Shooting Straight: why do we love to lie

I lied to a woman saying that she is the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. It made her happy and she made me happy. So who is complaining? Lying always has more benefits than telling the truth and trust me, I’m not lying about that. Let’s face it. Lies work in enabling us to get on with our lives whereas truth sucks and always manages to put us in a spot. When we lie well, we always get what we want.

We lie to avoid awkwardness or punishment. We lie to maintain relationships and please others. And, of course, most of all I think we lie to please ourselves. Whether we are embellishing our credentials or strengthening our stories, we often tell lies to make ourselves appear and feel better. In a study conducted secretly, students were videotaped having conversations with strangers. After that the students were made to examine the videotapes and identify the lies. On an average, they claimed to have told three lies every 10 minutes of conversation.

And that number is likely to be far too low. First, we’re likely to under-report the number of lies we tell. Which means we lie about lying. And the study only accounted for lies of the verbal variety, ignoring other deceptive behaviours such as misleading body language or facial expressions. In fact, we lie so readily that the dishonesty becomes automatic. Most of the time, we’re not even aware of the lies we tell. I think we lie best when we don’t know that we are lying.

But why are we so dishonest so often? Isn’t honesty always the best policy? No. Nobody wants to hear that they look fatter or less attractive. To tell the truth, we consider those who are too honest to be blunt, anti-social and even pathological. We all know that people who are most popular are the ones who can lie through their teeth with their face as straight as a scale. Yes, I am talking about politicians.

Our default assumption is that people are telling the truth. And often, we don’t actually want to hear the truth. We only want to hear what we want to hear. So while I would like to say I value honesty, I must also say I value dishonesty as long as it makes everyone happy. All said and done, let’s not forget that we are trained to lie by our parents and teachers from a very early age. The catch is, they don’t call it lying; they call it tact or social grace.