bad faith

A form of deception in which one’s true motives are not what they claim. Bad faith may also involve self-deception, in which one lies to themselves about their true motives while also misrepresenting them to others.

Examples

• Someone negotiating in bad faith may have no intention of reaching a compromise, intending only to waste the time of the other party, or perhaps wanting to appear conciliatory to the public without actually being so.
• Concern trolling is a recent example, in which someone claims to be part of a group and share the group’s goals, while actually belonging to an opposition group and working to undermine those goals by sharing “concerns” about said goals or methods to achieve them.

Sartre on the bad faith of anti-Semites in his day:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.

The trouble with “assuming positive intent”

“Assume positive intent” is oft-repeated advice in business (PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi is the earliest source I could find). While it can lead to a more positive outlook and smooth over conflict in many (high-trust) situations, it also leaves us vulnerable to bad-faith actors (with ill intent) who exploit the assumption of positive intent. See The Problem With Assuming Positive Intent

If you want people to assume positive intent, you also need to expect people to demonstrate positive intent. Bad faith eventually reveals itself as a bad-faith actor’s actions continue to diverge from their stated motives, e.g. someone claiming they’re willing to compromise but refusing every attempt at doing so.

See also: a dominant strategy for life.

Further Reading

• Challenging bad-faith actors