Good Faith vs Bad Faith Communication Styles
Typology
The Consilience Project:
"Bad faith communication has become normalized. This is bad news for any society that values and seeks to rely upon the uncoerced cooperation of its members. History tells us that the endgames of society-wide communication breakdowns are catastrophic. When open communication cannot be used to resolve conflict and coordinate behavior, societies are driven towards chaos, war, oppression, and authoritarianism. Restoring public trust in good faith communications is possible. But it requires both a cultural shift toward civic virtues and a redesign of the technologies and social processes that structure civic discourse.
People are being deskilled in the art of good faith communication, while refining skills in bad faith tactics. Despite the new normal of widespread bad faith communication, good faith communication is always already available to all parties (see Box 1 below). But the choice to engage in good faith is an especially difficult choice to make in today’s culture. Powerful disincentives and barriers to making this choice have been put in place during many decades of escalating cultural conflict. Understanding why it has become so hard to engage in good faith communication is the first step towards shifting the cultural balance back in its favor.
Communicating in good faith as a society requires that people take up certain skills and commit to shared values. These skills and values are generally not practiced and endorsed in most contexts of civic discourse today. People are instead being deskilled in the art of good faith communication, while refining skills in bad faith tactics."
(https://consilienceproject.org/the-endgames-of-bad-faith-communication/)
Good Faith Communication
"Discourse oriented towards mutual understanding and coordinated action, with the result of increasing the faith that participants have in the value of communicating.
- Some Signs of Good Faith Communication:
- Expressions of humility and curiosity
- Openings for changes in position based on new information
- Disagreements welcomed; group learning valued
- Steelmanning the position of others
- Respect maintained during disagreement
- Sufficient time given to open discussion and other
aspects of fair process
- Use of careful clarifications and evidence
- Attempts at finding shared base realities and values
- Emergence of new positions, integrations, and nuance
Note: All signs of good faith communication can be “faked” in bad faith."
(https://consilienceproject.org/the-endgames-of-bad-faith-communication/)
Bad Faith Communication
Discourse that is intended to achieve behavioral outcomes (including consensus, agreement, “likes”) irrespective of achieving true mutual understanding, with the result of decreasing the faith participants have in the value of communicating.
- Some Signs of Bad Faith Communication:
- Expressions of hubris and lack of curiosity in opposing views
- Refusing changes in position based on new information
- Disagreements unwelcomed; consensus overstated
- Strawmanning the position of others
- Disrespect included as part of disagreement
- Insufficient time and other aspects of unfair process
- Avoidance or omission of careful clarifications and evidence
- No attempts to find shared base realities and values
- Emergence of stalemates, polarization, and simplifications
Note: All signs of bad faith communication can be disguised and denied.
The situation has degraded to the point where it is widely believed that calls to good faith (such as this paper) are themselves acts of bad faith, undertaken only by those interested in controlling the discourse. Calls for good faith communication are understood at best as naive requests to calm the outrage and conflict that now runs rife in political discourse. Both ends of the political spectrum (the far left and the far right) express this view. Both sides believe that “the other side” simply can’t be trusted and therefore cannot be engaged in good faith. To do so would be to fall into a trap, serving only to validate the dangerous views of groups known to be acting in bad faith.
This stance of assuming the undesirability (and sometimes impossibility) of good faith communication sets off a spiral of mutual dismissal, distrust, and villainization.
Common Strategies of Bad Faith Communication
- Misleading with facts
Presenting an argument containing factual information, which is used intentionally to lead others to draw a conclusion that is not entirely accurate.
- White hat bias
Presuming one’s own moral and intellectual correctness, then using that assumption as righteous justification for communications that are intentionally deceptive and manipulative.
- Strawman arguments
Presenting the arguments of opponents in their weakest forms, and after dismissing those, claiming to have discredited their position as a whole.
- Ad hominem dismissal
Disparaging the character or person of others, and in so doing acting as if this also invalidated their arguments.
- Moving the goalposts
Establishing an agreed standard (criteria or data) for accepting others’ views, but once this is provided or met, the prior agreement is not mentioned, and a new standard is set. [The reverse case also applies, i.e., when one cannot meet the agreed standards, these standards are forgotten, and new ones are established.]
- Sanctimony
Acting as if oneself and/or group is unquestionably morally superior and more intelligent than specific disagreeable individuals or groups, and thereby devaluing the members and delegitimating all the views of that group.
- Appeals to authority
Deeming that one’s own authority, that of a favorite expert, or that of an associated institution, definitively establishes positions currently being contested, therefore no further communication or explanation is needed and the arguments of the disagreeable parties can be dismissed.
- Dehumanizing language
Deploying language that characterizes groups as irredeemably unreasonable and not worthy of consideration, and thereby suggesting such groups should not be engaged in good faith.
- Undue social pressure
Making arguments in ways that signal that disagreement will result in removal or disparagement from the in-group, as demands for behavioral conformity override the power of reason and evidence. This includes “canceling ,” deplatforming, unfollowing, blocking, boycotting, trolling, etc.
- Pejorative representations
Employing openly insulting and dismissive language when describing the persons, ideas, or practices of disagreeable groups, thereby justifying the discounting of their arguments without earnest consideration.
- Faking empathy and respect
Pretending to feel empathy and respect for disagreeable others in a manner that undermines their actual experiences and beliefs— “strawman empathy.”
- Equivocations and false logics
Engaging involved and detailed forms of argument that are nevertheless fallacious and misleading due to subtle (and not so subtle) logical mistakes, such as strategically conflating and misusing terms (equivocation).
- Manipulative framing
Using metaphors and emotional frames to lead preemptively to conclusions that are not fully suggested by the details of the argument.
- Villainization
Creating the image of an “anti-hero” who epitomizes the worst of the disagreeable group, and contrasts with the best qualities of one’s own, then characterizing all members of the other group as if they were identical to that image.
- Oversimplification
Intentionally focusing on only a few (or the wrong) variables when drawing conclusions about complex systems, while also dismissing as irrelevant or misleading the views of those seeking to include more variables for consideration.
- Complexity smoke screen
Bringing an overwhelming amount of complex information to an argument and in so doing strategically downplaying a smaller, less complex set of variables that are actually more meaningful to the topic under discussion."
(https://consilienceproject.org/the-endgames-of-bad-faith-communication/)
Discussion
A "post-truth" culture is a culture of bad faith
The Consilience Project:
"A key feature of escalating extremism is a belief that group membership requires bad faith engagements with out-groups. In these contexts, bad faith behavior is often justified to maintain in-group membership and consensus. The normalization of bad faith communication contributes to the creation of extreme in-group pressures, which can rupture identities and exacerbate mental health crises. Personal instabilities usually lead to a doubling down on the need for group membership, increasing rationalizations and amplifications of bad faith practices.
Digital media companies’ business models result in a proliferation of increasingly niche group memberships. They also incentivize public displays of conflict and bad faith communication, in order to capture attention and optimize engagement. Advertisements and propaganda dominate the social media space, driving up the total amount of bad faith communication to which people are exposed.[9] In a very literal sense, heavy users of social media are being behaviorally entrained to engage disproportionately in bad faith communication. Politicians, public officials, and influencers of all kinds seek to exploit this environment of distrust and capitalize on the declining social value of good faith interactions. The epistemic commons is repeatedly degraded to the point of exhaustion. A “post-truth” culture is a culture of bad faith.
This must stop if there is to be any future for open societies. Although there are many significant barriers to acting in good faith, they are surmountable given sufficient interest and willingness to seek cooperation and mutual understanding. If the desired outcome is sustainable uncoerced social cooperation—which is what democracies strive to achieve—then willingness and interest must be found.
The remedy for ongoing bad faith communication is not more bad faith communication."
(https://consilienceproject.org/the-endgames-of-bad-faith-communication/)