To Be Honest, I Hate Your Dishonesty

Featured on the Monday July 28, 2025 edition of The Armstrong & Getty One More Thing Podcast....

• the shocking arrest of an airline pilot...
• Joe brings us a new study about honesty!

Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
To be honest. I hate your dishonesty. It's one more thing,
Armstrong and Getty. One more.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
First this. We didn't get to this story on the
Armstrong and Getty radio show, Maybe we will tomorrow. Plane
lands in San Francisco. As soon as it lands, federal
agents rush into the plane, grab one of the pilots
and take him off in cuffs. Man, if I was
sitting there, I would think, what the hell is going
on there? Yeah? Was some guy that and run a

(00:34):
foul of child porn laws and they're waiting for him
to land in the United States.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Immediately ran grabbed him and took him away. More on
that on the next Armstrong and Getty radio show.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Well, you know, you put a cop right there at
the entrance to the cockpit. He's not going anywhere.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
I guess he's kind of odd.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
They did that in front of the passenger. They must
have thought he was gonna be a flight risk.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey, huh oh stand a plane.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah. I can't think of any better place to arrest somebody.
I mean, I get I get your whole passenger thing,
But I mean, like I said, he can't possibly flee anywhere.
He can hardly even stand up right, Yeah, wow, perf
m ah. So your relationship can handle way more honesty
than you think it can, As I often respond, how

(01:30):
do you know what I think? In a new study
from the University of Rochester and Beautiful up State New
York found that being brutally honest with your partner benefits
both of you even if things get uncomfortable. Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
I can't wait to hear the examples because some of
them are clearly well, maybe I'm wrong. I was going
to say, clearly, don't fall under this category that you know?
Do I look fat in this? But maybe I'm wrong?
Are they going to say that you should tell him
you look fat as a hog in that?

Speaker 1 (01:56):
All right? So here's your methodology. Scientists examine two hundred
and fourteen romantic couples who'd been together an average of
fifteen years. There you go. Researchers brought these couples into
a laboratory and began jabbing them with sharp sticks. No,
I've made that part up. They had them discuss something
one partner wanted the other to change, the kind of

(02:17):
conversation most people dread having, and partners took turns being
the person requesting change and the person receiving the feedback.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
This reminds me of one of my best friends texted
me on Friday that can you believe it's been thirty
two years? They have been married for thirty two years,
he and his wife, And I remember him telling me
one time he said, sometimes you just gotta take a
step back so they can't hit you in, say an
uncomfortable thing.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
That's a funny way to put it anyway. So getting
back to the methodology, which is interesting because I haven't
talked about this for a long time. I used to
make It was a incredibly small amount of money. I
can't even remember if it was five bucks or fifteen
or something. As an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois,

(03:09):
I would answer the little ads the psychology department needed
subjects for experiments, tests, studies, and I would go down
and I was I did a bunch of them.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
But would they lock you in a box and let
rats on you? I mean, like, what kind of tests
were you do?

Speaker 1 (03:26):
No? No, Indeed, at the time, the Mamby Pamby administration
wouldn't allow anything cruel or pain inducing. But the interesting
part of it is they would tell you what you
were doing and sometimes like what they were testing, and
then you would do what they want you to do,
answer the questions or whatever. Then at the end they'd
revealed that they weren't really looking into that thing at all.

(03:48):
Oh cool, they throw you off, so you're not like
trying to interesting. Okay, yeah, teach to the test as
it were anyway, So here's your method on the examples. No, no,
I really can't. One might pop into my head. Well
we're talking, I can picture the setting. They erased his

(04:10):
memory when they hooked Hi up to the air.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Someone with the rats nibbling on you.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah. Oh yeah, these weird, unexplained scars roughly rat tooth
shaped anyway. So they they brought the couples into the lab,
had them discuss something one partner wanted to change, uh,
the other to change the and and then vice versa.
Before couples talked, participants privately wrote down what they wanted
their partner to change. Then researchers compared what people wrote

(04:38):
in private to what they actually said out loud during
the recorded conversations. Now they then they also had another
layer of it. Independent observers watched all the videos a
bunch of people and rated how honest each person was
being by comparing their private thoughts to their spoken work.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
But so, is this like a situation where you were
going to I'm gonna I'm gonna tell them about their
breas you know, when you write down, I'm going to
tell him that the breath is horrible. They need to
do something about it, something like that. Sure, but then
you get the yips when you have to actually tell
them when you like, yes, okay.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yes I do, we do, everyone does. Yeah. It's that
sort of thing. When people were more honest about requesting
changes from their partners, both people in the relationship reported
better emotional well being in higher relationship satisfaction immediately after
the conversation, and researchers found that the couples did not
need to share the same reality about the conversation for

(05:33):
both people to benefit from it. What mattered more was
that people were actually actually were being honest and that
their partners perceived them as honest.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
So if I wrote down I'm going to tell him
about Okay, how about this scenario I'm married to a woman.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
If I almost say, wait a minute, this is an announcement.
Be cool, we love you, we care about you. It's fine.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
No, I would I think the other problem would complicate
the marriage with him because I'd have to at some
point say I'm not gay. So if you've noticed a
lack of intimacy, it's because I'm not getting so. So
if I was going to say to her, your breath
smells like a garbage dump, I don't need to say
it like that. But if I was going to tell
her the act, and then I get in there and

(06:14):
I say, there are there are Look, there are certain
things about you hygiene wise that I don't dig or
something like that, because I get scared to just say
it out loud. But if I said it out loud,
it would be better.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
For both of us, right, not not to be intensely hurtful,
as your quasi humorous example it was, but yeah, just
be be frank. That's more like moral the honesty aspect
of it, like just come out on saying what you feel. Yeah,
to kind of jump to the end of it. You

(06:53):
are sending the message I am honest with you, and
that underlying principle of your relationship is much more important
than the topic or any momentary discomfort with someone being
honest with you, because it can be very uncomfortable on a.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Better example, because I just feel like that one wouldn't
bother many people. I mean, if if somebody tell me,
that'd just be oh, well, I need to change things.
They need to brush, I need to get a mint,
I need to build. But I wouldn't be personally hurt.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Really, it could be a sexual thing. You know, it's
to this or that or not enough this, or the
way you do that is not only not pleasurable, it's
really annoying and off putting, and you know there are
ways you could put it that were a little more gentle.
But it could certainly be something like that. Interestingly, researchers

(07:44):
tested their findings across multiple measures, including self reported emotional wellbeing,
relationship satisfaction, and motivation to change. They also had trained
observers rates the same factors. Patterns held consistent across all measures,
and interestingly, three months later, many benefits persisted. People who
had been more honest during the initial discussion reported better
emotional well being and were more likely to see positive

(08:05):
changes in their partners over time. Which makes sense. Hmm, oh, oh,
here it is Jack. Study participants were not discussing minor
annoyances either. Changes people requested were specifically chosen to be
topics they would find uncomfortable to share real issues that
could potentially caused conflict. Yet even in these challenging circumstances,

(08:26):
honesty proved beneficial.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Listen, pillow, princess. Here, hold this youand or a trout,
and she says, why the truck. You're a like a
cold fish. That's what you're like.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Wow, that so perfect? Well, yeah, that's that's that's really
good because people love a visual aids B metaphors and
see the smell of a trout, right, yes, fish exactly.
You're like this in bed, Hold it, see how you
like it. There we go, and she would reply, I

(09:01):
feel better about our relationship.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
This was beneficial.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
Thank you. I feel better across several measures of satisfaction. Well,
I guess that's it.