Is Lying Good for You?

We preach the value of honesty to our children, and we espouse honesty as one of the most valued goals of society; yet most people lie every day. One study found that most people lie at least once a day and some as often as two to three times every 10 minutes. We have an ambivalent relationship with lying. We believe it to be morally wrong but have no compunction about lying when it serves our purpose.

We tell our spouse the pants don’t look too tight when they do. We complement our mother-in-law on a barely edible meal. We tell our children “maybe” when we mean “no.” We thank our mom for the birthday sweater we can’t wait to return. We drop $10 off the price when we tell our spouse how much we paid. We invent a prior engagement when we don’t want to accept an invitation. We tell the plumber the check is in the mail. We lie about our weight when we renew our driver’s license. We interrupt our work and paste a welcoming smile on our face when our gabby aunt drops by for an unexpected visit. We lie to ourselves about how often we exercise and how many cookies we ate.

Now researchers are saying that those little white lies may be good for us. “We use lies to grease the wheels of social discourse,” University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman said in an article on U.S. News & World Report online. “It’s socially useful to tell lies.”

Psychiatrists say we bend and embellish the truth for all sorts of reasons. We lie to protect ourselves and those we love, to seek an advantage at work, to excuse poor behavior, to appear more important, and to pump up our self-esteem. Experts believe that slightly inflating the truth can have a positive psychological effect and may even create a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a recent study, college students who inflated their GPA later improved their grades. “Exaggerators tend to be more confident and have higher goals for achievement,” explained study co-author Richard Gramzow, a psychologist at England’s University of Southampton.

More about lying on Monday