Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Sarah Jons 
We all know that it’s better to do something rather than just talk about the problem or talk about doing something.
Do As I Say, Not As I Do. Scream no. No! Scream at them. Scream no more.
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
We all know that it’s better to do something rather than just talk about the problem or talk about doing something. But hypocrisy requires relatively high-level thinking. In our heart and gut, we're more moral, honest and fair. Many of my neuroscientist friends have long argued over whether hypocrisy is driven by emotion or by reason. This should be simple to understand, right? Is it our gut instinct to cast a halo over ourselves, or by efforts to rationalise and justify our own transgressions? In other moral judgments, brain imaging shows, regions involved in feeling, not thinking, rule.
Consider the psychologist's classic train dilemma. People are asked whether they would throw a theoretical switch to send an out-of-control train off a track where it would kill 10 people and onto one where it would kill one. Most of us say we would. But would we heave a large man onto the track to derail the train and save the 10?
Most of us say no: although the save-10-lose-one calculus is identical, the emotional component—heaving someone to his death rather than throwing an impersonal switch—is repugnant, and the brain's emotion regions scream No!
At the end of the day, whatever your actions may be will show what you are trying to prove. If you are simply talking, nothing is happening, but when actions take place, you are actually engaging in this behavior. Actions prove who someone really is while words only show what someone wants to be.
There are sociopaths out there, but more often than not when people hurt us, it’s not because of psychiatric diagnoses. It’s because they’re hauling around pain from their pasts and crashing it into everyone they meet.When someone knowingly manipulates or uses others, or deliberately tries to control or intimidate them and they aren’t mentally ill, it’s rarely a happy, well-adjusted person who simply decided to be heartless and cruel.In understanding this, we can be compassionate—but that doesn’t mean we need to willingly accept mistreatment.
That brings us to hypocrisy, which is almost ridiculously easy to bring out in people. In a new study that will not exactly restore your faith in human nature, psychologists David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo of Northeastern University instructed 94 people to assign themselves and a stranger one of two tasks: an easy one, looking for hidden images in a photograph, or a hard one, solving a mathematical and logical problem. The participants could make the assignments themselves, or have a computer do it randomly. Then everyone was asked, how fairly did you act?, from "extremely unfairly" (1) to "extremely fairly" (7). Next they watched someone else make the assignments, and judged that person's ethics. Selflessness was a virtual no-show: 87 out of 94 people opted for the easy task and gave the next guy the onerous one. Hypocrisy showed up with bells on: every single person who made the selfish choice judged his own behaviour more leniently—on average, 4.5 vs. 3.1—than that of someone else who grabbed the easy task for himself, the scientists will report in theJournal of Experimental Social Psychology.
If our gut knows when we have erred and judges our transgressions harshly, moral hypocrisy might not be as inevitable as if it were the child of emotions and instincts, which are tougher to change than thinking. Since it's a cognitive process, we have volitional control over it.
That matters because of another nasty aspect of hypocrisy: we apply the same moral relativism when judging the actions of people like ourselves. When people like us torture, it's justified; when people unlike us do, it's an atrocity. When we make that judgment, the brain's cognitive regions are the hypocrites; emotional regions make honest judgments and see the terrible behaviour for what it is. As with other forms of judgment, the way to change hearts and minds is to focus on the former: appeal to our better angels in the brain's emotion areas, and tell circuits that are going through cognitive contortions to excuse in ourselves what we condemn in others to just shut up.
It’s true that our words can often be contradicted by the actions we take. Actions must be more thought out and are a more accurate measure of what you really intend to do. Make sure to choose your actions wisely, as others will come to their conclusions about you based on what you do rather than what you say. Many times there is a big discrepancy between what is said and what is done, which is why what you do matters more. The classic stereotypes are:
- The emperor is all talk, no action. Like the emperor’s new clothes, everything is centered on the show rather than substance. He talks a good game, but don’t expect any action or follow-up from this empty suit.
- The politician will say anything to win your vote of confidence; this person is great with words but don’t ask for accountability. Once this opportunist gets what she wants, she’s nowhere to be found.
- The hypocrites are so wrapped up in themselves that even they don’t believe what they are saying. Forget action on their part. They have a hard enough time keeping their own stories straight.
- The drifters have no backbone. They make statements one minute and change their positions the next. If it seems that these folks are confused or evasive, it’s because they are.
- The professor speaks eloquently about theory, but that’s where it ends. Action? That thought never crossed her mind. Friedrich Engels had it right when he said, “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”
- The zombie is so oblivious to reality he doesn’t even realize that his words are out of step with his actions. It only takes someone else to shine a bright light on this fellow to expose his insincerity.
In Miranda Stuart’s book, “Dead Men Sing No Songs” published in 1939, the author wrote:
Deeds speak louder than words. First she tells you the most damning things she can, and then she begs you to believe he’s innocent in spite of them?
Her words paraphrased Abraham Lincoln’s comments when, in 1856, he wrote:
‘Actions speak louder than words’ is the maxim; and, if true, the South now distinctly says to the North, ‘Give us the measures, and you take the men.’
Back on American soil, in 1692 Gersham Bulkeley wrote in his book Will and Doom:
Actions are more significant than words.
Reaching back a little further, in the “Hansard Parliamentary History of England” J. Pym is credited in 1628 with these words from a speech he made:
‘A word spoken in season is like an Apple of Gold set in Pictures of Silver,’ and actions are more precious than words.
People say things and make promises they have no intention of keeping on a daily basis. You can tell someone you love him or her as many times as you want, but until your behavior coincides with that, the other person will probably not believe you. Some feelings cannot be expressed in mere words; they require actions to speak for them. Words are cheap, anyone can tell someone they love them, but they will not feel the immensity of these emotions until they are acted upon.
We must consistently monitor our actions so that they coincide with the words we say. Words are easy to throw around, but it takes a righteous person to follow through with actions that back them up.The way people conduct themselves in different situations is a greater determinant of behaviour and character than the words through which they choose to express themselves. What you do holds much more significance than what you say.
When you walk the talk, your behaviour becomes a catalyst for people’s trust and faith in you. And it also emphasises what you stand for.The bottom line is simply this: Trust is not guaranteed, and it can’t be won overnight. Trust must be carefully developed, vigorously nurtured, and constantly reinforced. And, although trust may take a long time to develop, it can be lost through a single action and once lost, it can be very difficult to re-establish.
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