The Effect Of Making Everyday Life That Much Less Friendly

When you first read that assertion, did you believe it? Further, this coloring of mood can last even after the conversation has returned to more honest territory. The sum effect of this is what DePaulo calls an emotional smudge on the interaction. The common lies in everyday life may not hurt us in an easily measurable way, then. But they have the effect of making everyday life that much less friendly. The accumulation of these many smudges can erode our trust in one another, it can make us cynical about our media and government, it can make us generally less attentive to the world around us. Whatever our particular response to the lies in our lives, the fact is that we have one. It’s probably fair to say that some have a greater impact than others, but given their volume, not even the smallest lie can be wholly ignored. Furthermore, when people find out they are being lied to, the effect is immediate and almost always negative. In a study I conducted in which participants learned that they’d been lied to during a conversation they’d just held with another person, these participants immediately formed a negative impression of the individual who had lied to them. Their conversational partner was seen as untrustworthy, unlikable, and generally more devious. In making the argument that all lies are consequential, we need to consider both the reasons lies occur in nearly every walk of modern life and the effect those lies have on us. As with a lie to keep a conversation moving, some deception can be extremely helpful in accomplishing goals that are essential to an individual’s or society’s continued functioning.

Here Comes The Sun

On the other hand, we will also consider the toll lying takes. Lying can often be more expedient in the short term, but ultimately, in the long term, it may present more social and psychological difficulties than it solves. First, though, let’s examine an aspect of deception we have so far ignored. We’ve been looking at lying as something we recognize. Very often, though, this is not the case. He became a standout on the track team and took six or seven classes a semester, earning mostly A’s. He even won admission to one of Princeton’s most prestigious eating clubs. But she didn’t recognize him as Santana. Although what Hogue did is clearly extraordinary, it’s not exactly unprecedented. He sold titles to land in Poyais, and even convinced European settlers to sail across the Atlantic to establish colonies there. He had the mayor arrested and seized money from the local treasury before being found out. After that story was exposed, she later posed as a Holocaust survivor named Laura Grabowski.

Functioning Normally

Many psychologists would argue that the perpetrators themselves don’t even really know why they’ve carried out their deceit. Yet perhaps the most compelling aspect of deceivers like James Hogue is not their underlying motivation but that such impostors can succeed at all. Indeed, an incredible part of James Hogue’s unlikely story is that for so long, he got away with it. Professors, coaches, classmates, and deans at this Ivy League university were all fooled. Still more surprising is the fact that Hogue was far from the polished, unflappable charlatan we expect from movie and television portrayals of con men. He avoided eye contact. He was vague about the specifics of his past. He made extraordinary claims, such as that he’d done stunts for a movie about skiing. Hogue’s success, though, illustrates an essential truth about deception, one we rarely recognize. We usually think that successful lying is difficult. Confident in our ability to sort out what’s true and what isn’t, we are unnerved when we discover that we’ve been lied to. We speak of good and bad liars, ascribing to the former group unusual skills that allow them to pull off the difficult feat of fabrication.

Beyond The Blue

It doesn’t take a slick con man to fool dozens of the brightest, most educated people in the country. The last time you had a chance encounter with a stranger, did he or she lie to you three times? You would probably say no, but my research and other studies suggest that the answer is yes. Most likely, you simply didn’t notice the deception. The question is, Why not? Why didn’t someone at Princeton catch on to James Hogue? Why do we believe it when someone says our pants don’t look too tight, even when we struggled to pull them on? Why can’t we tell when a colleague’s praise about job performance is hollow? In short, why can’t we detect deceit? This is my term for the range of factors, some large, some small, that give liars a leg up in getting away with their deception. If we want to understand why so much lying occurs in modern society, it’s essential that we understand the many components of the Liar’s Advantage. In reality, the Liar’s Advantage allows the bulk of lies to pass unnoticed. Consequently, people can, and do, lie with regularity. As we explore the Liar’s Advantage, we will see how more of our basic assumptions about deception are false. And we will also examine how a large piece of the Liar’s Advantage comes not from the liar but from the person being lied to. Startlingly, it turns out that often we don’t notice lies because we don’t want to notice them. As we begin to discuss the Liar’s Advantage, let’s examine this notion that lying is easy to get away with. Or did you think, Other people might not be able to spot a liar, but I can you too? The latter sentiment is the typical view. Study after study has shown that most people have a great deal of faith in their ability to catch a lie, to sense fabrication. Even if we don’t share Maura’s level of confidence, few of us think of ourselves as pushovers, easily susceptible to cons and dishonesty. But do we really know when we’re being lied to?