![]() A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.If these questions sound familiar, it might be because they’re part of being a teenager. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". Join 800,000+ Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter. Melissa Hogenboom is BBC Future's feature writer, she is on twitter. So next time you hear a fact that sounds odd, or someone to be deflecting a question, be aware that what you think is the truth may very well be deceptive. ![]() "What they ultimately learn is that even though honesty is the best policy, it's also at times fine and preferable to lie about things." "We give our kids very mixed messages," says Feldman. We tell young children about tooth fairies and Santa, or encourage a child to be grateful for an unwanted present. ![]() Lies play a role in our social interactions from a very young age. Unfortunately, the prevalence of lies might stem from the way we are brought up. But it's how human cognition works," says Rogers. "It's unethical and it makes our democracy worse. It can help someone paint a better picture than the truth, or help a politician dodge an uncomfortable question. Lying can and does clearly serve a devious social purpose. "When we're lied to by people in power, it ruins our confidence in political institutions – it makes the population very cynical about real motivations." Psychologist Robert Feldman, author of The Liar in Your Life, sees this as worrying both on a personal and on a macro level. One 2016 poll found that the British public trust politicians less than estate agents, bankers and journalists.Īnd despite the fact that we now frequently expect lies from those in power, it remains challenging to spot them in real time, especially so if they lie by paltering. The public are clearly sick of being lied to and trust in politicians is plummeting. We can see the problems this sort of thinking can cause reflected in society today. "We show evidence they are making a mistake," says Rogers. "We want to achieve our narrow objective – – but we also want people to see us as ethical and honest." He says these two goals are in tension and by paltering, people believe they are being more ethical than outright lying. It happens because we constantly have so many competing goals, suggests Rogers. Paltering is perhaps so commonplace because it is seen as a useful tool. ![]() Both statements are true but mask the reality of the unpopular property and the dodgy car. Or the used car salesman who says a car started up extremely well on a frosty morning, without disclosing that it broke down the week before. Consider the estate agent who tells a potential buyer that an unpopular property has had "lots of enquiries" when asked how many actual bids there have been. While it's common in politics, so too is it in everyday life. And this happens more often than you might think. It is when individuals use lies to manipulate others or to purposely mislead that it is more worrying. DePaulo, a psychologist at the University of California Santa Barbara, says that the participants in her study were not aware of how many lies they told, partly because most were so "ordinary and so expected that we just don't notice them". Many of the lies were fairly innocent, or even kind, such as: "I told her that she looked good when I thought that she looked like a blimp." Some were to hide embarrassment, such as pretending a spouse had not been fired. Out of the 147 participants in her original study, only seven said they didn’t lie at all - and we can only guess if they were telling the truth. She discovered this by asking participants for one week to note down each time they lied, even if they did so with a good intention. She found that each of us lies about once or twice a day. In 1996 one researcher, Bella DePaulo even put a figure on it.
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