One meets this personal as contrasted with a social standard of ethics frequently in people of fine character and of otherwise good intelligence. Mayors, clergymen, teachers, employers may suppress the truth where they think this would help someone for whom they are sorry. They want to give him "another chance," often regardless of the chances he may have already wasted, and of the treatment best calculated to make him a useful citizen.

A woman whose maid had caused her great annoyance by staying out till the small hours night after night, and had later left because pregnant, told none of this to another mistress who inquired about the girl some months later. She said she did not want to be the one to do it.

This woman thought she was being kind. Again, as in the case of the police, it never occurred to her that this might be a poor way to get the girl started right. She did not know how to take active steps to help her maid, and so did the one passively kind thing that presented itself.

A medical-social worker had occasion to consult a former employer of one of her patients about the patient's insurance. The employer denied any knowledge of it, though the insurance records showed his signature to payments. Here was an honorable man making a false statement. He explained later that he had promised his employe not to tell about the insurance. The denial was due to what he regarded as the demands of loyalty.

Of course, the social worker cannot ask that witnesses violate their own standards of ethics. These instances show a kindheartedness that no one would wish less. In the last illustration, however, what was presumably good nature led the employer to make a promise which was obviously futile.

3. The Bias of Self-interest. This form of bias is of course universal. When, therefore, a witness testifies reluctantly and apparently against his interest, his testimony has special weight.

A charity organization secretary was interested in a family consisting of a widower and four children under fifteen. These children came to the office one day, saying that their father when drunk had turned them out of doors, and that they had spent the night with a cousin. The secretary called at once on this cousin, finding his wife at home and himself in bed in the next room. The wife said nothing except that the children had been there as they said. The next day the secretary called again and found the woman alone. This time she said she had not dared to talk openly on the previous day, because her husband would not approve of her saying things about his uncle. The uncle, the children's father, was drunk most

of the time. Although the children should be taken away, she could not go to court about it. Her husband, too, drank and often beat her. She did not dare complain about this even to her own relatives, because her husband had said that he would kill her father and brother if she did.

This evidence, given under circumstances that warrant one's believing that the woman had nothing to gain and possibly much to lose by telling it, carries a strong presumption of truth.

The suppression of facts from a desire to escape work and receive assistance instead is a fairly obvious form of self-interest. The following is the only illustration of this particular fault that need be given:

An Italian girl of thirteen was referred to a medical-social department for general hygiene. There were two younger children, the mother was dead, the father out of work, the home wretched. A young man living there was said by the patient to be her cousin. The relationship was so described by the public relief officials, the school teacher, and the Italian society-all of which seemed to be confirmatory evidence. But a priest who was seen thought that the young man was a brother, and, as a matter of fact, he was. All of the other agencies had taken the statement from the family-a first-hand source but not a disinterested one. Relatives not living with the family group told the truth, and proof of the brother's responsibility for support was taken into court, with the result that both father and son were induced to go to work.

A less evident form of self-interest, or of what the witness thinks is such, is the impulse to gratify some strong emotion. For instance, a young unmarried mother with an unfortunate past wrongfully accused a former lover of being the father of her child, because she wanted to pay him back for an old score. Again, an exasperated mother applied to an agency to get them to make her stubborn, lazy daughter work and be obedient. She said she could do nothing with the girl. It turned out that the mother drank, had always abused her daughter, and was herself immoral. The likelihood seemed to be that she made the complaint partly because she wanted the girl to support her and thought to get this through the society's supervision, and partly because she feared that, once the daughter was no longer as amenable to authority as when a child, her younger attractions might alienate the affection of a man who had been living with the mother.

Self-interested bias also shows itself in another form, in individual or collective self-esteem. An ex-probation officer states

that when she has asked girl shoplifters from respectable families how they happened to do such a thing, again and again she has met the reply, "I don't know what got into me." Her acquaintance with such girls satisfied her that they had not thought of shoplifting as a serious offense against the law. It had seemed to them a peccadillo, something rather smart to put through without detection, like stealing a car ride. When they found themselves behind prison bars, they were shocked to see themselves without illusion as thieves, under disgrace. They had never intended to be that; they had thought of themselves as being far-removed from the criminal class. After release, their rallying self-esteem led them to the half-expressed feeling that it was not their real self that had committed a crime.

Collective self-esteem appears frequently as family pride.

The secretary of a charity organization society interviewed the brother and sister-in-law of a deserted wife who was asking relief for herself and children. The brother blamed his sister's husband for being “no good,” and for not supporting his family, but could offer no suggestions as to future plans. His wife, however, advised boarding the children out on the ground that their mother could not go out to work and at the same time care for them.

A former landlord also condemned the husband, saying that while the deserted wife lived in his house she had taken excellent care of it and paid her rent regularly. He did not consider it her fault that the man deserted. Although this landlord had heard that she went to town with men, he did not regard her as vicious. She undoubtedly needed the money, since she never seemed strong enough for work.

With further inquiry, more evidence came to light of this mother's wrong-doing. The secretary then went again to the sister-in-law who, finding the woman's character known, testified that the husband had been away many years, that the last two children were not his, but were the offspring of two different men, the last of whom was paying the woman an allowance and still living with her from time to time. The court removed these three children from the mother.

The family pride which led the brother and sister-in-law in this case to withhold the truth in the first place was of course a feeling one must respect, however disastrous its possible results to the children involved or however annoying it may be to a busy worker. They had never seen the worker before and perhaps could not judge how carefully he would guard confidences or how much power or interest he might have in remedying a bad situation. The landlord's bias was twofold. His standards of conduct were evidently easy,

inclining him to be tolerant beyond reason, and his interests as a landlord prejudiced him in favor of a good tenant.

There is a bias of self-esteem to which social workers, especially the clever or informed ones, may themselves become liable. A desire to be thought penetrating may lead them to interpret facts of conduct with over-subtlety, to see a certain motive where it does not exist. To such over-subtlety the social worker is tempted in dealing with a case of the following type: She learns that a man's relatives have habitually characterized his marriage as a very good match on his wife's part. Learning further that the husband has never told his family of his wife's capability as a manager, she interprets these facts to mean that the man has not wanted to modify his family's flattering partiality of judgment towards himself. This inference on the worker's part might easily spring from vanity at her astuteness, rather than from unbiased reasoning. As is true of all prejudice, the cure of this bias lies in becoming aware of it.

Finally, this discussion of testimonial evidence should not close without the further warning that there is always danger-though the danger here is greatest for the beginner in social work-in the attempt to substitute the results of formulated experience for our own unguided impulses. We may easily become, for a time at least, hypercritical. The new worker, while throwing himself with enthusiasm into the task of mastering a new discipline, may lose his perspective. "The extreme of distrust in these matters," says Langlois, "is almost as mischievous as the extreme of credulity." The case worker's best safeguard against formalism and skepticism is a concern for the interests of his client.

SUMMARY OF THIS CHAPTER

1. The two factors which condition the value of a witness's testimony are his competence and his bias. Competence includes both the witness's opportunity to know the facts and the way in which he has used this opportunity. Bias includes those ideas and emotions of the witness which may prejudice his judgment.

2. A witness frequently thinks he has had ample opportunity to know the facts when the reverse is the case. The use which a witness has made of his opportunity to know the facts is conditioned by his powers of attention and memory, and by his suggestibility.

3. Closeness of attention to an incident depends in part upon the importance attached to it at the time, and in part upon the stock of ideas or "funded thought" of the observer.

4. The time at which an event took place is often recalled by associating it with some other event the date of which is already known. It is characteristic of memory material that it deteriorates with repetition. The first, unrehearsed statement of a witness is often the most trustworthy.

5. An over-readiness to yield assent to or reproduce the assertions of others often impairs the value of a witness's testimony. Such suggestibility may even lead to mistaken confessions.

6. Closely related to this characteristic of suggestibility is the danger involved in asking "leading questions." It is not always possible to avoid them, but the case worker can at least cultivate a watchful eye for their use, so that he shall not be betrayed into accepting back as fact what he has himself suggested by the form of his query.

7. The commonest forms of bias encountered in social work are racial or national and environmental bias, and the bias of self-interest. Collective selfesteem, one form of which is family pride, may be classified under this last-named head.