At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, psychology professor Bella DePaulo got 77 students and 70 townspeople to volunteer for an unusual project. All kept diaries for a week, recording the numbers and details of the lies they told.
One student and six Charlottesville residents professed to have told no falsehoods. The other 140 participants told 1535.
66. ______
Most strikingly, these tellers-of-a-thousand-lies reported that their deceptions caused them "little preoccupation or regret." Might that too be a lie? Perhaps. But there is evidence that this attitude toward casual use of prevarication is common. Last year, for example, 20,000 middle- and high-schoolers were surveyed by the Josephson Institute of Ethics — a nonprofit organization in Marina del Rey, Calif. devoted to character education. Ninety-two percent of the teenagers admitted having lied to their parents in the previous years, and 73 percent characterized themselves as "serial liars," meaning they told lies weekly. Despite these admissions, 91 percent of all respondents said they were "satisfied with my own ethics and character."
Think how often we hear the expressions "I'll call you" or "The check is in the mail." And then there are professions — lawyers, experts, PR consultants — whose members seem to specialize in shaping or spinning the truth to suit clients' needs.
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"What's wrong with that.'?" Tom asked Professor Josephson, president of the Josephson Institute. It's a question we might all ask.
Josephson replied by asking Tom to consider the lie from his mother-in-law's point of view. Suppose that one day Tom' s child blurts out the truth, and she discovers the deceit. Will she tell her son-in-law, "Thank you for caring so much?" Or is she more likely to feel hurt and say, "How could you have misled me all these years? And what else have you lied to me about?"
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How often do we compliment people on how well they look, or express our appreciation for gifts, when we don't really mean it? Surely, these "nice lies" are harmless and well intended, a necessary social lubricant. But like Tom, we should remember the words of English novelist Sir Walt Scott, who wrote, "What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
Even seemingly harmless falsehoods can have unforeseen consequences. Philosopher Sissela Bok warns us that they can put us on a slippery slope. "After the first lies, others can come more easily."
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Who believes it anymore when they're told that the person they want to reach by phone is "in a meeting"? By itself, that kind of lie is of no great consequence. Still, the endless proliferation of these little prevarication does not matter.
Once they become common enough, even the small untruths that are not meant to hurt encourage a certain cynicism and loss of trust.
Are all white lies to be avoided at all costs? Not necessarily. The most understandable and forgivable lies are an exchange of what ethicists refer to as the principle of trust for the principle of caring, "like telling children about the tooth fairy, or deceiving someone to set them up for a surprise party," Josephson says. "Still, we must ask ourselves if we are willing to give our friends and associates the authority to lie to us whenever they think it is for our own good."
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And if you' re not sure, Mark Twain has given us a good rule of thumb. "When in doubt, tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends."
A. When Tom tells a lie, his face may not show it, but certain other changes in his body take place that would give him away. His pulse would beat faster, his breath would come in gasps, and his blood pressure would change.
B. The lies were most often not what most of us would call earth-shattering. Someone would pretend to be more positive or supportive of a spouse or friend than he or she really was, or feign agreement with a relative's opinion.
C. Little white lies have become ubiquitous, and the reasons we give each other for telling fibs are familiar. For example, every year my friend, whom I'll call Tom, goes with his wife and son to his mother-in-law' s home for Thanksgiving for dinner. Tom doesn't quite like the pumpkin pie intensely, but he invariably tells her how wonderful the pie is to avoid hurting her feelings.
D. Josephson suggests a simple test. If someone you lie to finds out the truth, will he thank you for caring? Or will he feel his long-term trust in you has been undermined?
E. And what might Tom's mother-in-law suspect about her own daughter? And will Tom's boy lie to his parents and yet be satisfied with his own character?
F. Take the pumpkin-pie lies. In the first place, it wasn't just that he wanted his mother-in-law to feel good. Whether he realized it or not, he really wanted her to think highly of him. And after the initial deceit he needed to tell more lies to cover up the first one.