Why People Lie ?

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/dontpanic-tour

What is a lie?

A lie is an untruth, a deviation, big or small, from what is known to be real. It is a false statement deliberately presented as being true, thus misrepresenting a situation or giving a totally wrong impression about something.

There are generally two types of lies - white lies, which do little or no damage, and black lies, which can do detriment to the deceiver or the deceived when the truth is found out.

The People who lie

Everybody lies. Admit it - you do as well. There is probably not a single person who has ever lived who has not once in his life told a falsehood or misrepresented the truth, regardless of whether it was unintentional or if he told it so that someone else's feelings would not be hurt - or if he did it for more sinister reasons.

Why people lie?

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

Example of lie

(1) 'Yeah, I'll Get to Work on it Right Away'

False promises are those that people make and then do not follow through. A typical example might be, 'No problem - I'll just make a few calls to the companies; you'll get the stuff in no time' (even when you know that you'll be busy for the rest of the week, and will never get around to making those calls). Of course these are lies that will eventually be found out - usually to your detriment, because your acquaintance/friend may decide never to trust you again.

Of course, there are cases where false promises have worked to a person's advantage, to the detriment of the other party. Hitler was one example - he'd promised British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 that he wouldn't invade Czechoslovakia if the Czechs would consider redrawing their border with Germany. He didn't exactly hold up his end of the deal, did he?

(2) ‘I Did it’

Plagiarism. A serious offence committed by desperate students who have to hand in a paper by the next morning, but have neither the time nor the imagination to compose their own thoughts or ideas. This is seriously damaging, whether or not the person gets caught. A student who gets away with it is encouraged by his own audacity to try the trick again. And again. Until he gets caught. This dependence on somebody else's work hampers his own creativity, and suppresses his ability to think for himself - something that is not going to get him anywhere in the long run. It is also damaging to those who are honest enough to do their own research, but get poorer grades than those who cheated, thus causing them to think that there is little use in pouring so much effort into their assignment. And if the cheat gets caught - well, let's just say that it's usually a case of copyright infringement. At the very least, the student gets suspended - or expelled.

(3) ‘I Didn’t Do it’

This is probably one of the most common lies. Students who neglected to do their homework tell it to avoid getting punished ('The computer ate my homework'). People who have accidentally totalled an expensive piece of equipment may resort to lying to avoid getting the blame ('I don't know. It just stopped functioning'.). People of power lie to get themselves out of sticky situations that might damage their career, as did Representative Gary A Condit, Democrat of California, who lied about his affair with Chandra Ann Levy.

This is usually a case of evading responsibility. A person does something he knows to be wrong. He may not be able to come to terms with what he has done, or is afraid of being blamed or condemned for it. So he tells a lie to get out of the situation, often transferring the burden of the blame to a scapegoat - chance, a colleague, the dog.

There is a variation to this type of lie - 'What do you mean, I'm losing my hair???' We live our lives by parameters we set for ourselves. Sometimes, things just don't turn out the way they're meant to, sometimes people point out things that we were not previously aware of, things that we never expected would happen to us. Death is one example, excessive weight is another. When that happens, the shock that hits us is sometimes too great for us to accept, thus triggering the denial reaction. Denial is a form of lying - to ourselves, because of our inability to accept the sudden change to our lives.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it is up to you to decide. Just a word of advice - if you decide to lie, you'd better make sure you don't get caught.