KeithWe all tell little white lies. We often lie for the right reasons. Believe it or not, it doesn’t make us bad people. If lying was a crime, we would all be criminals. I’m not justifying lying here as I do believe we should be honest and as transparent as possible, but some lies are justified. Some, not so:
Why do people lie?
1. To avoid punishment. People will do almost anything to avoid being punished. No one wants the embarrassment of a good telling-off.
2. To obtain rewards fraudulently. This is the second most commonly mentioned motive, An example of this could be claiming that you are not working when you are and claiming unemployment benefit.
3. To protect someone close to you. This could be trying to get a friend or co-worker out of trouble.
4. To protect yourself from physical harm. This could be a lie that you think up on the spot to stop being attacked by someone.
5. To look better in the eyes of others. This could be fabricating a life story to make your life look better to others. There are many fake stories going around on social media. And people tend to show their good side only on places like Instagram and Facebook.
6. To save yourself from an awkward social situation. This could simply be concocting an excuse to go when a blind date isn’t working out. Or using a fake story about not having a babysitter to avoid going out with certain friends.
7. To avoid being embarrassed. This could be perhaps creating a story about how a seat happened to be wet to cover up incontinence or any other embarrassing noise or smell.
8. To maintain a more private life. For example, avoiding a busy and expensive wedding where guests would be invited whereas perhaps all the couple wanted was a private ceremony with just family.
9. To exercise power over others. Dictators and politicians tend to have their own version of the truth.
The Child
Children often lie to their parents to avoid the consequences of being found out. Research says that if parents forcibly confront the lying of their children it only convinces them to get better at lying.
Lying starts at an early age and stays right through to adulthood where often we find new things to lie about. Our age for instance.
The Adult
For the most part, as honest adults, we only tend to lie if the truth would hurt someone else or if we were to be embarrassed by telling the truth. However, in situations like dating, often or not, adults don’t always tell their potential partners the whole truth. We often like to paint a much better side of our personality to others.
We don’t like being judged, and although people say they don’t care what people think, they often do.
The Truth About Lying – Liar Liar Pants On Fire
When we find out that someone has been lying to us, we feel hurt by this, and we feel that we can no longer trust that person. When we lie to others, we tend to justify it as normal behavior.
Compulsive Liars.
Although people can often forgive being lied to on the odd occasion. Compulsive liars are people who are not so easy to forgive. When a person consistently lies, it’s either because they are living in cloud cuckoo land, or they have a very deceptive nature.
A compulsive liar is someone who has the habit of lying. They could have developed this habit as early as childhood and is a symptom of various personality disorders, including antisocial, narcissistic, and histrionic personality disorders.
Conmen (and women) are masters of lying. They lie all day for personal, financial gain. Others lie to get more control over people. Whatever reason people lie, in their eyes, it’s justified.
I hope you got some value from this post. I would love to hear your thoughts on the content. Please do leave a comment below.
Have a great day.
Keith.
P.S People who liked this post, also liked this one. The Weirdness of Lies.
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