to lie or not to....

Some data by a leading researcher (Paul Ekman) on why the general population finds it difficult to discern lies.

Reason #1.Our environment, to a large extent the environment we grow up in viz; genetically and physical environment. The former invloves the line of thought that our brains are not developed in the area of being deceivers. In a community, more often people want to live peaceably amongst each other so the chances that people in a community would lie are rare. This implies that in a community since people find it difficult to get away with a lie thus most people will not lie. The research points out that in the early communities people did not have their own space, rooms with walls for privacy, in such a case lying and cheating would be difficult, so we come from an environment that didn’t purportlie and cheat. What the researcher is implying is that our brains are not developed to a level where we are congenital liars and thus we find it difficult to identify a lie.
This could mean that if a liar is in an environment that fails to catch him/her, he/she is more likely to lie. So it may be important to know the past environment to evaluate the probability that one is a liar.

Reason #2. Society by itself makes it difficult for a liar to get away with a lie. I mean the law. The law is attuned to catch the outlaw. So there is a discouragement in a community to lie.

I don’t know how far this is true, look at our politicians they talk through their hat most of the time. Our problem is we don’t know when they are lying and when they are telling the truth, but it could be fair to generalize that politicians talk through their hats most of the time.
But the society does not encourage to lie but people who can get away with a lie will.

3. The target (of deceit) would prefer to believe the lie than otherwise as the target would have a vested interest to maintain the status quo than find out otherwise.

Corny Example:- A wife asks her husband, “Was there any other woman at the party whom you thought was more attractive than me?”. The husband would most probably lie by claiming she was the most attractive even if she was not. He does not want to make her jealous or he does not want her having ill feelings, and she herself may want to believe she was the most attractive.

Self-Thought Question #1: Is that a trick question?
Self-Thought Question #2: Why would a woman ask a question like that?

Implicit Conclusion: Maybe the husband loves his wife so he lies. Maybe he is a real nut-case and he prefers to lie.

The afore questions and conclusion are not relevant to the discussion, some rhetoricals are better not raised or concluded.

4. We are generally polite or at least we want to be polite even when we don’t want to be. I couldn’t believe this one, till the researcher exemplified.

Example 1: We generally avert our gaze if someone picks his/her nose. At that juncture we wouldn’t interrupt the digger while he/she is on such a meaningful activity in life and break his/her concentration and query him/her on why he/she did what he/she did exactly at that juncture.

Example 2: A secretary who feels miserable about a fight with her husband the previous night answers, “Just fine,” when her boss asks, “How are you this morning?”. The boss just wants to know if she is up to work, so she politely replies she is fine.

5. People don’t let tell us they are lying, if they did infomr us immediately after telling a lie, then we have a better chance of analyzing the facial expressions, demeanor, gaze, etc. Since we do not receive such information people tend to be dubious about all statement or they are gullible to the information provided by a liar.

In the normal course of our lives, we generally don’t have situations like this where we know that the subject is trying to mislead us. Neither do we know if the subject will mislead us – for all we know at that instant he/she may say a truth.

Now to the crux. We do know that the moot reason an individual lies is in self interest but there are professions that look at a lie with no self interest rather not one which purports themselves.

Professions like forensic experts, detectives, police, counter intelligence, etc need to discern a from the truth, this is common knowledge and quite elementary .

But, in addition we have 2 legitimate professions who should know how to lie.
Nurses and doctors should know how to conceal negative emotions, maybe this keeps the patient and family positive about a possible recovery which could actually aid the patient’s recovery. It also gives patients and thier immediate relatives a chance of hope in such cases.