Reasons why people tell lies

CEBU, Philippines - In his book “Lies! Lies!! Lies!” published in 1995, Dr. Charles V. Ford, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who has worked in academic medicine for about 50 years, compiled the following list of the major reasons why we lie:

Lies to avoid punishment. These are the lies that emerge early in childhood, according to Ford, who offers some examples: “No, I didn’t eat the cookies.” “No, I didn’t hit my brother.” “No, I didn’t break the vase.”

Lies to preserve a sense of autonomy. These lies are common among children and adolescents, according to Ford, who said in the interview that “small children tend to believe that their parents can read their minds.” Children use lying as a way to test this belief, according to Ford. “If you lie, and your parents don’t know it, you know they really can’t read your mind,” he said.

Adolescents tend to use this type of lie as they are beginning to establish their independence. “When you are breaking away from your parents, assuming responsibility for yourself, you tend to not be completely truthful with your parents about activities and other things,” Ford said.

Lies as an act of aggression. “This is when you deliberately lie to harm someone else,” Ford said. “These are lies that have an external gain to the liar.” Even the lies told by a salesman to a prospective customer, for example, can fit in this category, according to Ford. “They are trying to get something by making truly aggressive lies,” he said.

Lies to obtain a sense of power. “If you can lie and get away with it, you feel more powerful and you feel superior, and the more you lie and get away with it, the more powerful you feel,” Ford said.

This type of lying may apply to public figures that develop a large, loyal following. “If you can get whole groups of people to follow you, you feel even more powerful,” Ford said. “You may begin to feel invincible and have a disconnection between your true abilities and what your fantasized abilities are.”

Ford cited the example of Adolf Hitler, Germany’s most infamous ruler: “The more he lied, the more he began to believe his own lies and his own invincibility, and we can pick out some U.S. political figures, too.”

Lies for the delight of putting one over. Practical jokes come under this category, according to Ford. These jokes, “although hilarious to the perpetrators, may not be amusing to the victims,” Ford says in the book. “Unlike genuine humor, the practical joke often contains underlying aggression and hostility.”

Lies as wish fulfillment. These lies are common among children ages 4 to7, according to Ford. “Often children will say something has happened just because they want it very much,” Ford said. “‘Last summer we went to Disneyland,’ for example. The child may think, ‘We wanted to go to Disneyland, and if people think we did, maybe that’s almost as good.’”

Lies to assist self-deception. These are lies we tell to others to avoid confronting some painful truth about ourselves, according to Ford. And if the people we tell seem to believe our lies, all the better. “If you can get somebody else to believe something about you, then maybe it really is true, so that you can start to believe it is really was true about you at some level,” Ford said.

Lies to manipulate the behavior of others. “People lie and distort the truth to pursue their own needs and wishes and, at times, the needs of others,” Ford says in the book.

Lies to help another person. These are also referred to as altruistic or paternalistic lies, according to Ford. Examples include people in Holland in World War II who lied to protect the Jewish people they were hiding from the Nazis and even people who tell what they see as small lies to avoid hurting a friend’s feelings.

Lies to accommodate others’ self-deception. “People want to be told what they want to hear,” Ford said. “Politicians know this. This is very common in religion. You can have all these evangelical preachers promising all this sort of stuff. This is what people want to believe in.”

Lies as a solution to role conflict. “Individuals in a group may find conflicting expectations and demands being made on them,” Ford says in the book. “Lying and other forms of deceit might be a way to resolve these role conflicts.” For example, if a salesman is pressured to use techniques he believes is unethical, he might choose to treat customers in the way he thinks is proper but lie to his bosses and tell them how he really pressured the customer.

Lies to maintain self-esteem. “People with low self-esteem often experience a sense of failure and inferiority because their abilities and accomplishments fall short of their personal expectations for themselves,” Ford says in the book.

“Men are likely to exaggerate athletic and military accomplishments as a way to make them seem more masculine,” he said in the interview. “Women as a whole... will tell stories that enhance their concept of how well they get along with other people.”

Lies to create a sense of identity. “(These are) lies to have people see you in a certain way,” Ford said. “If they perceive you in certain way, then they will treat you in a certain way, and you feel more comfortable in that particular role or identity. This can be pathological and manipulative, but it can also be relatively healthy. Professionals, for instance, need to behave in a certain way so that people seeking their services will feel that they will be cared for.”

But lies are still lies regardless of purpose and intention. It is still better to tell the truth, so that the person becomes aware of his or her own flaws. Truth hurts, yes it does, but it’s the only pain that sets anyone free.  (www.al.com) Jesse Chambers (FREEMAN)