David DeSteno - Out of Character: Surprising Truths About the Liar, Cheat, Sinner (and Saint) Lurking in All of Us

Copyright 2011 by David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Crown Archetype with colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
DeSteno, David.
Out of character : surprising truths about the liar, cheat, sinner (and saint) lurking in all of us / David DeSteno & Piercarlo Valdesolo.1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Character. 2. Conduct of lifePsychological aspects. I. Valdesolo, Piercarlo. II. Title.
BF818.D43 2011
155.2dc22 2010050275

eISBN: 978-0-307-71777-1

v3.1

To our wives, Amy and Liz

M arshall Clement Sanford was an Eagle Scoutliterally. The son of a respected Florida family, in his younger years he was a proud member of Boy Scout Troop 509 from Pompano Beach. But these early years werent all campfires and fishing tripsbecoming an Eagle Scout was hard work, both physically and mentally. Besides learning how to tie knots that would hold your weight, mastering the exacting science of log cabin construction, and figuring out which way was north based on the position of the sun, being an Eagle Scout also constituted, as Marshall would later say, an important and arduous developmental voyagea voyage of character, leadership, and persistence.

For him, it was a voyage that appeared to pay off. Marshall did well for himself. After high school, he graduated from Furman College at the top of his class. He went on to complete an MBA at the University of Virginias prestigious Darden School of Business and a summer internship at Goldman Sachs. Marshall was rising fast, widely admired for his skills, for his smarts, and for being a straight shooter. That summer of his Goldman internship was also the summer he met Jenny Sullivan at a party in the Hamptons, and when he returned to New York City that fall to take a high-profile job, he promptly asked her to marry him. Although they both had promising careers in the big cityJenny was a vice president of a large investment firmthey soon decided to move back to South Carolina (where Marshalls family had moved his senior year of high school), where they could live a more traditional life.

Once settled back down South, Marshall headed up a real estate company and Jenny raised their four boys in what everyone agreed was the picture of family harmony. Although her husband could be quirky and often a bit stoic, she admired him for his honesty and integrity. As Jenny would later say, He cherished Galatians 5:22: The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, and he lived accordingly. But Marshall was also ambitious and passionate about serving his community. So the beloved native son, the very embodiment of strong moral character and good old-fashioned American values, decided it was time to run for public office.

Okay, we know what youre thinking: good character and politics arent usually two things that go together. But Marshall was not your average politician. He wasnt in it for the prestige, the perks, or the power. He liked to describe himself as a citizen legislator who was in it to do the right thing by South Caroliniansto be a champion of the people. A political neophyte with a fresh face and a boatload of enthusiasm, his straightforward and earnest demeanor catapulted him to victory in his first run for Congress in 1994, where he served three terms. Those terms werent tarnished by scandal or ego or disgrace, as they are for so many in his line of work; instead, he was widely seen as a staunch advocate and strong voice on issues of both social and fiscal responsibility. But he didnt just vote his values, he lived them. He not only fought wasteful spending during the day but was just as judicious with his own moneyand the taxpayersat night. With little interest in the material excesses or extracurricular dalliances of the Washington, D.C., party scene, he spent his nights in the capital on the futon in his office, accommodations he preferred to renting an apartment on the governments dime. Conservative both in lifestyle and in politics, his straight-arrow persona made him a conservative favorite back home in the red state of South Carolina, and as a result, by 2003 he, Jenny, and the boys found themselves moving into the governors mansion.

It was a welcome change for the family, as living apart had been difficult, with the frequent separations limiting the couples time for deep conversation and sharing the ups and downs of daily life. But now everything was again falling into place. Though we were both incredibly busy, wed been living under the same roof at last, and with that proximity, Jenny said, Id fallen in love with him all over again. And so, it seems, had his constituents. From the very outset of his term, Marshall was trumpeted both in his home state and in Washington as a new kind of politiciana man of virtue. Even if you didnt agree with his policies, there seemed to be no question that he was a good man.

Yet on June 24, 2009, Marshall Mark Sanfords life changed forever. Upon arriving back in the United States from a trip to Buenos Aires, he was met by a reporter who, like many South Carolinians, had spent the past week wondering about Sanfords whereabouts. The governor had gone AWOL, offering his staff, his family, and his constituents only the flimsy lie that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. But as we now know, he was actually in Argentina with his mistressor his soul mate, as he would later call her. It turned out that the seemingly levelheaded and loyal governor had been penning erotic love letters to Maria Beln Chapur for months. Evidently he had just returned to the States with more material about which to write.

Mired in a tug-of-war between his firmly held convictions about what was right and his desire for the woman he now claimed was his once-in-a-lifetime love, Sanford, in a tear-filled press conference later that day, begged forgiveness for his moral transgression, admitting that he had crossed the sex line and apologizing for the pain he had caused. But it was too late. On that day Mark Sanfords image suddenly changed forever. He was no longer a paragon of virtue, and his political ambitions, along with his character, were consigned to the junk heap.

C ases such as Sanfordsand the many others like it that regularly grace the headlinesfascinate us. The idea that a person seemingly living a life of propriety could commit such shameful acts, along with the suggestion that we could be so easily fooled by the pretense of goodness, shatters our confidence in our ability to judge othersor even ourselvesaccurately. Whether the transgressor is a politician touting family values while carrying on an affair with an international mistress, the next-door neighbor who seemed just like everybody else until he committed an act of terrorism as a member of a radicalized political group, or the admired and upstanding hedge fund manager who turned out to be the perpetrator of a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, when people act in a way that violates our expectations and beliefs about their character, weboth as individuals and as a societyare often shaken to our very core. To compensate for our errors in judgment, we convince ourselves these people must have been wolves in sheeps clothinginherently nasty individuals who may have managed to hide in plain sight for a time, but whose true colors have ultimately been revealed. Hindsight, after all, is 20/20. We tell ourselves that Sanfords fall from grace must have been long in the coming. He must have had some flaw in his character that lurked there those many years, hidden behind that Eagle Scout badge, something that Jenny (and the rest of us) just couldnt see. If we had just looked closely enough, maybe there would have been clues, windows that would have let us discern who Sanford really was as opposed to who he presented himself to be. How else could a man who once seemed such an exemplar of good character have turned out to be a lying, cheating philanderer? How else could we all have been duped?