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Lying has just been around ever since the creation of the humans and Adam and Eve as the first human beings to be created lied to God after they ate the forbidden fruit since they were afraid. Lying is defined as an assertion that is believed to be false that is typically used with the purpose of deceiving someone. There are many reasons why people tell lies. Despite the fact that the reasons for lying might vary from one another, in the end, they all stem from the same root cause which is not being able to bear the consequences for telling the truth.
On the other hand, sometimes we tell lies since the truth might eventually hurt another person that we care about, so we end up lying, and from there, we get the reasons why we lie. It is, therefore, important to consider the key reasons why we lie when we do not need to which are to avoid disappointing others, to protect others from spiritual and physical harm, and to avoid confrontation.
The number one reason why people tell lies is that they think it actually matters.
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“ She followed all my directions. It was really easy to contact her and respond very fast as well. ”
While the rest of the people surrounding the individual think that it is an inconsequential issue, the liar might still have believed it is critically important thus they may tell lies is because they do not want to disappoint the other parties. “Do not blame others for lying to you, blame yourself for expecting too much from them.” (Shruti, Bazarova, and Cosley, 37).
Most of the people that usually tell lies are worried about losing the respect of those surrounding them hence they decide to tell lies so that they can be liked, impress others, and for them to be valued and for that case, they are worried that the truth might lead them to be rejected or be shamed. For example, the best way to avoid disappointing others is not to expect anything from them. “When people are arguing about the color of the sky and since admitting something might create the potential of the entire house, once a chronic liar has admitted a single lie, and everyone feels that what has just been admitted is a lie, then everyone has to reason to distrust them.” (Shruti, Bazarova, and Cosley, 39). Another reason for telling a lie is because people want to be true meaning a liar might have the desire of making their le to be true and again wish to overwhelm their instinct of telling the truth.
Most of the times, people will lie so that they can protect others from spiritual and physical harm. For example, my friend in primary school always enjoyed laughing with someone in my class maybe because they wanted to make fun of people but really made others feel bad of themselves. Our teacher always warned us against doing such awful things to others, but they did not care because they continued making fun of the rest of the students. Lying can be described as an immoral thing since it does not only cause physical harm but also causes spiritual harm. “You can`t lie to people and expect them not be hurt spiritually.” (Mevlüt, 44). Once the spiritual has been hurt, it takes more time to heal as compared to the physical pain. My classmate could as well destroy the childhood of another student. A lie can as well destroy anyone else not only in their childhood but also in their adulthood. “One the parents have taught their children about Christmas has Santa Claus, who usually gives the children some Christmas gifts, the children will grow up knowing that Santa Claus should give children gifts during Christmas.” (Mevlüt, 45). The children will, later on, realize that it was not true in their adulthood, but they will as well think that it was a good childhood memory. “You can`t constantly lie and expect people to trust you.” (Mevlüt, 45) Lying can sometimes be fun but should only be done in such a way that will ensure that nobody gets hurt. In daily life, people always lie for some reason and for some purposes.
Sometimes people lie so that they can avoid confrontation where it will help in getting the person doing the confrontation to cool down. People can sometimes lie because they do not seem to have answers, and through that, it can be easier to going along with what is being implied that facing the unarticulated or the unknown. Sometimes people might lie so that they can make things up than just risking disappointing anyone. People sometimes lie because of the fear that they have where it can sometimes be challenging to face reality or even confront some facts. “The only people who are mad at you for speaking the truth are those people who are living a lie” (Chloe, and Villeval, 66). The person who is doing the confrontation usually has a low tolerance of ambiguity; hence there is a high demand for answers that are concrete. For example, once the person being confronted does not have a better way that he or she can use in painting the picture more accurately, and then he or she might not be aware of how what is happening can clearly get corrected.
Once the individual doing the lying fails to have an accurate way of looking inside of a story and then come up with a description that can be described as a self-experience, the lying can be feasible. That can happen when people do not have words to describe how they feel and experience. People might put some emphasis that is undeserved on themselves or even on the issue not until they are asked why the issue really matters to them. “Telling the truth might sometimes feel like giving up control” (Drouin et al. 136). Most of the time people tell lies because they are trying to have control over some issues and impose some influence on arriving at the decisions. The truth might sometimes be inconvenient since it might not end up conforming to their narrative.
Overall, the majority of people are honest by default. The reasons, why people lie, need to be clearly understood which are to avoid disappointing others, to protect others from spiritual and physical harm, and to avoid confrontation. Our capacity of language is always built on the assumption of honesty meaning that whether we agree that the words we usually use have the same meaning consistently and on the same case we do not use words deceptively since that can render language and communication of ideas to become impossible. Some of the people have the tendency of lying more than others, but still, the frequent liars can as well be honest some times. Sometimes it can stand out to be dramatic when their deceptions seem to be seemingly unimportant. As frustrating as it can be when we understand what someone is telling a lie, we can now start to understand the motivation that is behind it. Asking people why telling a lie seems to be so important to them can be a useful and a non-threatening way of getting the foundations of why someone is telling a lie. The person should not be asked directly why they are lying since the person can be motivated by not being called a liar, and that question might paint them into a corner.
Drouin, Michelle, et al. "Why do people lie online?“ Because everyone lies on the internet”." Computers in Human Behavior 64 (2016): 134-142.
Gündüz, Mevlüt. "Reasons for which people lie: an evaluation in the context of values education (turkey example)." European Journal of Education Studies (2017).
Sannon, Shruti, Natalya N. Bazarova, and Dan Cosley. "Privacy lies: Understanding how, when, and why people lie to protect their privacy in multiple online contexts." Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2018.
Tergiman, Chloe, and Marie Claire Villeval. "The way people lie in markets." Available at SSRN 3455904 (2019).
Why Do People Tell Lies?. (2020, Sep 27). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/why-do-people-tell-lies-essay
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