Below, Michael Hallsworth shares five key insights from his new book, The Hypocrisy Trap: How Changing What We Criticize Can Improve Our Lives.
Michael is a leading figure in applying behavioral science to real-world challenges. For the last 20 years he has been an official and an advisor for governments around the world. He has held positions at Princeton University, Columbia University, Imperial College London, and the University of Pennsylvania.
What’s the big idea?
Hypocrisy is one of those things that really gets under our skin—we see it everywhere, in politics, at work, even in our own families, and calling it out often feels like the right thing to do. That way, we can preserve trust and keep others honest. But what if our constant hunt for hypocrisy is making things worse?
1. Hypocrisy is about status.
We often think hypocrisy is mainly about morality—someone pretending to be good when they’re not. That’s part of the picture, but the deeper reason hypocrisy makes us so angry often comes down to social status and what psychologists call false signals. When people make claims—about their ethics, skills, or beliefs—they’re sending signals to gain status: things like respect, trust, and admiration. We grant people this status, often at a subtle cost to our own relative standing, and we are expecting a kind of fair exchange based on the signal they sent.
Hypocrisy messes up that fair exchange. The person gets the status benefits without paying the real cost of being the person they claimed to be. It feels like they’re free riding on our trust to get status, and that triggers a deep sense of injustice.
How is this different from lying? The difference lies in whether the signal implies a wider consistency with principles. A lie might be specific: “Did you take the cookies?” “No.” Hypocrisy usually involves a broader signal about your character or consistency across different situations, like saying, “I never eat cookies; self-control is vital. Someone who eats cookies is weak.” This false claim to being a certain type of person earns the hypocrite status they haven’t deserved.
And here’s an interesting wrinkle: condemning others acts as a very powerful signal of that consistency. Studies suggest we often see someone who criticizes a behavior as more likely to avoid it themselves than someone who just says, “I don’t do that.” Condemning others subtly broadcasts strong commitment to a standard, which makes it feel like an even bigger betrayal when that person turns out to be hypocritical.
2. We like some hypocrisy.
We often hate hypocrisy because of that unfair status grab, but our reaction isn’t always negative. Sometimes, discovering inconsistency can make us view someone more positively. This complicates the simple idea that we just hate all hypocrisy.
“Their imperfection makes them human.”
Take the virtuous hypocrite. A study looked at the founder of Ashley Madison, a website designed for extramarital affairs. When people found out that, despite promoting infidelity, the owner was faithful to his own wife, they rated him as much more hypocritical. But the twist is that they also saw him as more praiseworthy. The act that created the hypocrisy (being faithful) was seen as good in itself, and that seemed to outweigh the inconsistency for many people. Again, hypocrisy is not about morality—it’s about a claim to status, of many different kinds.
Then you have the relatable hypocrite. Think about doctors advising patients on healthy living. Some research suggests that overweight patients might avoid super-fit doctors because they worry about being judged. A doctor who isn’t perfectly fit might seem hypocritical giving weight-loss advice, but their shared struggle can make them seem more approachable, more relatable, and maybe even more effective. Their imperfection makes them human.
And finally, we often tolerate reasonable hypocrisy. Imagine a dedicated vegetarian who, visiting their elderly grandmother, politely praises her famous meat stew to avoid causing deep hurt. Very few people would condemn this as serious hypocrisy. We understand that life involves balancing conflicting values—like principles versus compassion—and sometimes, being a bit inconsistent is simply the kindest or most sensible thing to do. Our judgment isn’t black and white; we’re constantly weighing the inconsistency against things like intention, outcomes, and other competing values.
3. Double standards are the most dangerous kind of hypocrisy.
While some hypocrisy may be minor or even understandable, there’s one type that is particularly corrosive: double-standard hypocrisy. This is when we judge ourselves, or people in our own group, much more leniently than when we judge others for the very same action—all while claiming we believe in treating everyone fairly.
We see this in small ways all the time. Think about phubbing, meaning using your phone when you’re supposed to be interacting with someone. When your partner does it, it feels dismissive. But when you do it, well, you have perfectly good reasons, like quickly checking something important or looking up a fact related to the conversation. Psychologists call this the actor-observer bias: we explain our own actions based on the situation and our good intentions, but we explain others’ actions based on their flawed character. The tricky part is, we’re usually blind to our own bias.
This tendency gets dangerous when it scales up to groups, especially in politics or social conflicts. We find excuses for behavior on “our side” that we would absolutely condemn if the “other side” did it. Think about how partisans might evaluate the economy or a politician’s scandal completely differently depending on whose team is involved.
“This tendency gets dangerous when it scales up to groups, especially in politics or social conflicts.”
Why is this specific type of hypocrisy so damaging? Because double standards directly attack the principle of equal treatment, which is fundamental to fairness and trust in society. They allow prejudice and unfairness to hide behind a mask of principle. And this isn’t static; it can escalate. It creates spirals of distrust and resentment that make dialogue and cooperation almost impossible. It’s the kind of hypocrisy that erodes the foundations of a fair society, pushing us toward cynicism or even situations where rules only seem to apply to certain people.
4. The power of being an “honest hypocrite.”
If perfect consistency is often out of reach, how do we handle our own inevitable shortcomings without getting caught in the hypocrisy trap or just giving up? One surprisingly effective strategy is what I call honest hypocrisy. Essentially, it means openly acknowledging your own inconsistencies, even as you advocate for the principles you care about.
Imagine you’re at a dinner party, and a friend is passionately arguing against fast fashion, but you happened to see them shopping at one of those stores last week. If, before anyone can call them out, they say something like, “Look, I know I’m not perfect on this, I really struggle sometimes, but here’s why I still think it’s important…”, it completely changes the dynamic. Instead of a potential “gotcha” moment, their vulnerability can build trust and lead to a more honest conversation where others might admit their own struggles, too.
Why does this work so well? It goes back to that idea of false signals. By admitting your flaws upfront, you remove the deceptive claim to unearned status—that pretense of perfection—which is often what really makes people angry about hypocrisy. You’re still inconsistent, maybe, but you’re not pretending to be consistent.
This isn’t just an excuse for bad behavior. Honest hypocrisy only works if it comes with genuine regret, some humility, and a clear signal that you’re trying to do better. Just shrugging and saying “nobody’s perfect” can easily sound like you’re claiming a double standard for yourself. But genuinely owning your struggles can be disarming. It allows imperfect people (so, all of us) to still participate in important causes, like climate action, without being totally silenced by the fear that we’re not living up to impossible standards of purity. Maybe embracing a little honest hypocrisy is crucial for making progress together.
5. Beware of the Hypocrisy Trap.
Our very intense desire to hunt down and punish hypocrisy can be counterproductive. This is what I call the Hypocrisy Trap. It tends to backfire in a couple of key ways.
First, the act of accusing others can sometimes breed more hypocrisy within ourselves. When we point fingers, it often gives us a little rush of moral superiority. We often tell ourselves, and others, that we’re motivated purely by high-minded principles, a quest for justice. But honestly? Part of it often feels good because it makes us feel superior. This creates a gap between our virtuous self-image and our mixed motives. We can become overly zealous, demanding standards from others that we ourselves don’t consistently meet—ironically, making us hypocritical in our very crusade against hypocrisy.
“When we point fingers, it often gives us a little rush of moral superiority.”
Second, and more insidiously, is the danger that we exhaust the concept through overuse. If every minor inconsistency, every political compromise, every time someone falls short, gets labelled “hypocrisy,” the word just becomes background noise—another insult thrown around, losing its specific meaning and power. This risks creating a deep cynicism, where nobody takes accusations seriously anymore, principles don’t matter much at all, and people feel free to act purely out of self-interest if they’re strong enough.
A worrying example of this is democratic hypocrisy: people can become so convinced that their political opponents are only pretending to value democracy that they start justifying anti-democratic tactics themselves, supposedly to “save” democracy. They end up violating the very principles they claim to uphold, precisely because they fear hypocrisy in others. It shows how our fear of hypocrisy, when it runs unchecked, can lead us down dangerous paths.
To escape the trap, learn about how hypocrisy really works and learn to tolerate the less harmful kinds, focusing instead on its most toxic forms—starting with double-standards hypocrisy. Thinking about these dynamics might help us be a bit more effective, maybe a bit more forgiving, and hopefully better able to focus our energy on the inconsistencies that truly cause harm.
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