Guest Commentary: WHY DO PEOPLE LIE?

 

Everybody lies. It may only be “white” lies, but everyone tells lies or “omits the truth” sometimes. We start lying at around age 4 to 5 when children gain an awareness of the use and power of language. This first lying is not malicious, but rather to find out, or test, what can (be) manipulated in a child’s environment. Eventually children begin to use lying to get out of trouble or get something they want. White lies, those concocted to protect someone’s feelings, are not a big deal at all. The person, however, who seems to feel compelled to lie about both the small and large stuff has a problem. We often call these folks pathological liars (which is a description, not a diagnosis). They lie to protect themselves, look good, gain financially or socially and avoid punishment. Quite often the person who has been deceived knows that this type of liar has to a certain extent deluded him or herself and is therefore to be somewhat pitied.  A much more troubling group is those who lie a lot - and knowingly - for personal gain. These people may have a diagnosis called antisocial personality disorder, also known as being a sociopath, and often get into scrapes with the law. Lying often gets worse with the passage of time. When you get away with a lie it often impels you to continue your deceptions. Also, liars often find themselves perpetrating more untruths to cover themselves. We hold different people to different standards when it comes to telling the truth. We expect, for example, less honesty from politicians than from scientists. We have a vision of purity about those who are doing research, while we imagine that politicians will at least shade the truth about themselves in order to get elected. Why do we dislike liars, especially sociopaths, so much? It’s a matter of trust. When a person lies, they have broken a bond - an unspoken agreement to treat others as we would like to be treated. Serious deception often makes it impossible for us to trust another person again. Because the issue of trust is on the line, coming clean about the lie as soon as possible is the best way to mend fences. If the truth only comes out once it is forced, repair of trust is far less likely. As a parent, the most important message you can send your children about lying is that you always - always - want them to come clean with you. No matter how big a whopper they have told, remind them that you would always rather hear the truth, no matter how bad it is, than be deceived. Tell them there is really nothing more sacred in your relationship than your trust of each other. Of course, all this presupposes that we have discovered an untruth - some people are so expert at deception that it often takes a long time to find out that we have been lied to.  How, then, can we best detect whether we are being misled? There is no foolproof way, but there are often clues you can see in behavior that should make you suspicious: 

• Avoidance of eye contact.  Usually someone makes eye contact at least half the time they are talking to you. If you notice them avoiding eye contact or looking down during a specific part of a conversation, they may well be lying. 
• Change of voice.  A variation in pitch of voice or rate of speech can be a sign of lying.  So can lots of umms and ahhs. 
• Body language.  Turning your body away, covering your face or mouth, a lot of fidgeting of hands or legs can indicate deception. 
• Contradicting yourself.  Making statements that just don’t hold together should make you suspicious. If you lie all the time, even about unimportant things, you are likely to have a problem that will eventually — if it hasn’t already — cause you real relationship, financial or legal troubles.  Figuring out what is driving you to lie in the first place will help heal this self-destructive behavior.  This may mean going into treatment with a therapist to discover why you feel the need to deceive.  –By Gail Saltz, Contributor, TODAY (lifted from msnbc.com) 

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x x x A dangerous form of lying involves deliberate deception intended to gather support for a particular organisation or group, to obtain information about the opposition or to manipulate the outcome of a situation. This includes the manipulation of information or data interpretation so as to sway the target population, or defamation of the opposing party with falsified evidence or claims.

In military operations, fabrication of information is a tactic employed regularly to throw the enemy off course or to force the enemy’s hand. Soldiers on duty at an outpost may be required to lie about their numbers when reporting so as to misinform eavesdropping enemies. Military tactics sometimes call for the planting of false information for enemies to retrieve and misinterpret - ‘leaked’ information about their next target, for instance. And some of these strategies are used ruthlessly in espionage, especially when moles are planted within hostile organisations, pretending to be allies under faked identities while siphoning information from the members. 

Why People Lie - a Summary

We have already covered different types of lies and on what occasions people tell them. But here is the question - what makes people lie? 

• Greed - for power, for advantage, for money, for admiration
• Fear - we are sometimes driven to lie by fear - usually of what will happen if we tell the truth
• Acceptance - no man is an island. We find ourselves doing whatever it takes to be accepted, to be liked and appreciated
• Habit - compulsive liars lie compulsively because they are used to it 

The Hazards of Lying

When everything depends on just one tiny lie, we forget that in order to correct one lie, seven others have to be told.
- Shevat Yehudah 

It is all too well if someone manages to get away with a little lie or deception. But what’s in it for him if he gets caught? Or - if the lie is an especially big one - what will it do to others? 

The immediate answer is:  people would lose faith in him.  He has betrayed their trust - how will he ever regain it? This is especially bad if he belongs to a large organisation or movement of some sort, because that little act will now have insinuated to the people that the person is untrustworthy, ergo his organisation is not to be trusted either - who knows how many deceitful people are in it? It may even cost the person his career, his reputation, his future. Damage like this is irrevocable.

And what of those that have been deceived? Jolly good for those who see through the lie. However, countless others will fall for it, hook, line and sinker. This is not necessarily because they are unable to think for themselves, but because they may feel that there should not be a need to question the person’s integrity, especially if he is a person of power. Status can sway the people. And in some cases, when the liar is exposed, it is not he who the people are angry with - it is the person who exposed him. 

In extreme situations, lies can also create turmoil, political upheaval, even war as people of one country are turned against the people of another because wildly inaccurate information has been propagated and their feelings have been stirred.

The most tragic hazard of lying, however, is that too often a person who repeatedly tells a certain lie will end up believing it himself. It may start out as an attempt to impress or to get sympathy, but as the lying goes on, the person himself may lose track of reality, until at the end he can no longer differentiate between reality and the fiction he has created.  –Excerpts of the article were taken from bbc.co.uk 

Gloria.  Mike A.  Ermita.  Bunye.  Gaite.  Atienza.  Razon.  Abalos.  Neri.  Now we know where they’re coming from.