# Lying summarized

## How often do people lie?

We're *surrounded* by lies:

- People lie about 3 times for every 10 minutes of talking.
- Everyone wants to adapt their [image](people-image-distortion.md) to its best possible interpretation.
- [Modern marketing](marketing.md) creates false perceptions to sell their products.
- Most of the time, success requires small lies, or "bending the truth", especially when we've [endured severe hardship](hardship.md) and are afraid of what others may think.
- Even trustworthy people are worse liars than you may expect.

Further, we often lie to ourselves:

- Typically, we'll listen to false statements from others, then believe them over clearly true things we can observe.
- Many times, we'll avoid confronting lies from the risk that it may force us to [change ourselves or change our environment](people-changes.md).

Frequently, when we endure [childhood trauma](hardship-ptsd.md), we [lie to *ourselves* so much that we believe it](hardship-worthlessness.md)!

Many times, we're forced to lie.

- We often have to avoid [shame](mind-feelings-shame.md), so we will make "little white lies" to prevent others from knowing we didn't do what we promised, then fix it ourselves.
- This is [habit-forming](habits.md), and can extend to entire [cultures](people-culture.md) that *expect* everyone is lying at least a little.

Because of all this, we frequently assume *falsely* that other people are lying, even when they're not.

## Liars' motivations

Pro-social lies are attempting to promote others' happiness:

- Most lies are pro-social because most people consider them harmless.
- There's a complicated social agreement within most [cultures](people-culture.md) that normalize it.
- Common examples:
  - Affirming someone about something you don't value
  - [Misleading officials](legal-safety.md) to hide someone
  - Making promises that you can't keep
  - Giving false praise (instead of criticism) to prevent hurting someone's feelings
  - Deceptive behavior like magic tricks and illusions
- If it's driven by [love](people-love.md), some lies are actually *good* for society (e.g., misleading a gang, hiding an unjustly persecuted person).

Self-enhancement lies are for personal gain:

- Self-enhancing lies may be embellishment, but also include many types of nonverbal behaviors.
- Most self-enhancement lies are harmless, but can create [unhealthy habits](habits.md).
- Common examples:
  - Owning knock-offs of expensive products
  - [Clothing selection](people-image.md) like embellishing size or padded bras
  - Cosmetic surgery
- Some people can get *very* [creative](mind-creativity-how.md) with self-enhancing lies:
  - Buying a birthday card with something embarrassing you want to buy
  - Crying on command (relax the eyes ~30 seconds, gently rub for ~10 seconds, then keep them open)
  - Wearing a chef's hat or tuxedo and walking rapidly to get through a large group of people
  - Many [negotiation tactics](people-conflicts-negotiation.md)

Selfish lies come from fear:

- The most common lie others catch are when people try to protect themselves.
- People make selfish lies because they're afraid the cost of the truth is too much to pay.
- Selfish lies often [trigger](habits.md) from social pressure or the risk of losing social status.
- Common examples:
  - Redirecting or refocusing the conversation
  - Pretending to not hear someone
  - Acting busy or on the phone when vendors/beggars approach

Antisocial lies are intentionally malicious:

- Antisocial lies are statements and implications designed to sabotage someone else.
- These lies, unquestionably, are always [evil](morality-evil.md).
- If your friend makes antisocial lies, [find a new friend immediately](people-friends.md).
- Often, a liar's reputation can mask an antisocial lie.
- Common examples:
  - Misstate what someone said or did
  - Claim ownership for someone else's achievements
  - Insist someone broke a promise they never made
  - Imply someone is crazy to avoid accountability (gaslighting)

Not everyone lies about the same things:

- Men tend to lie more about their outward status:
  - How much money they make
  - Social power symbols like height or the vehicle they own
  - Relationships they're already in (already married or already dating)
- Women tend to lie more about themselves:
  - Age and weight
  - Their openness to relationship possibilities
- As people gain life experience, they become more clever and their lies are harder to detect.
  - A young person may lie about the industry they work in, but an older person may lie about their job title.

People lie differently online:

- More people are comfortable lying online or via text than in person.
- Generally, the more someone separates their online avatar from their name, the more likely they'll lie.
- People are typically more honest in emails than chat rooms, text messages, or phone conversations.
- Most people tend to use direct deception in-person, but evasion, equivocation, and vagueness on the internet.

There are many [cues for lying](people-lying-cues.md), but none of them are foolproof, and looking specifically for them can create a false-positive.

## Lying is rarely worth it

The truth is uncomfortable, but lying is disastrous.

While most people curate their [appearance](people-image.md), the most well-managed and easily maintained [image](people-image-why.md) very closely reflects [reality](reality.md).

Lying corrupts the truth:

- Even without lying, we have a tenuous grasp on [what is legitimately true](reality.md), and a falsehood will corrupt that [understanding](understanding.md).
- It's nearly a [human universal](humanity-universals.md) that we don't like to maintain falsehoods, and it [creates tremendous risks for us](safety-riskmgmt.md) when we do.
- Since we must spend time working on lies, more lying makes it more difficult to detect the truth.

By lying, you risk permanently ruining your reputation:

- When people find out (and they usually will), they come to believe they can't trust you.
- Liars will lose *far* more reputation than honest people who confess legitimate wrongdoing or failure.
- Even with incredibly high stakes, you can still tell the truth while omitting specific information the other person doesn't need to know.

Liars must maintain more than one story:

- A liar must juggle many [stories](stories-why.md) at once:
  1. What they told Person 1
  2. What they told Person 2
  3. (every other story they told)
  4. The truth they know people know
  5. The truth they hope people don't find out
- The stories are so similar, so it's very difficult to keep track of them all because the details will merge.

Frequent lying becomes habitual:

- [Habits](habits.md) are difficult to break already, but lying is addictive because it can feel like a competition to "outsmart" others.
- Nobody can trust liars, so they have a hard time with [keeping friends](people-friends.md) and [having intimate relationships](relationships-marriage.md).
- Because we're maintaining multiple false stories as part of our experience, lying makes wise decisions harder to discern.

Lying makes it difficult to trust:

- People, naturally, don't trust liars.
- However, when we lie, we also imagine others are doing the same.
- Over time, [distrust](mind-trust.md) creates issues that honest people would otherwise not have.

## Detecting lies has risks

Focusing on lies can make us have trouble [trusting](mind-trust.md) people who deserve our trust.

- It can also be difficult to conceal what you [feel](mind-feelings.md) about them.

Contrary to popular opinion, no single method detects lies:

- Most people think they're excellent lie detectors, but they're usually about 44% accurate.
  - In other words, you can more accurately tell if someone is lying by flipping a coin or disbelieving everyone else's distrust.
  - Even people in jobs that require detecting lies (e.g., police, deal-makers) tend to assume people lie *more* than reality.
- Fiction with liars will dramatically embellish lie-detecting cues to make them incorrect.
  - Most of the cues may be present, but far more subtle and relative to the person's baseline behavior.
- Contrary to popular culture, polygraph lie detectors can't consistently detect liars, but they can force a confession because they *appear* to detect them.
  - Ironically, police officers everywhere *constantly* lie to catch liars, and the myth of the lie detector makes their job easier.

[Getting a confession](people-lying-confession.md) often takes less than an hour if you're prepared, but after about 16 hours, most people will blindly confess to *anything*.

## Getting them to confess

Only get a confession if it provides a tangible benefit:

- Getting a liar to confess is difficult and unrewarding in itself.
- For the sake of your [happiness](mind-feelings-happiness.md) and [success](success-1_why.md), never interact with that person again once you've made hints that you know they're lying.

If someone is lying, calling out their lies to "let the truth be shown" is a complete waste of time.

- They feel entitled to lie, and they won't like your correction because it calls them out.
  - If you call out their lies publicly enough, you may create an enemy.

However, you can definitely have fun with a compulsive liar, even if they don't confess:

1. Talk about something you're very familiar with, but without expressing your full knowledge.
2. Let them share a dramatic story for a while that you are certain has been entirely fabricated.
3. Ask them a question for them to explain how their story can be true when you know of a contradicting fact.
   - e.g., "Oh, you won silver in curling in last year's Winter Olympics? I have a cousin who won the bronze! What did you think of the Winner's Lounge?"
4. From this point, you have control of the conversation because you know their lie and they know you know.
   - You have the choice to destabilize them, you can publicly expose them, or you can leave it alone.
5. If you leave it alone, they'll often feel very uncomfortable, and will be too [afraid](mind-feelings-fear.md) to attack you directly.
   - However, expect them to try to destroy you in retaliation.

The healthiest thing to do in the presence of a liar is far less interesting:

1. Once you know they're lying, behave like you're disinterested in their story.
2. Try to change the subject by asking a question that redirects attention from that story.
3. Make the decision to back away from any further association with them.