Should you admit to a shortcoming? There’s no hard and fast answer to that question but there are definitely situations when honesty can serve you well. We are not advocating that you bare your soul for all to see, but sometimes admitting to a weakness can lead others to evaluate you more favorably. For example, imagine yourself in a job interview that goes like this:
Interviewer: “This job will require you to stand in front an audience from time to time and speak to them for about 30 minutes. Does that present any problems?” Now suppose you really do suffer some anxiety when you are in front of an audience. We don’t mean you faint or tremble uncontrollably and have to run out of the room; we simply mean you get nervous, self-conscious, and would prefer not to speak in front of people unless absolutely necessary. With those conditions in mind, let’s consider two possible replies to the interviewer’s question.
Reply A: “Funny you should ask that. I have to give presentations for my present job and the truth is, I do get a little nervous and anxious when I’m speaking in front of people. Because of that, I try to do a lot of preparation. I try to practice and rehearse what I’m going to say. When I really prepare, I find I’m less likely to stutter or forget my train of thought. As long as I know in advance about having to give a presentation, I would say public speaking is not a major problem for me, although it wouldn’t be my favorite part of the job.”
Reply B: “No, that requirement of the job doesn’t present a problem.”
Are you secure enough to give Reply A, or will you fall back to Reply B and worry about your problem later? You may be torn here because you figure that if you give Reply A you might not get the job; if you give Reply B and get the job, you’re screwed down the road when you have to give speeches.
In many situations, when it comes to divulging a weakness, honesty is probably the best policy, a statement supported by psychological research. For instance, psychologists asked people to evaluate the application of a hypothetical college applicant. For one group of evaluators, the application included statements from both the student and guidance counselor that some of the applicant’s grades should have been better, that in a few courses he simply did not live up to his potential. For a second group of evaluators, no such statements occurred in the application materials. The results showed that evaluators who read that some of the applicant’s grades should have been better actually rated his grades overall more favorably than did evaluators who did not have the negative observation about the grades. In another interesting study, college students had to read a paragraph and rate it for clarity. For one group, the material was precededby a statement that the paragraph was somewhat confusing. For two other groups, an identical statement either came afterthe paragraph or was never given. The results showed that the first group (statement preceding) rated the paragraph as clearer than did the other two groups. One final study: Students listened to a taped lecture by a speaker with a heavy Austrian accent. For half the students, before beginning, the speaker admitted that he had a strong accent and hoped the audience could follow him; no such statement occurred for the other half of the listeners. The results showed that the students who heard the apology rated the speaker as clearer and having more years of speaking English than did the students who did not hear an apology.
One thing to note in these studies is that admission of a weakness concerning some ability led to more positive evaluations of the individual being described, but the positive evaluation was specific to that ability. For instance, in the college applicant case, grades were judged more favorably when the applicant admitted they weren’t always the best, but SAT scores and other measures of performance were not rated more favorably. Similarly, the apologetic Austrian speaker was judged to have more experience with English, but not someone necessarily fluent in other languages. Thus, admitting a weakness is not automatically going to have someone see you as a better person in general. Therefore, if you’re going to be honest about a weakness, keep it specific to a particular trait or action.
Psychology and Stress 