201768 WhyWeLie

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Why We Lie
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ByRobinLloyd | May15,200606:26amET

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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 nd that as soon as people feel that their self-esteem is threatened, they immediately
begin to lie at higher levels."
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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
HEALTH
boasting and lies in the name of tact and politeness, can be classi ed as less than serious. But
bald-faced lies (whether they involve leaving out the truth or putting in something false), are
PLANET EARTH as they corrode trust and intimacythe glue of society.
harmful,

Kidding
STRANGE yourself
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Many animals engage in deception, or deliberately misleading another, but only humans are
ANIMALS
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 ction
in their own minds, Feldman's
HISTORY research shows.

For instance, In one experiment, Feldman put two strangers in a room together. They were
CULTURE
videotaped while they conversed. Later, independently, each was asked to view the tape and
identify anything they had said that was not entirely accurate.
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Rather than de ning 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 reexively," 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.
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Extroverts tend to lie

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

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Workplace lies
Other research has delved into prevarication in the workplace.
TECH
Self-esteem and threats to our sense of self are also drivers when it comes to lying to co-
workers, rather than strangers,
HEALTH 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
PLANET EARTH
than they are to strangers.

"We want
STRANGE NEWS 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.

ANIMALS reading a scenario to a subject, telling them they had paid more
The experiment involved
than a coworker for the same new car. When the coworker, in the scenario, mentioned what
they had paid, $200 or $2,000
HISTORY more in di erent versions of the experiment, the subject was
asked to report how they would respond.
CULTURE were more willing to lie when the price di erence was small and
Argo found that her subjects
when they were talking to a coworker rather than to a stranger.
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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 someonesave my self-image and self-worth now, but later on if the deceived
individual nds 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 o if honesty is the norm. It's like the old saying: honesty
is the best policy."

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Author Bio

Robin Lloyd,
Robin Lloyd was a senior editor at Space.com and Live Science from 2007 to 2009. She holds a B.A. degree
in sociology from Smith College and a Ph.D. and M.A. degree in sociology from the University of California
at Santa Barbara.

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