Different Ways We Lie We all lie, including children, young adults, and even older people. According to Dr. Robert Feldman, the average person lies three times in a ten minute conversation, often without realizing they’ve done so (Meese). We lie for all particular reasons. We lie because it’s a way to control our world, but also a way to get people to do what we want them to do. Lying can also be used to “fit in” to get along with other people; many children lie for this reason. We also lie to escape accountability of our actions. There are various types of lies that we tell. Lies that are consider small lies are called ”the white lie”, or a lie that many of us are guilty of telling our parents to avoid punishment is called “Omission”. …show more content…
The white lie tends to have less importance than any other type of lie. Many of us tell this lie to avoid hurting our friends or our family’s feelings as well as to avoid being criticized or rejected. The white lie can seem like an innocent little lie, but in reality this lie can become a problem. The smallest of lies that seems to be totally harmless can snowball into bigger kinds of lies that can cause problems. For example, my family tradition on Thanksgiving Day is to have my whole family gathered together for a big Thanksgiving dinner. The whole family would cook their own specialty. My mother’s best dishes are pernil, arroz con guandu, y ensalada de coditos which, means pork leg, rice and pigeon peas, and macaroni salad in Spanish. My family always looks forward to every thanksgiving just because of my mother’s cooking. Last Thanksgiving was different from every other thanksgiving, my mother was sick so she couldn’t cook her specialties. Instead of my mother making her famous dishes, my aunt was in charge of making them. My aunt is known for making the best dessert, nothing else but the dessert. The whole family knew this was a disaster ready to happen. On Thanksgiving morning, I woke up to an awful smell, which smelled as if my house turned into a farm overflowing with wild animals. The smell was coming from the kitchen; my aunt was up early cooking the pernil. I walked into the …show more content…
Later that day, after all the cooking was done my aunt called me over to the kitchen to try the pernil she had cooked. As I walked over she opened the oven, and that awful smell came rushing out, she cut me a piece to try. I was so scared to try it because of the unpleasant smell, but I did it anyways. The taste was worse than the smell; I couldn’t get that piece down my throat. I had to tell her the truth. That little white lie I told became a bigger problem because there was no time left for her to start all over if I had told her the truth ahead of time, she would have had time to make a new pernil or go out to buy one. This little harmless “white lie” caused my whole family to have no pernil for
22). People mindlessly respond to avoid their true emotions. Truthfully, I was not fine, but exploding inside with nervousness. However, I didn’t attempt to burden anyone with my lack of confidence, so I told this untruth. Even though white lies may be harmless, they can lead to other deceptive lies labeled by the authors as gray, red, blue and colorless lies. Why do we tell lies? Interestingly, according to the (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013), “evolutionary biologists have proposed that Homo sapiens is indeed hard-wired to tell lies,” (page 25). Furthermore, we want to appear favorable to our friends and family and this may pressure us to justify our lies. According to (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013) it is referred to as “impression management,” by social psychologists (p.27). Thus, lies allow others to see us as we want to be seen, such as I wanted the group to see me as a confident person who could handle obstacles and superbly interact with
White lies are usually used to prevent the hurting of someone’s feelings. In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Christopher’s father uses white lies to deceive Christopher without establishing more questions about Christopher’s mother's flee. In everyday life, people lie extremely often, causing it to be difficult to tell when someone is actually lying. According to Pamela Meyer, “Lying's complex. It's woven into the fabric of our daily and our business lives. We're deeply ambivalent about the truth...We're against lying, but we're covertly for it in ways that our society has sanctioned for centuries and centuries and centuries. It's as old as breathing. It's part of our culture, it's part of our history.”(Meyer 4:59) In fact, the reason behind Christopher believing his father’s lies is because they are familiar in a way. Ed lies to Christopher, because of habit more than to protect anyone. Although, Christopher’s father used mostly white lies to protect Christopher from the harsh truth, he does it because of the emotion that goes along with them. Even though Christopher has a difficult time showing emotion he becomes upset. According to Paul Ekman in Lying and Deception, “Lies are also betrayed by signs of emotions. The simplest case is one in which the liar attempts to convincingly fabricate an emotion that is not felt. Few people are very good at this, although most of the time people get away
Ericsson's article is clearly about the way people lie, mainly whether the manner in which people lie to others is to make the other’s life easier or their own life easier. People lie every day, whether in simple white lies or more complex lies. Ericsson describes white lies, the most popular lies. She uses an example, how a friend told her another friend looked good when, in fact, she did not look good. People use these types of lies daily to avoid confrontation. “The liar deciding what is best for the lied to” (Ericsson #). Anyone can use them, children to parents, friend to friend, students to teachers, boyfriend to girlfriend, etc. A white lie is a good way to keep oneself out of trouble. Ericsson thinks white lies are so common because the truth is more dangerous than a simple lie. However, the lie may seem simple and part of daily life, but Ericsson points out that it is not always so simple. Telling a white lie may benefit to you in the short term, but if for a...
First Ericsson discuss white lies, she describes white lies as when a person “assumes that the truth will cause more damage than a simple, harmless untruth” (Ericsson 181). A person decides that it is better to tell the lie rather than to tell the truth because of how they perceive the outcome will be. Ericsson believes that people should not use white lies because they’re “[deciding] what is best for someone else” (Ericsson 181). When people use white lies they’re assuming that what they are doing is good for the other person, even if they do not know for sure that the other person will benefit from not knowing. On the other hand in the book “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon, the main character, Christopher does not believe in lying but he uses white lies. Christopher says, “A white lie is not a lie at all. It is where you tell the truth but you do not tell all of the truth” (Haddon 48). In this situation, Christopher’s
In my family the way a females hair looks is very important all of my aunts, cousins, my mom, and myself do our best to keep our hair healthy and looking nice. This of course is not an easy challenge, it’s expected that we shall have a bad hair day every now and then. Trust me every female weather the way their hair looks is important to them or not knows when they are having a bad hair day. Recently one morning I woke up to find my aunt in my living room having a chat with my mom, and the first thing I noticed was how awful my aunts hair looked that day, it was defiantly time for a good wash and condition. So to avoid any confrontation with my aunt I tried my hardest not to stare at this horrible hairdo as I say hello and quickly rush back to my room. Unfortunately things did not go according to plan, of course this is the day my aunt decides she wants to “catch up”. As we sit and chat about the basics of my life such as my relationship status, school, work, and the many other things of my personal life that I don’t feel comfortable sharing with my aunt, I pray that the topic of hair doesn’t come up. One thing about my aunts on my mother side is they cannot handle the truth no matter how much they say they can. If ever you tell them the truth it will almost always end in an argument if the truth is what they believe to be negative or if it’s simply the opposite of what they want to hear. So over the years I have learned telling a little white lie won’t hurt especially
In “The Truth about Lying” Judith Viorst explains the four different kinds of lying. She categorizes lies as social lies, peace-keeping lies, protective lies, and trust-keeping lies. Social lies are lies that are “acceptable and necessary”, they are the little white lies most people use all the time. Peace keeping lies are told when the liar is trying to protect themselves from getting in trouble or causing any conflict. The protective lies are far more serious, are often told because of fear that the truth would be “too damaging” for the person being lied to. Lastly, there are the trust keeping lies, which are lies in which the liar is lying for a friend in order to keep a promise. Viorst finds that most of these lies, while some are more acceptable than others, are necessary and she can understand them.
Stephanie Ericsson’s The Ways We Lie, analyzes and reflects on how lying has simply become the norm in our society. We all lie, there is not one person in the world that does not lie. Most people lie because they are afraid of telling the truth, however what they do not know is telling a lie can lead them in the wrong direction because many things can happen when lying to a person. The person can find out when everything unravels that person will not have trust in you and you would be known as a liar. To every action there is a consequence, so why not deal with just one consequence when telling the
White lies are defined as diplomatic or well-intentioned deception. There are many different types of white lies that are told, such as, lies of flattery for example; if someone gives another person a gift and the gift was not what the person wanted, this person would reply “thank you so much! I just love it!” This type of white lie is told because telling someone that their gift was undesirable would make the teller look like an inconsiderate being.
It is almost inevitable to lie, at one point or another in your life we have all lied. Weather it was a white lie to protect someone or, a selfish lie to protect yourself. When telling a white lie are you truly protecting them or shielding them form the realities inevitable turn of events.
Lying is when you purposely tell someone something you believe or know is false. If you told someone something you thought was true, but then it ended up being a lie, you simply have just given false information. Lying is obviously not an ideal thing to do, but sometimes it may be necessary. Here are the four types of lies.
A family friend, Rose Widmer, came over as my mom and dad were getting ready to leave. She would be staying with us because it looked like they would not be coming home that night. As Kelly and I were eating our supper, my mom came into the kitchen and sat down beside me. She explained to us that our dad was very sick, and that he was having trouble with his brain. She used the term "brain abscess." She said that this is what the doctors speculated was wrong with him, but they needed to go to Fort Wayne to take precautions.
However, I do tell white lies, or I tell lies to people I am never going to see again. The main lie that I tell others though is when I am asked if I have seen a certain movie or heard a certain song. A lot of the time I have not heard or seen it, but for some odd reason I usually lie and say that I have. I usually only tell lies if they will improve a situation or spare someone’s feeling and it wont cause drama in the future. I also tell lies by omission sometimes.
As discussed in “Why Do People Lie (2010.2.22)” “Why Do People Lie? The answer… (nd.)”, and “Why Do People Lie, Exactly (n.d.)?” the other of them is the kind of deceptions that kids make a lot, starting from their childhoods. It was the fear of being punished or having conflicts with others.
People lie everyday to, in someway or another, keep themselves out of trouble. Many teenagers will lie to their parents about what they are doing for the evening, how much of their homework they have done, or how that glass vase got broken while they were out of town. We even lie to our significant others about who that other boy was that called the house or what exactly we did with our friends last night. All anyone is trying to accomplish by this is to stay out of trouble when we know we’ve done wrong. But we never think of the effects of lying. Although we think we’re being sly, parents are usually smarter than we give them credit for! And eventually our boyfriends and girlfriends will find out! Then the problem becomes the issue of trust. If you lie, there is no trust. That can be one of the serious consequences of lying.
Awaking at 7:00 a.m. on the cool morning of December 7, 2003, I prepare for a long day. I put on the spandex and T-shirt that I will wear during the tryout at Northeastern Junior College. By 7:30 a.m., my family is walking over to the neighboring hotel's restaurant for our breakfast. It did not take long to decide that I wanted two golden-brown, buttermilk pancakes with warm maple syrup for breakfast. Both of my parents knew what they wanted right away and as usual, we were all waiting for my little sister to decide. Finally, she decided on the pancakes. It took only ten minutes to get our food and what a relief that was considering my stomach sounded like there was a lion inside. The pancakes were delicious, and my dad's biscuits and gravy was yummy. However, the cinnamon roll my mom order was hard as a rock and she had to pour maple syrup over it. That did not help it at all. After breakfast, we returned for some lounge time in the hotel room.