Why do we lie?

We all know what a lie is. Nobody can deny lying even once month. We all hear lies everywhere. But what most of us don’t know is that lying is something innate in human being. More than that, there are some psychologists who said that even animals lie!! I’ve read that there was a Gorilla named Koko; confronted by her handlers after a tantrum in which she had torn a steel sink out of its moorings, the Gorilla made a sign in American Sign Language in which she accused the cat. "Cat did it," pointing at her tiny kitten. But what if this is only an exception or a joke from the Gorilla?

According to wikipedia, lying is “untruthful statement, especially with the intention to deceive others, often with the further intention to maintain a secret or reputation, protect someone's feelings or to avoid a punishment”.

To lie means to be socially intelligent. Social intelligence or Machiavellian intelligence as it is defined by cognitive sciences is “the capacity of an entity to be in a successful political engagement with social groups”. It starts at the human age of about four years, at this age kids begin to be able to lie convincingly. Before that age, kids think that in any event, their point of view is always the right one. For this they don’t care about making their lies believable. And here you can enjoy hearing their marvellous stories when they start lying. I remember that we I was a teenager, there was a garden near our house. In that garden there were apple trees full of apples. Some kids penetrate into the garden to pick some apples. After getting them, they heard some one coming. It was the owner of the garden. They all fled, except a little kid. He was afraid and trembling. The man rebuked and asked him: “from where did you pick these apples?” the little kid answered (honestly): “from that olive tree”. Here, we can obviously see that the kid wants to lie but he didn’t take into consideration to be credible. The man burst out laughing and let him go. It is the most stupid lie you can hear, but it works.

To lie and trying to change the reality means that there is something that we want to hide not to be punished, to be seen in a good image, or simply we don’t want the others to be hurt of the reality. Behavioural scientists claim that there are many to lie for but they all fall in these three ones: fear, greed and hate.

Lying because of fear:
Fear means fear of being rejected or losing something or someone. Kashy and DePaulo, held a research about “liars” and found that people who tend to lie more are those who are more concerned with self-presentation prestigious and more sociable. Those that tended to tell fewer lies, are more highly socialized, and reported higher satisfaction with same-sex relationships. It was also noted, not surprisingly, that individuals who tended to lie more, tell more self-serving lies (beneficial lies) rather than altruistic or what we call white lies.

The charismatic liars are the ones that pay attention to their appearance in the eyes of others. they lie to make themselves popular and acceptable this is called ego boosting. They are good actors. More than this they lie and believe their lies. This is mainly inter-sexual lies. Women lie to men and vice versa. They tend to hide their dark sides and show the bright one. These kinds of lies are not persistent. They end when they reach the aim for which they are invented for. At that time the masks fall down and each one begins to see the other naked.

Another kind of fear caused lies that we find among different sexes are those that are related to avoiding conflicts by misunderstanding. The man tries to hide some facts because he is afraid of being rejected by his woman or creating a conflict with her. Women try to get deep into details of everything. They pay attention to the very minute details opposite to man who neglect them. This may make man restless sometimes. He may feel that he is always watched. Here we are talking about jealousy. And so as not to make the woman angry he simply lies.

Lying because of greed:
This lie is mainly related to power and money. We hear them when we go to the market or when we watch TV. Many tradesmen tend to show the positive characteristics of their products and hide the negative ones. On TV, politicians tell lies to the people so as to keep the positions. They show their good images and deny their bad deeds. So as not to say that those are lies, they call it propaganda.

Lie because of hate:
It is also called lie of malice. This kind of lies is the worst because it aims to do harm to people it is backbiting. This happens when someone hates or envies a person and tells lies about him or her to be disapproved by others. And example of that is when a boy tries to get close to a girl and when she refuses, he start inventing stories about her reputation or the opposite. Or when a girl wants to show to people that she is so pure, she tells lies about other girls to make contrast. She pretends to be the best. It’s a cold revenge. These kinds of liars are psychologically sick.

The question now is “is it necessary to lie?” “Can we live without lies?” Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist who studies deception at the University of Virginia, says some lying is necessary in our everyday life. More than this, she said that "It would be a disaster if everybody were totally honest,". From her words we can assume that to tell the truth in any situation may hurt people. An example of this is when we want to hide somebody’s scandals. We should not tell openly other people’s mistakes and bad deeds if they didn’t hurt anybody else. I mean that we tell the truth if we are asked to do so for some reasons like in courts. DePaulo added that «Lies are like wishes, behind almost every lie there is a wish that the lie was true."
M.A.TAIBI