On Being Economical with the Truth

From Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw:
Bluntschli to Raina – "You said you'd told only two lies in your whole life. Dear young lady: isn't that rather a short allowance? I'm quite a straightforward man myself; but it wouldn't last me a whole morning."
 
People lie. A recent college study reported in The New York Times concluded that the average person lies twice per day. This is ludicrous. The study relied on self-reporting and many of the participants denied lying at all. They were lying… maybe to themselves, to put the most generous spin on it, but still lying. (The same participants who reported telling zero to two lies per day reported believing they were lied to about six times a day.) Past research (including analysis of recorded conversations) has put the typical number of lies told by an average person daily to be between 10 and 200. The reason for such a wide spread has less to do with the inherent honesty of different individuals and more to do with how much they are interacting with other people. Extroverts, for example, lie more than introverts, but only because they talk more; in percentage terms their truths and untruths are about the same. According to a study by Robert S. Feldman published in the Journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 60 percent of people lie at least once in the first 10 minutes of a conversation; they will tell an average of two to three lies in the whole of that 10 minutes. Most lies people tell each other are harmless. They are done in a spirit of kindness, false flattery (“Your poem is wonderful!”), or mild self-aggrandizement. That doesn’t even cover lies of omission, e.g. does the spouse really need to know about the pleasant chat you had with your ex during a random encounter?
 
Only a small percentage of lies are materially harmful, but enough are both to cost the US economy over one trillion dollars per year in fraud, embezzlement, and scams. Clearly, cons and material fraud are big problems and are rightly illegal. They can be personally devastating. However, the vast majority of lies have nothing to do with any of that. Instead, they just smooth out social interactions or gloss over some personal faux pas. Conventional wisdom is that lies in a romantic relationship are particularly harmful, for when lies are discovered (as they so often are) they can undermine trust to a degree that may be irreparable. So, honesty is generally regarded as the best way to go for couples and friendships at least on the important things such as criminal backgrounds, addiction, and money matters. But is it always the best way to go on the less important stuff? If not, how important does something have to be and by what standard?
 
Recent studies give more nuanced answers. As Professor Clancy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City notes, “Relationships last only if we don’t always say exactly what we’re thinking.” Relationship author Jenna McCarthy agrees: “If I tell [my husband] the reason I don’t want to stay at his parents’ is because I’m allergic to their cats – when the reality is I just can’t stand his parents – I’m doing it to spare his feelings.” Fundamentally, it comes down to motive. If a lie is prosocial it may simply be welcome tact. If it is intended to exploit, it is a problem. If a white lie is discovered, most relationship experts advise straightforwardly admitting to it; this reduces feelings of betrayal and you both can move on.

If you are sure you want to know when the people around you are tactfully lying (we all want to know when they are tactically lying) a handy book is Liespotting by Pamela Meyer. It explains the techniques used by interrogators to identify lies. We all have tells, and most people have the same ones. (Psychopaths can be a bit of a problem, one must admit though.) She says that mastering the techniques can give you a more than 90% success rate at identifying lies. How truthful that is, I wouldn’t venture to guess.
 

Brook Benton – Lie to Me