The Truth about Lying

It’s a world-wide hypocrisy to claim to want only the truth but yet accept the telling of lies as normal. People avoid telling the truth when they feel that something might damage them or others especially when threatened by losing something or someone.
Everyone lies sometimes, and a lot lies all the time. Robert Feldman, psychologist at university of Massachusetts, says that lying is tied in with self-esteem. “He found that as soon as people feel threatened, they immediately begin to lie at higher level.” Furthermore, Feldman did an experiment where he put two strangers in a room together. These two were videotaped and later they saw the video and they discovered that they both said inaccurate things.

Different kinds of lies

Moreover, Judith viorst who is a contributing editor at Redbook magazine, states that we can differentiate lies through four kinds: social lies, peace- keeping lies, protective lies, trust- keeping lies. As for the social lies, most people find social lies acceptable. Many people tell peace-keeping lies, they are lies made to avoid argument and to shelter the liar from possible blame or pain. Protective lies are lies that folks tell because they are convinced that the truth would be too damaging. Another group of lies are trust-keeping lies which are lies that we say when we’ve agreed not to betray a friend’s confidence.
As a mater of fact, lying to protect ourselves is the most common sort of lie. For those of us, who lie and don’t get caught, the question whether to lie or not can be a hard and serious moral problem. However people should become more aware of the extent to which we tend to lie and that honesty yields more genuine relationships and trust. We are better off if honesty is the norm. It’s like the old saying: honesty is the best policy.