Paltering
Answering a direct question with a true statement chosen to create a false impression, so that the speaker deceives while saying nothing false.
Paltering is the half-truth under questioning. Asked "has the car had engine trouble?", the seller says "it passed its inspection last month," which is true, relevant-sounding, and not an answer. The questioner takes the reply as a no. If the trouble later surfaces, the seller points out that every word was accurate.
Rogers and colleagues named and measured the practice in 2017 and found two things: that negotiators palter often, and that the people they palter to, once they discover it, judge it nearly as harshly as lying, while the palterers themselves judge it as almost honest. The gap between those judgments is why the device is used: the speaker feels clean. Exploits the assumption of cooperative communication and Anchoring.
Historical examples
Rogers, Zeckhauser, Gino, Norton, and Schweitzer's "Artful Paltering" put the device in a laboratory: in negotiation experiments, participants used truthful statements to mislead about a car's condition or a product's value, and the targets who later learned the truth rated the palterers as nearly as untrustworthy as outright liars. The paper gave the practice its modern name and its evidence base.
Rogers, Todd, Richard Zeckhauser, Francesca Gino, Michael I. Norton, and Maurice E. Schweitzer. "Artful Paltering: The Risks and Rewards of Using Truthful Statements to Mislead Others." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 112, no. 3 (2017): 456–473. Source
A story told of Athanasius of Alexandria, pursued by imperial officers, has him answer their question about his whereabouts with "he is not far from here," and pass unrecognised. Sissela Bok uses the anecdote in Lying as the classic case of deception by true statement, and the moral tradition has argued about it ever since.
Bok, Sissela. Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. New York: Pantheon, 1978.
In advertising and commerce
"Has this model had any recalls?" "It has the highest safety rating in its class." Sales training in several industries teaches the redirect to a true positive as a matter of craft, and consumer-protection cases turn on whether the true statement was chosen to mislead. The legal standard of "misleading by omission" was written for it.
Federal Trade Commission. Policy Statement on Deception, 14 October 1983; Rogers et al., "Artful Paltering" (2017), on paltering in sales contexts.
Ask someone a yes-or-no question and notice whether the answer is yes, no, or a fact. If it's a fact, ask again. How often did you have to?
In the wild
Short examples of the technique at work, each with what to notice. The same examples are questions in the quiz, where the answer is not given away.
"Have there been any complaints about the contractor?" "They've completed every project on time."
What to notice. A direct question is met with a true, adjacent, reassuring fact, and the questioner hears a no.
"Is the water safe to drink?" "It meets every federal standard." The state issued an advisory yesterday.
What to notice. True and chosen to imply an answer the speaker cannot give.
"Did you know about the leak before the report?" "I read the report the day it came out."
What to notice. The reply is accurate and answers a different question; the implied no was never stated.
Sources
- Rogers, Todd, Richard Zeckhauser, Francesca Gino, Michael I. Norton, and Maurice E. Schweitzer. "Artful Paltering." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 112, no. 3 (2017): 456–473. doi:10.1037/pspi0000081
- Bok, Sissela. Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. New York: Pantheon, 1978. ISBN 978-0375705281
- Schauer, Frederick, and Richard Zeckhauser. "Paltering." In Deception: From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating, edited by Brooke Harrington, 38–54. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.