To define bad faith, two schools clash:

• As opposed to good faith (being convinced of the veracity of what one says), bad faith would be the act of to know that one is saying a wrong thing. In The art of always being right, Schopenhauer describes 38 tricks to succeed in demonstrating “that one is right when one knows that one is wrong”.
• For the author Jean-Paul Sartre, bad faith is not conscious. ” We don’t lie about what we don’t know, we don’t lie when we spread a mistake that we ourselves are fooled, we don’t lie when we are wrong “. In a way, bad faith would be a simple lack of lucidity …

Both definitions have flaws. Bad faith is sometimes not a lie: it happens that all that is said to be strictly true, what matters being the gap between what is said and what is thought, in order to cheat on the other. And the objective of the person of bad faith is often hidden. In These people who are always right: Or how to thwart the traps of bad faith, Hervé Magnin speaks of a ” a relational phenomenon which consists in deliberately deceiving others about their own intentions in order to better realize them “. He adds that, in bad faith, “ there is a notorious pretext and an occult intention ».

Bad faith often takes the form of a very social attitude, marked by sustained or even exaggerated politeness.

Behind bad faith there is always a conscious motivation.

The individual who acts in bad faith does everything to not pass for someone of bad faith. He is therefore overly concerned about his image, even after accomplishing his goal.

It takes a primary intention and a project dishonest.

It is well known that dating sites are places of suspicion. Everyone can put forward what they want (without being considered that they are really lying), the goal being to speak abundantly about themselves, to expose their narrative identity through the menu. Alas, no one has a direct means of verifying the veracity of what is said there. Therefore, all users are suspected of bad faith. 

At the question ” Does the bad faith of others generate stress for you? »

40% say that the bad faith of others generates “a lot” of stress, for 10% of respondents, it even worries them “a lot”.

30% say that bad faith annoys them, 25% that it annoys them and for 20% of respondents, it even makes them violent.

In view of these figures, bad faith seems to be a problem that crystallizes many tensions. Yet bad faith is always that of others : 70% of survey respondents say they never or rarely act in bad faith. 

« The odious thing about bad faith is that it ends up giving a bad conscience to good faith » Jean Rostand