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Causes and Effects of Lying | Consequences of lying – Short Essay for Students

December 11, 2019 by Study Mentor Leave a Comment

No matter how careful we try to be about our everyday whereabouts, no person can possibly stay one hundred percent honest throughout their lives, and at one point of their life or the other, in one way or the other, it happens that they resort to lying for some reason- either big or small.

But nobody differentiates between lies as such, because whether big or small, a lie is always a lie, and it can be never undone or unsaid. Thus, the harm caused by lying can be described as irreversible, and therefore, we must be extremely careful about the consequences which can possibly stem from one seemingly small act of us lying for certain purposes.

Lying can also take the form of a disease, as some people can eventually become compulsive liars, as they constantly turn to lying, even if it serves no special purpose. Therefore, we must also be careful about the frequency of the act of lying we resort to.

There are several biological cues to lying as well- as in, there are certain specific non-verbal communication cues which might expose when someone is lying or not. These eventually led to the invention of a scientific device called the ‘polygraph’, or more commonly, the lie detector, which claims to accurately detect when one person is lying or not through certain bodily indicators such as changes in skin temperature, rate of heart beat, etc.

However, the accuracy of all such measures is highly debatable. Lying is an indispensable part of human life and we can try to analyse the cause by first studying the causes and effects of why people resort to the act of telling lies, which will be briefly described in this essay.

Table of Contents

Causes – why do people lie?

The most common reason for which people lie is the urgent need to hide truth. Day in and day out, many occasions take place which force us into certain situations where we cannot possibly disclose the truth, and therefore we necessarily need to conceal it from other people or institutions- either wholly, or partially. A lot of such times, lying, or hiding the truth is not very harmful and it can be quite easily overlooked.

However, hiding the truth, especially from the authorities can more than often land us and our close associates into troubles. For such reasons, lying to higher authorities such as one’s teachers or professors at educational institutes, one’s boss at the workplace, and especially the police, etc. is highly detrimental, and shall be avoided at all costs. Moreover, we also lie to save ourselves from different kinds of trouble, and, for convenience.

The most common lie of telling the teacher that you have forgotten to bring your notebook to class for escaping the consequences of not finishing the homework clearly demonstrates this factor evidently. We always want to gain all sort of benefits possible and therefore we also tend to lie to hide some undesirable facts about ourselves and show ourselves in a better light. This is also a part of our impression management.

For example, in interviews and similar situations, we try to only disclose the favourable information about us and hide the undesirable ones, so that the interviewers (or other people, in general) like us more than they would have if they had known the hidden set of facts.

Creating a good impression serves as one of the major motivations for us to lie. Also, people lie for the good of others as well, for instance, when they do not want to hurt someone or even themselves. Although this aims at not causing anyone any harm, but even this technique can very often backfire.

When we try to hide some truth from someone else to not cause them any pain, we are essentially not equipping them with the opportunity of dealing with their own problems. In this way, by wanting to not cause anyone discomforts, we somehow, maybe even unintentionally, cause them more harm than good. Therefore, even in this way, lying serves us no good at all.

Effects – what happens when we lie?

There are many adverse consequences of lying, but perhaps the most severe of all of those are the loss of face, or the decline in the reputation of the person who is lying. If a person is known to be a frequent liar, his or her reputation falls under severe criticism.

This can eventually lead to even graver consequences, for example, such people will never be possibly believed wholeheartedly by the others, no matter how genuine they later become in their endeavors. Thus, lying can jeopardize not just our present but also our future and can have certain long-lasting consequences.

Moreover, lying can land us into the exact trouble we have been trying to avoid by lying in the first place. If people come to know or get a hint about us lying about something, then they are also likely to play along and eventually cause us harm and tricking us into believing their innocence.

This is yet another adverse effect of lying. Apart from these, lying can also cause suspicion among others and lead to miscommunication and a certain degree of misunderstanding. This can prove to be very harmful, especially in interpersonal relationships, and therefore, lying to one’s close and loved ones are never advisable.

Lying can also make us question our self-worth and create a feeling of guilt and unease within our own self. This can also drive people to frustration, anxiety, paranoia, grief, and even clinical depression. This might be the worst effect of lying, as it hampers our self-image to a great extent, and distorts how we see and treat ourselves.

If we eventually lose the confidence in ourselves, then it might become even more likely that we will continue to use lies as our defence mechanism. Lying can also make us underestimate or overestimate people and their capabilities.

People are almost always lying about their identities, sometimes in a small degree and other times in far greater degrees. Therefore, we can perhaps never discover the real person beneath all the masks they wear in the form of such lying. Furthermore, lying need not be solely verbal.

Conveying false or untrue facts or messages through body gestures or expressions can also be counted as lying, and these are equally, if not more harmful to us. There is no possible way to stop lying. There is also no possible advice we can give someone to discourage them from lying in the future.

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causes and effects of telling lies essay

Why People Lie

Reasons for lying

People resort to lying for so many different reasons that it’d be impossible to list them all. However, of the most common motives for telling lies, avoiding punishment is the primary motivator for both children and adults. Other typical reasons include protecting ourselves or others from harm, maintaining privacy, and avoiding embarrassment, to name a few.

How to tell if someone is lying

Avoiding Punishment

“I thought I was only going 55 miles an hour officer” claims the driver speeding at 70 mph. “My wristwatch stopped so I had no idea that I got home 2 hours after my curfew”, says the teenager. Avoiding punishment is the most frequent reason people tell serious lies, regardless of their age, whether it be to avoid the speeding ticket or being grounded. In serious lies there is a threat of significant damage if the lie is discovered: loss of freedom, money, job, relationship, reputation, or even life itself.

It is only in such serious lies, in which the liar would be punished if detected, that lies are detectable from demeanor – facial expression, body movements, gaze, voice, or words. The threat imposes an emotional load, generating involuntary changes that can betray the lie. The lies of everyday life where it doesn’t matter if they are detected – no punishment or rewards — that lies are easily told flawlessly.

Concealing Reward or Benefit

In serious lies the falsehood is usually told to conceal the reward or benefit the liar obtained by breaking a rule or explicit expectation. The curfew violator was able to stay longer at the party; the speeding driver is rushing because he pushed the snooze button when the alarm went off. The husband who claims the ringer on the telephone in his office must have been turned off when he was ‘working’ late – in a hotel room with his girlfriend – will pay no price if his lie succeeds. In each of these examples, the rule breaker decides before breaking a rule that he or she will if questioned lie to cover the cheating. Sometimes the reward could have been achieved – a high mark on an exam — without cheating but not as easily, it would have taken more effort (hours of study in this example).

Protecting Someone from Harm

Protecting someone else from harm is the next most important reason why people tell serious lies. You don’t want your friend, you fellow worker, your sibling, your spouse – anyone who you care about — to get punished, even if you don’t agree with what the person you are protecting did that put him or her in danger. It is not certain whether society approves of these lies. When policemen refuse to testify against a fellow officer they know has broken the law, we respect their motives but many people believe they should be truthful. Yet the terms we use – rat, fink, snitch – are derogatory. Anonymous call-in lines exist so those who volunteer information can avoid any loss of reputation or danger by informing. Do we have different standards for people who take the initiative to inform as compared to those who inform when directly asked to reveal information? I will reconsider this issue in a later newsletter when I write about children’s lies and why we don’t want them to tattle.

Self-Protection

To protect yourself from being harmed even when you have not broken any rule is still another motive. The child home alone who tells the stranger knocking on the door “my father is taking a nap come back later”, has committed no misdeed that he or she is concealing; it is a self-protection lie.

Some lies are told to win admiration from others. Boasting about something untrue is an obvious instance. It is common in children, some adolescents, and even adults. If discovered it harms the reputation of the boaster, but not much more than that. Claiming falsely to have earned money for previous investors moves into the criminal realm.

Maintaining Privacy

To maintain privacy, without asserting that right, is another reason why people may lie. A daughter answering her mother’s question “who were you talking to on the phone just now”, by naming a girlfriend, not the boy who is asking her out on a date, is an example. It is only when there is a strong trusting relationship, that a child would feel brave enough to say “that’s private”, announcing the right to have a secret. Another topic I will return to in my newsletter about trust.

The Thrill of it All!

Some people lie for the sheer thrill of getting away with it, testing their unsuspected power. Many children will at some point lie to their parents simply to see if they can do it. Some people do this all the time enjoying the power they obtain in controlling the information available to the target.

Avoiding Embarrassment

Avoiding embarrassment is still another motive for some serious and many trivial lies. The child who claims the wet seat resulted from spilling a glass of water, not from wetting her pants is an example, if the child did not fear punishment for her failure, just embarrassment.

Avoiding embarrassment is relevant to many less serious lies that come under the rubric of lies-of-everyday-life. Very often people lie to get out of an awkward social situation. They may not know how to do it – “can’t get a babysitter” offered to avoid another dull evening and food. “Sorry I am on my way out the door”, an excuse given by people who do not feel brave enough to be truthful even to a totally unknown telephone solicitor.

Being Polite

Then there are the deceptions that are required by politeness — “thanks so much for the lovely party” or “that color really looks good on you”. I don’t consider these to be lies, anymore than bluffing in poker is a lie, acting in a play is lying, or the asking price not being the selling price. In all of these instances the target does not expect to be told the truth, there is notification. But the impostor is a liar, as is the con man, because they are taking advantage of our expectation that we will be told the truth. More about this will be in my newsletter about the different techniques for lying.

Do we really want to know if someone is lying?

In most cases, there’s no quick or easy way to detect deception and, even if there were, we might not like what we discover.

So, while people often claim to want to know the truth, there are many instances in which it is more comforting to believe the lies. In these circumstances, we tend to ignore deception clues and excuse otherwise suspicious behaviors to avoid the potentially negative consequences of uncovering the lies we’re told.

Still want to know if you’re being lied to? Check out our micro expressions training tools to learn how!

Health Encyclopedia

The truth about lying.

For your birthday, your aunt knits you a sweater that is, well, downright hideous. You tell her, 1) “I'd go out in an army blanket before wearing that;” 2) “It would look better on a peacock;” or 3) “It's beautiful, Aunt Sylvia! I really need a sweater.”

If you chose the third response, well, you’re a liar. Don’t feel bad, however. If the truth be told, most of us lie to some degree, especially when faced with an alternative like hurting the feelings of poor, good-hearted Aunt Sylvia.

Some of us, however, lie so often that we don’t realize it. That’s when it becomes the sort of problem that may need professional help. So, what’s the difference between being diplomatic and being deceptive?

The most common fibs are relatively harmless ones. They’re minor evasions told to prevent hurting someone’s feelings or to prevent conflict. For example, you say “Of course, I’m not angry you were 40 minutes late.” Behavioral experts seem to agree that these lies told with the intention of not hurting someone's feelings are acceptable in moderation to preserve social harmony.

The awful truth

Many of us don't want to hear the awful truth every time. Say someone asks you how she looks. She probably wants to hear that she looks great. If she doesn't look great, and we tell her the truth, we create a conflict and have to deal with the results.

Here, you have to ask yourself how much you have invested in the relationship. For example, if it’s your wife and she’s going to an important interview, you may want to give her constructive feedback and deal with her feelings. If it’s someone in the office you don't know well, you may choose not to risk a confrontation.

The problem arises when people rationalize that some lies are acceptable and necessary. Getting caught in a lie often destroys relationships.

Lying has consequences. When someone finds out you have lied, it affects how that person deals with you forever. If your spouse lies, you may be able to work it out in therapy, but an employer is not likely to forgive.

Even if you convince yourself a lie is OK, it still violates the dictates of conscience. You’re living a lie and waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is psychologically unhealthy. No one is saying you should tell your anxious mother that you have a 102°F fever, or your coworker that you think her clothes are inappropriate. There are many considerations that come into play when deciding whether honesty is the best policy.

What to consider

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

Would anyone be harmed if I withhold a bit of the truth?

Can someone change and grow from my honest feedback, or am I being unnecessarily blunt by giving an honest opinion that is hurtful?

How would it feel if someone withheld the truth from me under the same circumstances?

Is not revealing the truth in this situation an act of cowardice, or of compassion?

If you often find yourself being deceptive with family and friends to sidestep troubling issues, you may need to strengthen your interpersonal skills. The main reason people lie is low self-esteem. They want to impress, please, and tell someone what they think they want to hear.

For example, insecure teenagers often lie to gain social acceptance. Here, parents should emphasize to their children the consequences of lying. They should say that lying causes anger and hurt, and that people won’t like them when they find out.

When is lying a problem that needs professional help? If you have trouble controlling it. Pathological liars lie constantly and for no apparent reason. They need to discuss their problem with a therapist.

But for most of us, the untruths we tell are not whoppers. They’re fibs that help grease the wheels of everyday social interactions.

Be your own lie detector

All but the hardened liar has some anxiety when telling a lie. Lie detectors are based on the theory that our bodies react physically when we don’t respond truthfully.

Experts recommend that you look for clusters of signals when trying to spot a liar. The signals include:

Avoiding eye contact or shifting eyes

Stuttering, pausing, or clearing the throat

Changing voice tone or volume

Offering multiple excuses for a situation, instead of just one

Standing in a defensive posture with arms crossed over the chest

Reddening slightly on the face or neck

Rubbing, stroking, or pulling on the nose

Making a slip of the tongue while denying something

Deflecting attention from the issue

Appearing uncomfortable

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The Truth About Lying and What It Does to the Body

Dishonesty can take a toll on the body and mind..

Posted January 5, 2020 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

(This is a spoiler-free post about an unusual medical condition portrayed in the movie Knives Out .)

In the hit film Knives Out , Detective Benoit Blanc is hired to investigate the mysterious death of a wealthy novelist named Harlan Thrombey. Blanc questions the members of Thrombey’s eccentric family and his nurse, Marta Cabrera.

When Marta admitted, “Just the thought of lying makes me puke,” she was not kidding. Marta is like Pinocchio, but instead of lies elongating her nose, they make her vomit. Marta’s strange reflex is a dream for a private investigator trying to uncover the truth, but could such a biological anomaly actually exist off the movie screen?

What happens to the body when we lie?

We tell lies all the time. A 2002 study performed by psychologist Robert Feldman at the University of Massachusetts found that 60 percent of people lied at least once during a 10-minute conversation, telling an average of two to three lies.

The tendency to lie is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history, as other primates have been observed to cheat and deceive. Human children pick up this crafty behavior between the ages of two and five, and it is seen by some psychologists as a milestone of cognitive growth.

Many lies are trivial and are told simply to keep the peace or make someone feel good. Examples include niceties such as “You can’t tell that you’re wearing a toupee!” or “The turkey doesn’t taste dry to me!”

But more sinister lies, such as falsely accusing someone of a crime or lying to investors, can have devastating consequences. Dishonesty puts the brain in a state of heightened alert, and this stress increases with the magnitude of the lie.

Why does the brain care about honesty? As social animals, our reputation is paramount. Consequently, most people work very hard to maintain an image of trustworthiness and integrity.

Knowing that dishonesty risks irrevocable damage to one’s reputation, lying is an inherently stressful activity. When we engage in deceit, our respiratory and heart rates increase, we start to sweat, our mouth goes dry, and our voice can shake. Some of these physiological effects form the basis of the classic lie-detector (polygraph) test.

People vary in their ability to tell a lie due, in part, to differences in the brain. To take an extreme example, sociopaths lack empathy and therefore do not exhibit a typical physiological response when lying. Liars can also pass a polygraph if trained to stay calm during the test. Similarly, innocent people may fail the test merely because they are anxious about being hooked up to the intimidating equipment. For these reasons, the accuracy of polygraph testing is heavily contested.

In contrast, brain imaging studies are proving to be much more informative for learning about the body’s response to lying. Symptoms of anxiety arise because lying activates the limbic system in the brain, the same area that initiates the “fight or flight” response that is triggered during other stresses. When people are being honest, this area of the brain shows minimal activity. But when telling a lie, it lights up like a fireworks display. An honest brain is relaxed, while a dishonest brain is frantic.

Short-term and long-term effects of lying on health and well-being

Two doctors were recently questioned about Marta’s peculiar reaction to lying. Speaking to Fast Company , gastroenterologist Kara Gross Margolis of the Columbia University Medical Center stated that she has never seen a patient that suffers from chronic vomiting after lying . Nor has David A. Johnson, a gastroenterologist at Eastern Virginia Medical School. Speaking to Slate , Johnson said, "Never, at least in my 42 years of experience, has it [chronic vomiting] been brought up that it was specifically around a lie."

However, both experts mention the so-called gut-brain axis as a plausible mechanism behind a regurgitative reflex. The gut-brain axis refers to the two-way communication that takes place between these two bodily systems, explaining why we sometimes get butterflies in our stomach when nervous. Kara Gross Margolis admits that “significant anxiety can lead to nausea and vomiting,” opening the door for such a condition to exist in someone who is constantly worried.

In addition to short-term stress and discomfort, living a dishonest life would seem to take a toll on health. According to a 2015 review article , constant lying is associated with an array of negative health outcomes including high blood pressure, increased heart rate, vasoconstriction, and elevated stress hormones in the blood.

Other studies suggest that long-term effects could be minimal since it appears that we get more comfortable with lying the more we do it. In other words, we develop an unsettling tolerance to being devious.

Brain imaging experiments conducted by Tali Sharot at University College London show that the brain adapts to dishonest behavior . Participants showed reduced activity in their limbic system as they told more lies, supporting the idea that each lie makes lying easier. In addition, the findings support the adage that small acts of dishonesty can escalate into larger ones . If true, Marta’s tendency to vomit after lying could diminish over time as her brain adapts to being dishonest.

If our brain can cozy up to lying with enough practice, it would explain society’s disdain for dishonesty and why people hesitate to give liars a second chance. These strong social rules and the penalties that come from breaking them might be what really keeps us honest at the end of the day.

Bill Sullivan, Ph.D., is the author of Pleased to Meet Me: Genes, Germs, and the Curious Forces That Make Us Who We Are and a professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

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What’s good about lying, new research reveals how we learn to lie for the benefit of other people..

Do you teach children to lie?

I do. All the time. And you do, too! If you’re like most American parents, you point to presents under the Christmas tree and claim that a man named Santa Claus put them there. But your deliberate deceptions probably go beyond Santa, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny.

How many of us tell our kids (or students) that everything is fine when, in fact, everything is totally wrong, in order to preserve their sense of security? Have you been honest about everything having to do with, say, your love life, or what happens at work? Do you praise drawings they bring home from school that you actually think are terrible?

We don’t just lie to protect our kids from hard truths, either. We actually coach them to lie, as when we ask them to express delight at tube socks from Aunt Judy or Uncle Bob’s not-so-delicious beef stew.

These are what scientists call “prosocial lies”—falsehoods told for someone else’s benefit, as opposed to “antisocial lies” that are told strictly for your own personal gain.

Most research suggests that children develop the ability to lie at about age three. By age five, almost all children can (and will) lie to avoid punishment or chores—and a minority will sporadically tell prosocial lies. From ages seven to eleven, they begin to reliably lie to protect other people or to make them feel better—and they’ll start to consider prosocial lies to be justified . They’re not just telling white lies to please adults. The research to date suggests that they are motivated by strong feelings of empathy and compassion.

Why should that be the case? What is going on in children’s minds and bodies that allows this capacity to develop? What does this developmental arc reveal about human beings—and how we take care of each other? That’s what a recent wave of studies has started to uncover.

Taken together, this research points to one message: Sometimes, lying can reveal what’s best in people.

How we learn to lie

At first, the ability to lie reflects a developmental milestone: Young children are acquiring a “theory of mind,” which is psychology’s way of describing our ability to distinguish our own beliefs, intents, desires, and knowledge from what might be in the minds of other people. Antisocial lying appears earlier than prosocial lying in children because it’s much simpler, developmentally; it mainly requires an understanding that adults can’t read your mind.

More on Honesty

Explore gender differences in prosocial lying .

Learn about the life stages of trust .

Lying expert Paul Ekman discusses trust and deception with his daughter, Eve.

Are you living true to your values? Discover how to cultivate ethical courage .

Take our Relationship Trust quiz .

But prosocial lying needs more than just theory of mind. It requires the ability to identify suffering in another person ( empathy ) and the desire to alleviate that suffering ( compassion ). More than that, even, it involves anticipation that our words or actions might cause suffering in a hypothetical future. Thus, prosocial lying reflects the development of at least four distinct human capacities: theory of mind, empathy, compassion, and the combination of memory and imagination that allows us to foresee the consequences of our words.

How do we know that kids have all of these capacities? Could they just be lying to get out of the negative consequences of telling the truth? Or perhaps they’re simply lazy; is it easier to lie than be honest?

For a paper published in 2015 , Harvard psychologist Felix Warneken had adults show elementary-aged children two pictures they drew—one pretty good, one terrible. If the adults didn’t show any particular pride in the picture, the kids were truthful in saying whether it was good or bad. If the grown-up acted sad about being a bad artist, most of the kids would rush to reassure her that it wasn’t too awful. In other words, they told a white lie; the older they were, they more likely the kids were to say a bad drawing was good. There were no negative consequences for telling the truth to these bad artists; the kids just wanted these strangers to feel better about themselves.

In other words, says Warneken, it’s a feeling of empathic connection that drives children to tell white lies. In fact, children are trying to resolve two conflicting norms—honesty vs. kindness—and by about age seven, his studies suggest, they start consistently coming down on the side of kindness. This reflects increasingly sophisticated moral and emotional reasoning.

“When is it right to prioritize another person’s feelings over truth?” says Warneken. “Say, if someone cooks something for you, and it just doesn’t taste good. Well, if they’re applying for cooking school somewhere, the prosocial thing is to be honest, so that they can improve. But if they just cooked it on their own just for you, then perhaps it’s better to lie and say it tastes good.”

It’s a good sign, developmentally, when kids show the ability to make that kind of calculation. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence that we tend to see prosocial lies as the more moral choice. For example, people seem to behave more prosocially —more grateful, more generous, more compassionate—in the presence of images depicting eyes. While one would expect people to lie less under the eyes, in fact it appears to influence what kind of lie they tell: When Japanese researchers gave students an opportunity to make someone feel good with a lie, they were much more likely to do so with a pair of eyes looking down on them .

No eyes? They were more likely to tell the cold, hard truth!

How lies change as we grow

This moral self-consciousness appears to grow in tandem with the child’s self-control and cognitive ability.

Another study published last year in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology found that “children who told prosocial lies had higher performance on measures of working memory and inhibitory control.” This especially helped them to control “leakage”—a psychologist’s term for inconsistencies in a fake story.

To tell a prosocial lie, a child’s brain needs to juggle many balls—drop one, and the lie will be discovered. Some children are simply better truth-jugglers than others. Far from reflecting laziness, prosocial lying seems to entail a great deal more cognitive and emotional effort than truth-telling. In fact, one 2014 paper found tired adults are much less likely to engage in prosocial lying.

Studies by other researchers show that as kids grow older, the relationship between theory of mind and dishonesty starts to shift. Young children with high theory of mind will tell more antisocial lies than peers. This pattern flips as we age: Older children who have a stronger theory of mind start telling fewer antisocial lies—and more prosocial ones.

Kids also gradually become more likely to tell “blue lies” as they advance through adolescence: altruistic falsehoods, sometimes told at a cost to the liar, that are intended to protect a group, like family or classmates. (Think: lying about a crime committed by a sibling, or deceiving a teacher about someone else’s misbehavior.)

Though adults can (and do) teach children to tell polite lies—and in a lab context, kids can be primed by adults to tell them—Warneken says it’s more likely that successful prosocial lying is a byproduct of developing other capacities, like empathy and self-control. When kids acquire those skills, they gain the ability to start telling both white and blue lies.

But how do other people feel if these lies are found out?

The lies that bind

As they grow older, kids are also developing the ability to detect lies —and to distinguish selfish from selfless ones. The distinction comes down to intent, which studies show can be discerned through recognition of telltale signs in the face and voice of the liar.

In a study published last year, researchers used the Facial Action Coding System , developed by Paul Ekman , to map children’s faces as they told lies that served either themselves or others. The team, based at the University of Toronto and UC San Diego, found that the two different kinds of lies produced markedly different facial expressions.

“Prosocial lying reflects the development of at least four distinct human capacities: theory of mind, empathy, compassion, and the combination of memory and imagination that allows us to foresee the consequences of our words.”

Prosocial lies (which in this case involved delight in a disappointing gift) were betrayed by expressions that resembled joy—a “lip raise on the right side” that hinted at a barely concealed smile, and a blinking pattern associated with happiness. The faces of children lying to conceal a misdeed showed signs of contempt, mainly a slight lip pucker that stops short of being a smirk.

It’s almost certainly the case that we are subconsciously picking up on these signs (along with tells in the liar’s voice) when we catch someone in a lie. But research finds that the consequences of catching someone in a prosocial lie are often very different from those of an antisocial lie, or “black lie,” as they’re sometimes called. In fact, detecting a prosocial lie can increase trust and social bonds.

A series of four 2015 studies from the Wharton School had participants play economic games that involved different kinds of trust and deception. Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that black lies hurt trust. But if participants saw that the deception was altruistic in nature, trust between game-players actually increased. A complex mathematical 2014 study compared the impact of black and white lies on social networks. Again, black lies drove wedges into social networks. But white lies had precisely the opposite effect, tightening social bonds. Several studies have found that people are quick to forgive white lies, and even to appreciate them.

These differences show up in brain scans—and how different types of lies affect the brain can actually influence behavior down the road. A research team led by Neil Garrett at Princeton University assigned 80 people a financial task that allowed them to gain money at another person’s expense if they kept on lying.

“We found that people started with small lies, but slowly, over the course of the experiment, lied more and more,” they write . When they scanned the brains of participants, they found that activity lessened (mainly in the amygdala) with each new lie.

Not everyone lied or lied to their own advantage. One variation in the experiment allowed participants to lie so that another participant would gain more money—and the behavior and the brain scans of those people looked very different. Dishonesty for the benefit of others did not escalate in the same way selfish lies did; while people did lie for others, the lies did not get bigger or more frequent, as with black lies. And it did not trigger the same pattern of activity in the amygdala, which previous research has found lights up when we contemplate immoral acts. (Their methods are described more fully in the video below.)

In short, the brain’s resistance to deception remained steady after participants told prosocial lies—while self-serving lies seemed to decrease it, making black lies a slippery slope.

The upshot of all this research? Not all lies are the same, a fact we seem to recognize deep in our minds and bodies. We may indeed teach children to lie, both implicitly with our behavior and explicitly with our words; but some of those lies help to bind our families and friends together and to create feelings of trust. Other kinds of lies destroy those bonds.

This all might seem overly complex, more so than the simple prescription to not tell a lie. The trouble with do-not-lie prohibitions is that kids can plainly see lying is ubiquitous, and as they grow, they discover that not all lies have the same motivation or impact. How are we supposed to understand these nuances, and communicate them to our children?

In fact, the argument for prosocial lies is the same one against black lies: other people’s feelings matter—and empathy and kindness should be our guide.

About the Author

Jeremy Adam Smith

Uc berkeley.

Jeremy Adam Smith edits the GGSC's online magazine, Greater Good . He is also the author or coeditor of five books, including The Daddy Shift , Are We Born Racist? , and (most recently) The Gratitude Project: How the Science of Thankfulness Can Rewire Our Brains for Resilience, Optimism, and the Greater Good . Before joining the GGSC, Jeremy was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

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The Cause and Effect of telling Lies

A lie of any type ----white lie which is not considered a bad or a severe lie which affects the person lied upon are both a lie and affects the person lied little or very severely.

Lying among the adolescence and the youth had become epidemic and a thrill from the society. Every minute someone lies. Lies to get his/her point accepted and may be to acquire fame. Thus, being in the atmosphere of lies younger generation started to consider this point as a common norms of daily life.

At home parents monitors and teaches their children about this malice and try to built –in a child the habit of not to lie. But the easiest way to surpass the punishment or rage of the parents to a child is to lie. The consequence always never happens positive. After all a lie remains a lie and harms or creates an adverse effect on the subject or event.

At school, the teachers try to build up the moral of the students not to lie in a situation of distress. But in twenty-first century the process of presenting lies have become innovative among the students. They lie out of fear, wanting to become a hero among the others school friends or avoid a complain to their parents. But in the process jeopardize the way of making them an honest, fair student and a meaningful human being in the society helpful to the nation.

In the office, a person to lie his / her boss to avoid professional punishment or firing from the service or just to acquire a fame of successful “ idiot genius “ among his/her colleague. This may many a times gain them temporary relief or fame. But generally harms their future evaluation as an able worker/officer/manager or harm the organization or a colleague/team member.

A friend who pampers others with wrong praises actually lies about you and does more wrong to you than any better. A friend who is actually straight forward and delivers the truth about you rather than tries to falsely please you; is your actual helpful friend and helps you develop a better means to life. It is very wrong attitude to influence others for the selfish means. To influence others is to instigate others and is very harmful than being an enemy to one. Therefore, be lovable to a friend but honest in your comments, advises or judgement to your friend rather than influence him/her to be liked by him/her wrongfully.

In the social judgement, when you lie a police; you fall into more trouble on an investigation which is bound to happen in the policing department. Then your quantum of punishment becomes very cumbersome and harsh. It gives opportunity to more lying and results in catastrophe. Even if the matter may have been solved with ease or little punitive measures, it turns very complicated and very punitive. In this context the famous saying of the Holy Bible should not be forgotten “God sees everything, and reveals the truth”

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Paragraph on Effects of Telling Lies – by Anand

Introduction:

Lying is a negative habit which is easily influenced by people so as to either get away with something or to keep things on an even keel.

There are some people who are pathological liars. They lie for anything and everything. On the other hand, there are people who lie occasionally to escape guilt. Whatever the case, lying is not a healthy habit and it is something which has been taught to us since childhood by our parents to be wrong. People who lie are conscious of the fact that they are lying and this makes them even guiltier.

Causes of Telling Lies:

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There are many reasons why people tell lies. The primary reason is to escape guilt. People lie to others so that the blame which is on their head shifts to that of the other person. By this, people try to get away with the guilt which they have actually committed. Another reason why people lie is when they come under pressure.

The pressure that is pushed upon them often makes them lie. For instance, a teenager who craves for acceptance in his social circle will go to the extent of lying about his personal things so as to remain part of the group. Another cause for lying is to avoid an unpleasant situation which could be avoided by simply lying.

Consequences of Telling Lies:

Lying has many effects on both the person who is lying and to the person who is being lied to. Lying is falsely saying something to someone when one knows that it is not the truth. Thus, by lying, one is misleading the other person who might suffer some injury or harm in the process. Sometimes, lying might also lead to the actual blame being shifted upon another person who is completely innocent and might not even be aware of the situation.

This causes unnecessary prejudice and inconvenience. Lying also has psychological effect on the person who lies. Such a person always remains nervous because of his guilt. That person tends to take hasty decisions and remain distracted almost all the time.

How to Overcome the Habit of Telling Lies?

The habit of telling lies can be overcome by self-restraint. An individual can exercise self-restraint so that whenever he feels like lying, he stops himself from doing so and tells the truth. Also, another way to stop lying is by trying to not indulge in any negative activities which might later push us to lie to others. One must always understand that lies always affect the people close by. It might also lead to hurt or injury to others. Thus, the aforementioned factors should stop the person from lying.

Conclusion:

Thus, there are many negative effects of telling lies. It is important that an individual understands the consequences of lying and thereby stops to do the same. This would help make him a better individual and person in the society.

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The Cause and Effect of Telling Lies (Essay Sample)

discussing the effects of telling lies and the causes

TELLING LIES: CAUSE AND EFFECT. Lies have become rampant in the present and the methods so sophisticated as a result of the society considering it a norm. The social fabric has been greatly damaged to an extent the lies are considered a legitimate survival mechanism and often go unpunished making it appealing as it attracts no or less consequences. The intense technological advanced has propelled the vice further in the present times making it easier and swifter. A lie in the simplest term can be defined as the intentional misrepresentation of an account of actions or statements from an individual or an organization to gain favor or escape consequences from the other party. The are two major categories of lies; lying to oneself and lying to others. Lying to oneself is too common but overlooked because it is a “debate” within oneself which contrast sharply with lying to others as it is mostly directed to another party and thus will be most noticeable as it affects the other party and the pain manifests by the hatred exhibited after the occurrence. Most people don’t like lying but the circumstances and what they stand to gain with the hedonistic nature of human beings compel them to. Different people have different reasons for lying. The factors can be internally or externally triggered. The discussion below explores the different individual reasons. First, majority of people lie to escape or get lesser punishment. As human beings, everyone wants their wrongdoing concealed and they achieve that by deliberately telling lies so as to paint a good image about themselves to others to dispel the perception of having a questionable character. Others especially adults do so to save face from embarrassment from their peers or colleagues at work. Secondly, veiling benefits is another important trigger for lying to other people. This reason for lying takes place when an individual obtains a requite or a benefit but does not want to share with colleagues at work or even friends. For instance, at the work place, a supervisor lacking specific skills to complete an assignment gives the assignment to a junior employee to complete the task, then he/she presents the completed task for promotion without giving credit to the junior employee presenting it as his personal work. Moreover, a majority of people lie to maintain confidentiality or secrecy of their personal lives and that of their family. This reason for lying is the most common on the spotlight as it keeps everything discreet. For instance, when someone lies about where they live, where their family resides or even whether they are married or not, they do this basically to protect their loved ones from any form of harm. Lastly, people lie to test their ability to lie. In this dimension, people lie to see if they can make it lying and test if it can work out for them. For instance, a friend requests to leave her baby with you for sometime but instead of directly declining the request, you lie by saying you are on your way out to complete some errands in town which is not true. As attractive as lies seem to be, and the benefits preempted to come with them, lies equally have negative effects. These effects include lowering trust, disrespect to others, addiction in lies and saving lives. The discussion below will therefore give a detailed understanding of each factor citing examples. Lies have in the past and in the present damaged relationships both personal and at family level. This is attributed to the declining level of trust accorded to the liar by the occurrences that prompted the lies. Trust in