Half-Truths and Brazen Lies: An Honest Look at Lying
2 Contents Introduction 2 Chapter 1 4 What’s in a Lie How we decide if a lie is really a lie or something else in disguise Chapter 2 14 The Whys of Lies There are loads of reasons people tell fibs and untruths Chapter 3 24 Lies All around Us From the news on TV to the food we eat lies touch our lives in surprising ways Chapter 4 36 Spot the Liar Can you tell if someone is lying to you Do you even want to Conclusion 44 Index 46 Sources and Acknowledgments 47 INTRODUCTION Do you believe in telling the truth Sure you do Then you might as well admit it You LIE Relax Given the right conditions we all lie Everybody Friends teachers athletes movie stars doctors scientists gasp even your parents Lying is as much a part of us as our curiosity It’s central to human nature In other words we tell fibs corkers fictions falsehoods and tall tales because we just can’t help ourselves Here’s something else We lie a lot One study found that six out of every ten people lied at least once during a ten-minute conversation Most of them didn’t even realize they were doing it
3 Honest to goodness It’s strange that we treat lying differently from many of our other universal shared traits Unlike eating sleeping and crying lying is commonly held to be bad It’s immoral wicked But is it Here are a few questions for you Would you lie to protect a friend Yes No Would you lie to make someone feel better Yes No Would you lie once to avoid telling even bigger lies later Yes No Mixed messages How did you answer Though many lies are immoral hurtful or unethical some certainly are not There are experts who say lies are actually so necessary that society would collapse if we told the truth all the time Some types of lies help communities run more smoothly and make people happier You were probably taught that honesty is the best policy So why do your parents ask you to pretend you like all your birthday gifts even Aunt Dora’s knitted dinosaur sweater Does being polite mean lying And aren’t card players encouraged to bluff when they play poker Talk about mixed messages So lies good Before you get too excited it’s still uncool to spread false stories about other kids Or to tell your parents that you’re studying when you’re actually playing a video game These lies can be hurtful and they’re not so good for you either Luckily there are ways to tell the difference between good fibs bad lies and untruths that fall into a large gray zone Keep reading because there is much to learn about lies and deception Honest
Chapter 1 WHAT’S IN A LIE
5 There’s nothing like real homegrown spaghetti When British families plopped down in front of their television sets one night in 1957 they thought they were in for some regular old TV viewing Panorama a popular BBC news show was on Toward the end of the show the news anchor turned to the camera and said We end Panorama tonight with a special report from the Swiss Alps The footage showed Switzerland in springtime and women wearing traditional Swiss clothing plucking long strands of spaghetti from trees The last two weeks of March are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer the reporter explained with a straight face While he spoke so-called farmers were shown spreading out a harvest of fresh spaghetti to dry in the sun Viewers were told that the threat of frost could ruin the pasta’s taste but at least the dreaded spaghetti weevil insect hadn’t damaged the crops that year When the story was over the anchor finished the broadcast by saying Now we say good night on this first day of April Of course the story wasn’t true It was an April Fools Day joke told for fun But not many people in Britain knew that at the time Italian pasta was still considered a special exotic dish Hundreds of viewers called in to the station to ask where they could buy a spaghetti bush Others wanted to know how to grow their own tree The reply Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best Hoaxes pocus So is an April Fools Day joke actually a lie Sure though not the same kind you might tell to wriggle out of an uncomfortable situation The spaghetti joke was considered a hoax A really good one too An April Fools hoax is a special kind of lie that’s outrageous told in good fun meant to grab the public’s attention TRUE STORY Perhaps what really sets a hoax apart from other kinds of lies is that the liar wants to be found out eventually Many companies now make up elaborate April Fools Day hoaxes to get attention and publicity only to reveal the truth later For instance on April 1 2014 Domino’s Pizza UK claimed it was now offering an edible pizza box calling it the future of snackaging Meanwhile Sonic Drive-In the American fast-food restaurant declared it would soon be offering a kale cream pie shake Back in 2011 Canadian airline WestJet released a video stating that the company would be adding helium think of helium balloons to their planes to make them lighter It was all a bunch of hot air of course As hoaxes show there are many different kinds of lies and lots of reasons people tell them This chapter is about answering the question When is a lie a lie and when is it something else
