On being honest about dishonesty: The social costs of taking nuanced (but realistic) moral stances.

Despite the well-documented costs of word-deed misalignment, hypocrisy permeates our personal, professional, and political lives. Why? We explore one potential explanation: the costs of moral flexibility can outweigh the costs of hypocrisy, making hypocritical moral absolutism a preferred social strategy to admissions of moral nuance. We study this phenomenon in the context of honesty.