Question I've really enjoyed reading the answers to the questions posed on this site and I've come up with a question that was inspired from an experience my 5 year old daughter recently had. My question is this: Why is it wrong to snitch on a friend? I can see in cases of minor mischief that snitching on a friend would seem to be unloyal but just how far should our duty to our friendship extend? I'm asking this from the context where you know your friend has done something wrong and in which you were not involved but your friend has requested you remain silent on their behalf.

Accepted:
December 13, 2005

Comments

When your daughter is looking for colleges, I hope you will encourage her to considering coming to where I teach!

Ethicists take different general approaches to replying to such questions, and one of the interesting things about this question is that it may allow us to see how different approaches will sometimes provide different answers to ethical questions. Very roughly, a consequentialist would say that in order to determine what to do in this case, one must calculate the benefits and detriments to all who may reasonably be expected to be affected, and do whatever maximizes benefit and minimizes detriment. In simple terms, you weigh the damage to the friend if you snitch against the damage done by leaving their wrongdoing undetected and do what will minimize that damage. A deontologist might count the requirement always to expose wrongdoing as a fundamental duty. (I actually doubt that any serious deontological theory would put is in such an unqualified way, in fact.) If so, a universalizable maxim of good action might be: Always expose wrongdoing! A virtue theorist would say that snitching or not snitching must be a judgment based upon good character--so what we should do in any given case (snitch or not snitch) will depend upon what the fully virtuous person would do in such a case...and then there would have to be a long story about what a fully virtuous person would be like, and how we might be able to tell what he or she would do in this case (virtue theorists--and I count myself among them--are notoriously reluctant to state rules of action for specific cases unless absolutely all of the details of the case are filled in, because we think that the exercise of judgment--which takes into account the specific circumstances of the case--rather than the application of clear rules of action, is always required).

I know that you’re primarily interested in the more sophisticatedquestion concerning the extent of our obligations to friends, but I’mstuck on childhood “snitching,” or as it’s known in my family,“tattling.” “Don’t be a tattle-tale,” I’m often tempted to tell my fiveyear old when she tells me of some minor indiscretion of her fourteenyear old sister. Why not? Didn’t her sister do something wrong? Andshouldn’t wrong-doers be held to account? And isn’t it my job as aparent to enforce all morally legitimate norms?

No, it’s my jobas a parent to do what is in my power to protect my children fromunjustified harm and to help them to develop their capacities to livegood, worthwhile, and morally decent lives. If they are being wrongedby someone else and if they do not yet have the skills or authority toprevent that wrong, then I must intervene. But the usual situationsthat motivate tattling aren’t like that. Most tattling is motivated byenvy. Tattlers tend to regard moral norms as arbitrary rules enforcedby parents that prevent them from having fun, and they don’t wantanyone else to get away with an illicit pleasure that they themselveswould like to have. Alternatively, in a bout of sibling or classmate rivalry, many tattlers seek to present themselves to the local god figure as “the good child” who knows and follows the rules, in contrast to those undeserving others. (Of course, my good child is never like this.) Because I don’t want to encourage these pictures of the point of moral norms (and also because tattling is really annoying), I amtempted to prohibit tattling. But I try to resist this temptation,because children often do find themselves at a loss about how toprevent injustices done against themselves and others, and aprohibition on tattling can seem like moral abandonment. So I try toresist the temptation to prohibit tattling, but I also try not to givesatisfaction to the envious tattler. You need to tell your sister whyher behavior upsets you. You don’t know why it upsets you? Well, let’sthink about it. What is wrong with what she did? Anything, really? Ifnot, then we shouldn’t worry about it. It’s not fair? Then maybe youcan help your sister to see why it’s unfair. And so on.

Ofcourse, as my five year old will tell you, this picture of our domesticlife is pure fantasy. Most of the time, in a desperate effort tomaintain my own sanity, I take the much easier route: “Don’t be atattle-tale.”