Why We Lie

One common trait that is seen throughout all individuals, is that all of them lie or in some way deceive others or themselves. It is seen that people are constantly lying, whether it is the smallest lie or even the largest. No matter how much a person remains truthful throughout their life there is a point where he or she lies. It is inevitable to avoid, people lie to gain something, to come into power, or to even mask the truth that they do not want others to hear (Bhattacharjee 1). It is seen in the two articles “Why We Lie; We like to believe that a few bad apples spoil the virtuous bunch. But research shows that everyone cheats a little--right up to the point where they lose their sense of integrity.” by Dan Ariely and “Why We Lie: The

Although they do believe they are doing this, it is seen that it highly unlikely that they truly are. In Dan Ariely’s “Why We Lie…” it had come to his attention that many people are capable of cheating and being deceitful. To set out if this were true he set up an experiment to test if a person would stay honest or not. In his experiment he set out two conditions for individuals that they had to go through, a control where cheating could not be done, and a shredder condition, where individuals had the opportunity to cheat. He had found that people had miraculously solved on average two more problems on the shredder condition. Meaning that people will take the opportunity to cheat, even if it is by the smallest margin. Ariely states, “Everybody has the capacity to be dishonest, and almost everybody cheats--just by a little… This overall increase results not from a few individuals who claim to solve a lot more matrices but from lots of people who cheat just by a little.” (Ariely 1-2). Here he is clearly stating that people will cheat, although it is not a very large amount of cheating, individuals will still take part in it. Meaning that all individuals have the nature to cheat, to gain any advantage. It is worked into their nature. In this case people lied about the number of problems they did for monetary gain, in other instances it could be much more or less, but

Some cases that have made national fame include Bernie Madoff, Richard Nixon, and even Ryan Lochte (Bhattacharjee 1). Although these cases were the extreme end of lying and cheating, they are still very similar to what people do on a daily basis with their smaller lies. They are deceiving others about what is true and what is not. In “Why We Lie; The Science Behind Our Deceptive Ways” by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, he sets out find if lying is apart of human nature and why individuals lie. Through his research Bhattacharjee was able to find that lyng is major development in any person, as it is seen to occur even at young ages. In one experiment that he had found, children were given a sound and had to guess what the hidden toy was based on the sound. There was a control where they were given a dog barking and the toy was a dog, but at one point they had a sound that was not associated with the toy. Also the workers left the room, giving the children the opportunity to peek at what the toy was. It was observed that 30 percent of two year olds, 50 percent of three year olds, and 80 percent of eight year olds did peek and lied about doing so. Children have not been taught to cheat or lie, yet they did so to gain an advantage. It is seen that lying came naturally, just as if human nature. It is seen in the article