Edit Your Profile With The Pink Armadillo

I spent a lot of time last night thinking about why people lie. I know this isn't the most elaborate opening sentence, but it's the simplest and not cause me to start maundering about how many times I have been lied to in the past. I wish to not stray away from my main point, and therefore, all names will not be mentioned and I will not even start on the seemingly infinite list of people who I have stopped talking to because they are compulsive liars. My main point here is to talk about the reasons some people lie. If you are anything like me, you know that one of the worst feelings in the world is to be lied to. It not only makes you feel let down and betrayed, but it makes it extremely difficult to ever trust that person again. You might even find yourself running through every conversation you've ever had with the person wondering if they were lying to you.


I've always agreed with the idea that "honesty is the best policy", and I've always tried my hardest to keep those I trust, informed as to what is going on in my life. When I do lie, it's because I am trying to protect someone from worry or from pain knowing that I'm hurting or not well. However, I've realized recently that the general concept of withholding information from someone (the same as lying) is not justified, even if your heart is in the right place. If someone is hurting or having a difficult time and they decide not to say anything because they "don't want the other person to worry", that only causes complications in due time. I realized that I can't get pissed off for people not telling me things if I do the exact same thing. I worry too much that I'm going to be a bother or a downer. I don't want someone else worrying about me, but if you don't tell someone what is going on, you'll keep that bottled inside and you will probably make things worse. 


My heart has been broken more than once due to liars. Even liars with good intentions have  hurt me as well as many other people. If there's anything I can ask of you right now out of this post, it is this: Be honest with each other. If you really care about someone, you should be willing to tear yourself open and let someone see you for who you really are. Lying only ruins relationships and when push comes to shove, it only ends up hurting people. Just because the other person might not find out, is not a good justification. Lying to someone is one of the worst things you can do as a human being.


So, why do we lie? Nearly every adult when you were a child told you that lying was wrong. But when it comes to avoiding trouble, it just seems like the easy way out.  In fact, more than 80 percent of women admit to occasionally telling what they consider harmless half-truths, says Susan Shapiro Barash, author of Little White Lies, Deep Dark Secrets: The Truth About Why Women Lie (St. Martin's Press, $15, amazon.com). Now, even little white lies can develop into larger lies. Now, of course there are some times where you don't want to hurt someone's feelings and it only seems logical to lie. Your aunt says that she's old, and you tell her that she's not. Someone starts crying about the way they look, and you feel horrible, and tell them things that might not necessarily be true.. The truth hurts, ladies and gentlemen, but a lie can kill. We lie because we want to look good to ourselves or to others. We lie to make ourselves more appealing, or to make someone else look less appealing.


The following was taken from http://www.livescience.com/health/060515_why_lie.html:
I read this and I found it extremely interesting:

Many animals engage in deception, or deliberately misleading another, but only humans are wired to deceive both themselves and others, researchers say. People are so engaged in managing how others perceive them that they are often unable to separate truth from fiction in their own minds, Feldman's research shows.

For instance, In one experiment, Feldman put two strangers in a room together. They were videotaped while they conversed. Later, independently, each was asked to view the tape and identify anything they had said that was not entirely accurate.

Rather than defining what counts as a lie and to avoid the moral tone of the word "lie," Feldman's experimenters simply asked subjects after the fact to identify anything they had said in the video that was "not entirely accurate."

Initially, "Each subject said, 'Oh, I was entirely accurate,'" Feldman told LiveScience. Upon watching themselves on video, subjects were genuinely surprised to discover they had said something inaccurate. The lies ranged from pretending to like someone they actually disliked to falsely claiming to be the star of a rock band.

The study, published in the Journal of Basic and Applied Psychology, found that 60 percent of people had lied at least once during the 10-minute conversation, saying an average of 2.92 inaccurate things...

"We're trying not so much to impress other people but to maintain a view of ourselves that is consistent with the way they would like us to be," Feldman said. We want to be agreeable, to make the social situation smoother or easier, and to avoid insulting others through disagreement or discord.

Men lie no more than women, but they tend to lie to make themselves look better, while women are more likely to lie to make the other person feel better.

Extroverts tend to lie more than introverts, Feldman found in similar research involving a job-interview situation.

Now 2.92 inaccurate things within a 10-minute conversation, to me, appears to be a bit insane. It is apparently, human nature to lie, however there are limits to lying. There is a difference between stretching the truth and straight up withholding information. It hurts... It hurts mentally, emotionally, and sometimes in extreme cases, physically. I'm stating this information, because I want people to think a bit harder before they start rambling off false information. If you put on a mask to make people like you, the people you are acting for still won't like you. They will only place judgement on who you are PRETENDING to be. Be yourself, because then you will at least have a chance.

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls. -Elizabeth Cady Stanton