You look fantastic! Have you lost weight? You really should wear those pants more often.
Suspicious yet? You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all these things. Well, I’ll be honest. I’m lying.
You don’t look fantastic. If you’ve lost weight, look behind you, you’ll find it where your small butt used to be. And those pants don’t make you look fat, your fat does.
According to this article and backed up by plain old common sense, everyone lies. Now before you think this is going to be a post that approves of lying (it’s not) let’s get real about lying. We all do it.
Ever say someone looked thin, when they didn’t? Ever tell your wife “I would LOVE to go antiquing this Sunday. I didn’t want to see the football game anyway.”?
Lies are common occurrences and even if you’re better than the rest of us and never lie (you do), people are going to lie to you. It’s normal. From CNN.com:
“In everyday life, people are often telling lies. Not to get something concrete that they want, like more money, but for psychological reasons,” says Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara whose research specialties include lying and other forms of deception.
We lie, she says, because we want other people to see us the way we wish we were, to spare others’ feelings or to avoid conflict. According to DePaulo, there are two types of lies:
• Self-centered lies are used to make you look better, or to avoid embarrassment or conflict (“I can’t get lunch with you because I have to run an errand”).
• Other-centered lies are used to spare someone else’s feelings (“You totally do not look fat in that dress”).
Lying happens, but some are more likely to lie than other.
DePaulo also found that some types of people are more likely to lie:
• Manipulative people will lie to get what they want.
• People-pleasers tend to say what the other person wants to hear.
• Extroverts “are more tuned into others, so they notice what other people want to hear, or they want to impress them,” DePaulo says.
Most white lies (for instance, a person trying to present himself as more knowledgeable) are told to strangers.
Serious lies, she found, overwhelmingly are told to or by people close to the teller (such as a parent lying to her child about how sick a grandparent is), most often to protect that relationship.
Lying is one of the negative things in life that happen. Some do it accidently, some subconsciously, some vindictively. But sooner or later it’s going to happen. The best way to handle lying is to
- Ask direct questions. By asking direct questions, you give the liar more and more rope to hang themselves with. As the old saying goes “You don’t need to remember the truth.” Asking a series of questions without getting the rubber hoses out allows the truth to come out. It works on Law & Order so it must be true!
- Tell people you CAN handle the truth. If people are lying to protect others, let them know you don’t need the protection and would appreciate the truth even more than spared feelings.
- Don’t be too judgmental. If we know people lie, and we know that most people lie to protect others, we can’t get too high and mighty when we catch someone lying. Because odds are, you’re going to get caught in a white lie yourself and I’m sure you’d appreciate a little understanding too.
The best thing is not to lie at all. There’s less work involved and less stress.
Would I lie to you?
