The Liar In Your Life

Have you encountered people who lie to you in your daily life? I am sure that you will recall experiences of where someone lied to you, subsequently struck an emotional or financial impact on you. Whenever we are asked about the event of being lied to or being deceived, we would vividly recall those that gave an emotional or financial impact on us. This is a fact. This is because most often these memories or events leave a deep scar in our lives. For example, you would remember the guy who ran away with your cash when you fall into his trap of investing in a fraud scheme better.

However, lies and deceit do not take only in that kind of form. In fact, all humans yes all humans, you and me alike lie and deceive all the time. It’s just that we don’t notice it. Now, it may strike your mind and wonder why do we all lie? Well, some experts believe that lying and deceit shown by humans are an evolutionary form of deception used by animals that brings benefit to themselves such as how possum plays dead when in danger, how tigers have stripes that matches the grasses to hide effectively during hunting as well as how some butterflies have big eyes pattern on their wings to scare off their predators. We, humans have been said to evolve and bring this form of deceit to a higher level compared to animals.

The first sign of deceit in humans is when babies fake cries or laughing to get attention. As they grow older, their form of deceit and lies often evolve into more complex form in which may also be used to manipulate or hide truths.

A research has been done where a five-year-old child was playing a game where he has to guess what toy is behind a friendly woman’s back who sat behind him. The first one was easy as the child knew it was a toy truck when he heard the sound of fire engine. The second sound was a recorded voice saying “To infinity and beyond!” and the child knew that this is the motto of Disney’s Buzz Lightyear. The sound of the third toy, though, left the child stumped. He couldn’t figure out what toy was it. Just as he was about to give up, the friendly woman said she need to go to the toilet and warned the boy not to peek what toy is behind his back. Guess what happened? The boy couldn’t resist the temptation and turned around to find that is it a Barney doll. As he heard the doorknob rattling he quickly turned around. When the woman asked him whether he had figured it out what the toy was, he happily blurted out that it was a Barney doll. He denied when she asked him whether he’d peeked.

This experiment was repeated with other children and most of them gave the same results. This shows that children already know how to lie in their early years.

Hence, the question here is not to know why we lie since it is innate in us but instead focuses more on how do we benefit from lying and how will it affect ourselves and the people around us.

What do we get when we lie or deceive others or in some case ourselves? Interestingly, the reason to why we deceive or tell lies varies between each individual, commonly to get away with something (mistakes, wrong doings, etc...) and to not hurt other feelings or what we call white lies (something we all do quite often in a day!) We can see how these two separate reasons can overlap; to get away with a mistake IS to not hurt the feelings the person we did mistake to. Hence, there is usually no one solitary reason to why we did it. In fact, to some lying is like a hobby to them, something they enjoy doing or in other words, they gain pleasure by deceiving people.

Apart from that, there are some who would not only deceive the rest around them but also themselves. This group of people deliberately tries to be someone else other than them. For example, a person may believe that he is a policeman where in reality he is not. He may then wear a uniform and carry a gun walking down the streets trying to be a policeman he thinks he is. This person is what we call the impersonator. There are many cases around the world where we often hear someone was caught impersonating someone other than themselves.

Lying and deceiving both are something that should be looked into further and to understand why does it comes in a package when we are born. Perhaps you should sit back and try to recall whether is there any day at all that gone by without you saying a lie? I guess the answer would be none!

Till here then folks!

All information was taken from The Liar In Your Life by Robert Feldman. This is a very good book, very insightful. It covers the topic with thorough explanation and real world examples.

Sorry to bother you all with such a long post. Hope you all enjoyed it ! :P