{"id":3984,"date":"2012-04-05T18:17:27","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T01:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/?p=3984"},"modified":"2012-07-19T20:45:45","modified_gmt":"2012-07-20T03:45:45","slug":"can-i-trust-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/can-i-trust-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Can I Trust You?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\ufeff\"\"<\/a>A conversation between world-renowned psychologist Paul Ekman <\/strong>and his daughter Eve<\/strong>, with Jason Marsh.<\/strong> The TV show Lie To Me<\/em> was based on his\u00a0research\u00a0into detecting lies through facial expressions.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>Growing up in San Francisco, a city renowned for its hedonism, Eve Ekman faced more than her fair share of temptations, especially when she got involved in the local punk scene as a teenager. Like most adolescents, she felt the urge to do some things she knew her parents wouldn\u2019t approve of\u2014go to clubs on weeknights, dabble with alcohol and marijuana\u2014and which would require lying about where she was going and what she planned to do once she got there.<\/p>\n

But unlike those other kids, Eve has a father who is one of the world\u2019s leading experts on detecting lies.\u00a0Paul Ekman, a professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco, pioneered the scientific study of facial expressions and body language. For more than 50 years, his research has identified how emotions are subtly expressed through nonverbal cues; for much of that time, he has devoted special attention to how and why people tell lies, and how others can catch those lies. His work has been used by police departments, teachers, and even the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In 2001, the American Psychological Association named Ekman one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

It sounds like every kid\u2019s worst nightmare: the parent who always knows whether you\u2019re telling the truth. But when it came down to it, Paul Ekman\u2019s scientific expertise on lying was of limited usefulness to Paul Ekman the parent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been studying lying professionally for more than 20 years, but it was not easy to deal with it as a parent,\u201d he writes in his 1989 book, Why Kids Lie: How Parents Can Encourage Truthfulness<\/em><\/a> <\/em>, which includes chapters by his wife, Mary Ann Mason, a professor and former dean at the University of California, Berkeley, and his son Tom, Eve\u2019s older brother. Indeed, as that book makes clear, it is one thing to be able to catch a kid in a lie; it\u2019s something very different to be able to raise a trustworthy child.<\/p>\n

So how does an expert on lying, deception, and truthfulness try to foster trust and trustworthiness? Paul and Eve, who is now 28, recently sat down with Greater Good\u2019s editor in chief, Jason Marsh, to discuss the benefits of trusting your kids (even when it\u2019s nerve-wracking to do so), how to encourage trustworthy behavior, and what it takes to build trust between parents and children.
\n***<\/p>\n

Eve Ekman:<\/strong> Do you ever remember catching me for anything when I broke your trust, or a time you caught me dead in a lie?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paul Ekman:<\/strong> Nope. When I suspected that you had done something wrong, I went to some length to avoid putting you in a position where you would have to lie. Instead, when I was worried about you, I would ask leading questions like, \u201cIs there something on your mind? Is there something you want to talk about?\u201d<\/p>\n

In that way, you had the opportunity to disclose on your own. I did not want to ask you every day if you had gotten into trouble, but there was a rule of disclosure. There were very few things I expected, but if you did not tell me, it was a lie.<\/p>\n

I remember once, when I had heard you come in after curfew, I asked you, \u201cWhat happened the other night? I heard you come in late.\u201d So I was already telling you, \u201cI know you did that,\u201d without trying to catch you in a lie.<\/p>\n

The issue clearly arises in every generation. I lied to my parents all the time. They were very restrictive, invading my privacy continuously. The challenge of my adolescence was learning how to outwit them, which I did. I had an entirely secret life.<\/p>\n

Eve:<\/strong> So you are saying it is the nature of the relationship with the child that determines the role of trust and lying?<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> Yes, certainly so. The role of the parent is an extremely difficult one because you have to keep moving backwards. When parents start out, they are completely responsible for their child, who is totally helpless. As that child grows, you have to roll back, you have to grant control; otherwise, your child can\u2019t grow. You have to be able to live with the fact that as you grant the child more autonomy, they will get into all sorts of trouble. But you ultimately have to leave it up to them.<\/p>\n

Jason Marsh: <\/strong>It seems like this could be difficult advice to follow, to trust that much. What was it from your research, or personal experience, that motivated you to take this approach?<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> It wasn\u2019t based on research, mine or anyone else\u2019s. It was based on my own experience with parents who did just the opposite. They did everything they could to try to interfere with my life, and they were the last people I would have ever turned to when I was a child. I wanted to be the first person my kids would turn to.<\/p>\n

It took some restraint, because worry was my middle name, way before I ever had a child. But I think, for children, the most important thing is to feel they can trust that their parents, whether they approve or disapprove, will always be available for help and support. If that\u2019s not the case, then I think you\u2019ve really failed as a parent.<\/p>\n

Jason Marsh:<\/strong> Eve, what kind of effect do you think this kind of parenting style had on your behavior growing up, and on your feelings of trust toward your parents?<\/p>\n

Eve:<\/strong> I was not your conventional good girl. But I definitely did not want to disappoint the trust they gave me, because I thought they were cool, and I liked them. They weren\u2019t just authority figures; they were very open and available and accessible. And if I challenged what they did, they would explain it to me. It wasn\u2019t like, \u201cBecause I said so.\u201d There was always an explanation of why, and I guess that helped build trust. I always felt like, even in the worst case scenarios, they would be the first people I would call. Still, to this day, I call them first when I have trouble.<\/p>\n

Paul: <\/strong>I remember the call from jail.<\/p>\n

Eve:<\/strong> That was when I was arrested for protesting the war in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Jason Marsh:<\/strong> Paul, do you think that by being so trusting, you not only earned the trust of your kids but also actually helped make them more trustworthy?<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> Yes. I didn\u2019t want them to get started on my path of lying to my parents. Because I do believe that it\u2019s a slippery slope: You start lying once, you lie another time, you lie about more things, and you\u2019ve crossed the threshold. And I didn\u2019t want to put them in a position where they would cross that threshold.<\/p>\n

Eve:<\/strong> What kinds of difficulties do parents encounter even when they want to put this kind of trust in their kids?<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> A major difficulty is that so much changes from generation to generation. What was normative in one generation can shift greatly\u2014changing sexual morality, recreational drugs. Parents have a hard time trusting that their kids are prepared to deal with these things that are so new to the parents.
\nBeyond that, there is the difficulty of giving up control. Many parents are control freaks, and that is in part because they do not want to worry. And in ways they are right to worry\u2014adolescents take risks that are very dangerous.<\/p>\n

Eve:<\/strong> But it starts before adolescence, right?<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> It starts at three to five years of age, and it gets really strong in adolescence.<\/p>\n

The Dalai Lama asked me once, \u201cWhat is destructive compassion?\u201d And I said that destructive compassion is when you are so worried about your child that you over-control them.<\/p>\n

Since I work in this area and think about this area, I try to be very explicit and never put anyone in the position where they feel they have to lie to me. If they think that I am going to be a strict disciplinarian, that will change the relationship as well. The major research I have done shows that the main reason people lie is to avoid being punished.<\/p>\n

Jason Marsh:<\/strong> But it seems that a lot of parents feel caught in a Catch-22. They may understand why it\u2019s important to trust their kids, but they may not feel that their kid is worthy of that trust. What can parents do to help encourage the kind of truthfulness in their kids that makes them more comfortable trusting those kids?<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> They can do things all the time\u2014over the dining room table, with stories, when they\u2019re playing Chutes and Ladders and kids get tempted to cheat in the game. I really think up to the age of 10 or 11, children are zealots for the truth\u2014they really don\u2019t want to mislead or be mislead. So you can build on that.<\/p>\n

You can do it by example. When Eve was born, I quit smoking after I had smoked for 30 years. And I also decided I was going to try to see if I could lead my life without lying to anyone about anything. It was much harder to do that\u2014to figure out ways to be truthful without being harmful or insulting, to stay polite but be truthful. And it became a real challenge. But I also thought, \u201cI\u2019m going to try to do this because that\u2019s the example I want to be showing.\u201d I want my kids to see that there\u2019s a way to be truthful. It was very deliberate.<\/p>\n

Parents also need to establish the rules of disclosure and the obligations that come with their trust. For instance, we always made very clear to both of our kids that if they got into trouble in school, they were obliged to tell us. So if they didn\u2019t tell us, then they were lying to us. That meant we had to define \u201ctrouble.\u201d Trouble meant they were held after school, or called to the principal\u2019s office. That\u2019s a rule of disclosure.<\/p>\n

We need to spell out these rules and obligations in any relationship. In the business world, do you have to tell your employer if you\u2019re looking for another job? Does your employer need to tell you if they\u2019re thinking of cutting your position? What are the rules of disclosure? They\u2019re never revealed. They\u2019re kept ambiguous. That just makes for a lot of distrust and bad work relationships. Same in marriages. I have one colleague who told me, \u201cMy rule is that anything I do out of town is OK.\u201d I said, \u201cDoes your spouse know that?\u201d He never felt he needed to tell his spouse about it. There was no disclosure. It\u2019s just the basis for misunderstanding and distrust.<\/p>\n

Jason Marsh:<\/strong> Eve, do you think that growing up with those rules has affected your relationships with others, outside of your family?<\/p>\n

Eve:<\/strong> It\u2019s funny because as my dad was speaking, I was thinking about how I really do respect authority. Even though I think I\u2019m a dissenter at heart, I definitely respect authority. You know, I\u2019m afraid of getting caught, and that helps me not do things wrong. I was arrested once, but that was simply because I was protesting. Other than that, I\u2019ve never broken the law. I\u2019ve only gotten one ticket.<\/p>\n

In general, I hope that when punishment is exacted, it\u2019s fair and just, and I do think that was modeled to me from my family relationships. I think if there\u2019s an inconsistent message, I could imagine feeling like, \u201cWell, those laws don\u2019t apply to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

And in my personal relationships with friends, as well as romantic relationships, I definitely think trust is core. I definitely know I\u2019m someone people depend on. I\u2019m a social worker, that\u2019s my profession, but I also feel I\u2019m the person who people call when things are really hard and they need someone they can trust. And I feel really respectful of that role, and I appreciate it.<\/p>\n

I think you experience people\u2019s family life through how they interact with you, and I feel like I\u2019ve been the beneficiary of a great deal of trust, and I myself am trusting. But I\u2019ve been burned. I remember talking with my dad about it at one point, like, \u201cWhy do I feel disappointed? I feel like I\u2019m trusting, and I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s always met.\u201d Like, in my early 20s, when I first started to have really meaningful and important relationships outside of family, I found there were some people for whom family wasn\u2019t a model of trust and for whom learning trust was new. And so they would maybe play people off each other, do those kinds of things that ultimately will burn you.<\/p>\n

Jason Marsh:<\/strong> So Paul, when you hear Eve talk about her ability to trust others and instill trust in others toward her, I wonder if you could step back and, putting on your psychologist\u2019s hat, draw on some research to explain why that may be. How might the particular parenting style that you\u2019ve practiced foster that trustworthiness over time? And perhaps even more importantly, what could be the negative consequences of not fostering that sense of trust and trustworthiness?<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> There are a lot of clinical reports of people who are commitment adverse and can\u2019t trust others. Based on their reports of their childhood, it seems that this is often a result of how they were brought up. They found they couldn\u2019t trust their parents because their parents broke their promises or their commitments. And unreliability can be very damaging.<\/p>\n

When I was 13, I spent five weeks rehearsing to play a role in a Gilbert & Sullivan show, The Mikado, for one performance, which my parents missed by two hours. I never forgave them for that. That was very decisive for me, that unreliability. Something like that can make it quite a struggle for you to trust others. Quite a struggle.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s been much less scientific attention given to the positive side: What does positive parental behavior that earns trust look like? What are its benefits? Psychologists study problems; we don\u2019t study success. But I would expect just the reverse\u2014that people who were trusting as children grow up being able to be trustworthy.<\/p>\n

Jason Marsh: <\/strong>Some parents might try to earn their kids\u2019 trust, but they might not exhibit trust toward their kids in return. What could be the consequences of not demonstrating trust toward your kids?<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> You have children who are either crippled by the over-controlling, micromanaging parent, or who become devious in order to get their freedom. They\u2019ve got to grow, and they are increasingly capable of acting independently. So they\u2019re going to find a way to do so, or you\u2019re going to destroy them.<\/p>\n

If they find a way to gain autonomy through deviousness, through gaming the system, that\u2019s really a bad way to learn independence because once you learn how to deceive your parents, there\u2019s a lot of temptation to do it with everybody else. That brings short-term gains and long-term losses. But if you\u2019re the type who just goes from one relationship to another, then you may never realize what you\u2019re losing\u2014until you get late in your life and you feel you haven\u2019t built anything.<\/p>\n

Jason Marsh:<\/strong> Based on research and your own experience, is it possible for you to sum up what you believe is most important to raising kids who are both trusting and trustworthy?<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> The two are related. People who are distrustful are usually not very trustworthy themselves, and difficult to deal with.<\/p>\n

You have a fundamental choice to make about how you\u2019re going to lead your life: Are you going to be suspicious and risk disbelieving people who are truthful? Or are you going to be trusting and risk being misled? As a parent, you always need to be trusting and risk being mislead. Being wrongly accused is terrible. And it is less pleasant to live your life being suspicious all the time, unless you are a police investigator. And you do not need to be an investigator in your home.<\/p>\n

Eve:<\/strong> Is there such as thing as too much trust?<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> No.<\/p>\n

Eve:<\/strong> Really? Even when your kids are lying to you, and you know they\u2019re lying to you?<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> There is no general rule.<\/p>\n

Eve: <\/strong>I imagine people who read your book Why Kids Lie<\/em> would want to be able to better catch their kids in lies.<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> But that absolutely was not my intention; my intention was to explain to parents why kids lie, not how to catch them in lies. There is nothing in the book that teaches how to detect lies. That is not your job as a parent to be the cop, to be the interrogator. You must be the teacher, or the model. You want to talk to your kids about the real costs of lying. The real cost is not being trusted. If you are not trusted, it makes all intimate relationships impossible.<\/p>\n

Eve:<\/strong> I did trust you and always felt you had my best intentions in mind. I sometimes felt that I knew how to take care of myself more than you could give me credit for, but I think that is a pretty natural part of growing up and wanting full freedom.<\/p>\n

To this day, I think that trust is present in my everyday thinking. When I am making a hard or risky decision, I think, \u201cWhat would my parents think?\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> Having had parents who made every mistake you could make\u2014they were good models of what not to do.<\/p>\n

Eve:<\/strong> So, do you trust me?<\/p>\n

Paul:<\/strong> Of course.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in Greater Good<\/a>, the online magazine published by UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. \u00a0http:\/\/greatergood.berkeley.edu<\/a><\/p>\n

Jason Marsh Bio:<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a>Jason Marsh<\/strong> is the editor in chief of Greater Good<\/em>, the online magazine published by UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. He is also a co-editor of two anthologies of Greater Good<\/em> articles: The Compassionate Instinct<\/em><\/a> (WW Norton, 2010) and Are We Born Racist?<\/em><\/a> (Beacon Press, 2010) Previously, he was the managing editor of the political journal The Responsive Community<\/em>; he has also worked as a reporter and producer at KQED Public Radio in San Francisco, as a documentary producer, and as a kindergarten teacher. His first documentary, Unschooled<\/em><\/a>, debuted at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.<\/p>\n

Back to <\/strong>Stories<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\ufeffA conversation between world-renowned psychologist Paul Ekman and his daughter Eve, with Jason Marsh. The TV show Lie To Me was based on his\u00a0research\u00a0into detecting lies through facial expressions. Growing up in San Francisco, a city renowned for its hedonism, Eve Ekman faced more than her fair share of temptations, especially when she got involved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,5,94],"tags":[163,95,119,182],"class_list":["post-3984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-parenting","category-trust","tag-communication","tag-lies","tag-parenting","tag-trust"],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":9529,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}