed because of new information?
But science cannot always provide the answer, for example in the political or social arena. Fact-checker systems work for some, but others assume such systems are themselves biased…
One answer in supporting the young here is to encourage them to be detectives: to look at claims made, what evidence there is for or against those claims, who is making those claims – and “cui bono”? Unfortunately, here, the internet can confound matters. Powerful algorithms feed us back websites that fit our initial views – a process that the 2020 BBC Reith lecturer Stuart Russell argued is more dangerously destructive than nuclear explosions.
What we all need, what the young need, is an understanding of the value of looking for “counterfactuals” to any claim – and the skills to do that.
- Dr Stephanie Thornton is a chartered psychologist, author and lecturer in psychology and child development. She is the co-author of Understanding Developmental Psychology (Macmillan International/Red Globe, 2021). To read her previous articles, including in this series, go to http://bit.ly/seced-thornton
Selected references
- Bortree: Presentation of self on the web: An ethnographic study of teenage girls’ weblogs, Education, Communication & Information (5,1), 2005.
- George & Odgers: Seven fears and the science of how mobile technologies may be influencing adolescents in the digital age, Perspectives on Psychological Science (10), November 2015: https://bit.ly/3GQR89h
- Huberts: Integrity: What it is and why it is important, Public Integrity (20), July 2018.
- Kochanska & Aksan: Children’s conscience and self-regulation, Journal of Personality (74), 2006.
- Matsuba & Walker: Extraordinary moral commitment: Young adults involved in social organizations, Journal of Personality (72), 2004.
- Qing Li: Bullying in the new playground: Research into cyberbullying and cyber victimisation, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (23), 2007.
- Reimer & Wade-Stein: Moral identity in adolescence: Self and other in semantic space, Identity (4), 2004.
- Suler: The online disinhibition effect, Cyberpsychology and Behaviour (7), 2004: https://bit.ly/3o75yLd
- Wolke, Lee & Guy: Cyberbullying: A storm in a teacup? European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (26), August 2017: https://bit.ly/3AgTiwo