WHY WE LIE

By Robin Llyod


We all lie, all the time. It causes problems, to say the least. So why do we do it?

It boils down to the shifting sands of the self and trying to look good both to ourselves and others, experts say.

"It's tied in with self-esteem," says University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman. "We find that as soon as people feel that their self-esteem is threatened, they immediately begin to lie at higher levels."

Not all lies are harmful. In fact, sometimes lying is the best approach for protecting privacy and ourselves and others from malice, some researchers say. Some deception, such as boasting and lies in the name of tact and politeness, can be classified as less than serious. But bald-faced lies (whether they involve leaving out the truth or putting in something false), are harmful, as they corrode trust and intimacy—the glue of society.

Kidding yourself

Many animals engage in deception, or deliberately misleading another, but only humans are wired to deceive both themselves and others, researchers say. People are so engaged in managing how others perceive them that they are often unable to separate truth from fiction in their own minds, Feldman's research shows.

For instance, In one experiment, Feldman put two strangers in a room together. They were videotaped while they conversed. Later, independently, each was asked to view the tape and identify anything they had said that was not entirely accurate.

Rather than defining what counts as a lie and to avoid the moral tone of the word "lie," Feldman's experimenters simply asked subjects after the fact to identify anything they had said in the video that was "not entirely accurate."

Initially, "Each subject said, 'Oh, I was entirely accurate,'" Feldman told LiveScience. Upon watching themselves on video, subjects were genuinely surprised to discover they had said something inaccurate. The lies ranged from pretending to like someone they actually disliked to falsely claiming to be the star of a rock band.

The study, published in the Journal of Basic and Applied Psychology, found that 60 percent of people had lied at least once during the 10-minute conversation, saying an average of 2.92 inaccurate things.

"People almost lie reflexively," Feldman says. "They don't think about it as part of their normal social discourse." But it is, the research showed.

"We're trying not so much to impress other people but to maintain a view of ourselves that is consistent with the way they would like us to be," Feldman said. We want to be agreeable, to make the social situation smoother or easier, and to avoid insulting others through disagreement or discord.

Men lie no more than women, but they tend to lie to make themselves look better, while women are more likely to lie to make the other person feel better.

Extroverts tend to lie more than introverts, Feldman found in similar research involving a job-interview situation.

Workplace lies

Other research has delved into prevarication in the workplace.

Self-esteem and threats to our sense of self are also drivers when it comes to lying to co-workers, rather than strangers, says Jennifer Argo of the University of Alberta.

A recent study she co-authored showed that people are even more willing to lie to coworkers than they are to strangers.

"We want to both look good when we are in the company of others (especially people we care about), and we want to protect our self-worth," Argo told LiveScience.

The experiment involved reading a scenario to a subject, telling them they had paid more than a coworker for the same new car. When the coworker, in the scenario, mentioned what they had paid, $200 or $2,000 more in different versions of the experiment, the subject was asked to report how they would respond.

Argo found that her subjects were more willing to lie when the price difference was small and when they were talking to a coworker rather than to a stranger.

Consumers lie to protect their public and private selves, she wrote in the Journal of Consumer Research with her colleagues from the University of Calgary and University of British Columbia.

Argo said she was surprised that people are so willing to lie to someone they know even over a small price discrepancy.

"I guess closely tied to this is that people appear to be short-term focused when they decide to deceive someone—save my self-image and self-worth now, but later on if the deceived individual finds out it can have long-term consequences," she said.

Feldman says people should become more aware of the extent to which we tend to lie and that honesty yields more genuine relationships and trust. "The default ought to be to be honest and accurate ... We're better off if honesty is the norm. It's like the old saying: honesty is the best policy."


MY COMMENT :

What people do and say may be two different things. Ideally, they need to be consistent. People often say one thing with the intent to project a certain image of themselves; but in reality, they are not at all what they are trying to portray to others. Sometimes people are not what they appear to be. It is one thing to put your best foot forward. It is quite another to put on a false front.

People deviate from the truth due to various reasons. What one perceives as the truth may not be so for another. It's a matter of perception and whose perspective you are looking from.

There are those whose clearly malicious intent is to lie in order to deceive someone. But most people lie in order to get to or as a means to a goal. And it all depends if the latter is more honorable than the former.

Some people lead a lifestyle of being a habitual lier and it becomes integrated as part of who they are as a person. And it is true that they cannot separate fiction from truth in their own minds because their minds have been conditioned to not be able to see the difference.

There are people whose lives is to live by how others perceive them as how they are to be. And as these perceptions fluctuate and so are their lies. Some use lying as a defense mechanism, to give themselves an ego stroke, to give themselves a false sense of pride and security, among other things.

Sometimes, consciously or unconsciously, choosing a lifestyle full of lies saves one's sanity while living on earth. Our minds will do anything to save itself from losing it at any cost because if we lose our minds, that is our sanity, what is left for us to do?? It is sometimes better to have a mind full of lies rather than losing our minds alltogether, I supposed. If we lose our minds and therefore our sanity; we lose our lives, essentially. We cannot function without a 'healthy' mind. Our society does not tolerate well those with compromised mental health. Furthermore, once a medical diagnosis of some form of insanity i.e. 'altered mental status' is made, society as a whole will treat us differently . That is why we have various mental health facilities.

So yes, for some, unfortunately, it takes constant lying to save their sanity and therefore their minds. And no wonder some people survive lying day in and day out. It is such an irony because in order for them to maintain an intact, coherent, well-functioning minds; they must live a lifelong full of lies.