And it could be that living with the guilt of lying is toxic in itself, especially in extreme cases where we are "living a lie. Suppose the answer to this question is yes. Suppose that those who reduce their weekly lies by one-half lose on average ten pounds, report feeling more confident and content, and end up living on average an additional three years, compared to those who continue lying at the same rate.
Would this reduce the level of mendacity in America? I suspect the answer is a resounding yes. Many of us would tell fewer lies if we thought doing so would make us healthier. Of course, it would not be good news for some sectors of the health care industry, which have a vested interest in collecting revenue from efforts to improve health.
What if the sales of antidepressants, the number psychologist and psychiatrist office visits, and the number of heart surgeries all declined? On the other hand, perhaps pharmaceuticals could be developed that would reduce the impulse to tell falsehoods, and mental health professionals and hospitals could offer tuition-generating courses on how to stop lying.
Whether the health care industry can monetize honesty or not, however, a more fundamental problem remains. Do we want to live in families, communities, or societies where truth telling needs to be incentivized?
Do we want our spouses and children, our friends and neighbors, and our colleagues and associates to be asking themselves on a regular basis, "Really, why shouldn't I lie? Isn't there something inherently wrong with lying? Perhaps the most powerful moral argument for honesty has to do with what the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called "bad faith.
When we lie we tend to distort our own view of reality, and the more often we lie, the more habitual this distortion becomes. Over time, the habit of lying divorces us further and further from reality, so we see less and less clearly the choices before us and what is at stake in them. Eventually, we may find ourselves unable to see what we are really doing and how it is affecting others and ourselves.
We end up leading inauthentic and irresponsible lives. To tell the truth is to live authentically and responsibly, to really live.
At times we may make honest mistakes, misperceiving what is really happening, failing to see things in appropriate context, or even operating unknowingly on deliberate untruths. Whenever possible, however, we should be honest with others and ourselves. It also takes into account what is age appropriate for your son. While white lies are often minor or inconsequential, real lies have far reaching effects.
Real lies tend to initially benefit the liar, too. For example, if Dan took the data his co-worker amassed and presented the project as his own, Dan blatantly lied and acted in a self-serving and clearly untruthful way. When his supervisor learned the truth, Dan was sent to human resources as a consequence.
Overall, it's important to look at the morality and societal acceptance of the type of life. White lies are acceptable and help our society function. Real lies are deemed to be universally wrong.
There are many reasons why people lie. Some common motives for lying include:. A study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience showed that the brain adapts to dishonesty. The more participants engaged in self-serving dishonesty, the more likely that behavior would increase with repetition. Small acts escalated into bigger transgressions. Even seemingly innocuous lies can become a habit, like second nature. In fact, it may become easier than being honest.
That can be very enticing. The second danger of telling too many lies might result in not getting the help you need. For example, saying "I'm fine," which seems like an innocuous fib, masks the fact that you are still struggling on many fronts.
This may preclude others from suggesting you get mental health counseling or you yourself from realizing that you could benefit from therapy. Then you must try to be as honest as you can be with loved ones. We are all human, but that should be the goal. You are not experiencing real intimacy then. Intimacy demands vulnerability and honesty.
You might also be depriving your family of the chance to show you that they see you for all your foibles and accept and love you as you are. Evidence shows that Americans average about 11 lies per week. Another reason to strive to tell the truth and reduce lies?
Anita E. Kelly, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame discovered during her research that participants who reduced lies and tried to live more honestly actually reported improved relationships and better mental and physical health. Participants stopped making excuses for being late or not completing tasks. They also figured out other ways to avoid lying and the results were significant. In these types of situations, lying for the sake of protecting yourself or loved ones is deemed acceptable:.
What if our relatives are grappling with mental health problems or impairment? Sometimes lies are necessary to help them. Challenging someone with severe memory impairment to 'face the truth' of certain situations—even those that seem benign to someone else—can cause agitation and fear, and can break trust, too.
So while honesty is usually the best policy, there are exceptions. If someone lies to you, are you entitled to lie to them in return?
Has the liar lost the right to be told the truth? Human behaviour suggests that we do feel less obliged to be truthful to liars than to people who deal with us honestly. Most moral philosophers would say that you are not justified in lying to another person because they have lied to you. From an ethical point of view, the first thing is that a lie is still a lie - even if told to a liar.
Secondly, while the liar may be regarded as having lost the right to be told the truth, society as a whole still retains some sort of right that its members should use language truthfully. But is it a pardonable lie? The old maxim 'two wrongs don't make a right' suggests that it isn't, and it's clear that even if the liar has lost their right to be told the truth, all the other reasons why lying is bad are still valid. But there is a real change in the ethics of the situation; this is not that a lie to a liar is forgivable, but that the liar himself is not in a morally strong position to complain about being lied to.
But - and it's a big 'but' - even this probably only applies in a particular context - if I tell you lies about the number of children I have, that doesn't entitle you to lie to me about the time of the next train to London, although it would make it very hard for me to complain if you were to lie to me about the number of children in your family.
Nor does it justify lying to someone because you know they are an habitual liar - once again all the other arguments against lying are still valid. There are cases where two people or groups of people willingly engage in a mutual deception, because they think it will benefit them.
Sisela Bok puts it like this:. Such deception can resemble a game where both partners know the rules and play by them. It resembles, then, a pact of sorts, whereby what each can do, what each gains by the arrangement, is clearly understood. An example of this is a negotiation in which both parties will lie to each other 'that's my best price', 'I'll have to leave it then' in a way that everyone involved understands.
If both parties know that the liar's statement is NOT intended to be taken as a definitive and important statement of the truth then it may not count as a sinful lie, because there's no intention to deceive.
There are many cases where no reasonable person expects what is said to them to be genuinely truthful. Incidentally the Ethics web team disagreed amongst themselves as to the status of lies that don't deceive - your thoughts are very welcome. A white lie is a lie that is not intended to harm the person being lied to - indeed it's often intended to benefit them by making them feel good, or preventing their feelings being hurt. For example, I go to a dinner party and my hostess asks how I like the dish she's prepared.
The true answer happens to be 'I think it tastes horrible' but if I say 'it's delicious' that's a white lie. Most people would approve of that white lie and would regard telling the truth as a bad thing to do. But this lie does do some harm - the hostess may feel encouraged to make that dish again, and so future guests will have to suffer from it. White lies weaken the general presumption that lying is wrong and may make it easier for a person to tell lies that are intended to harm someone, or may make it easier to avoid telling truths that need to be told - for example, when giving a performance evaluation it is more comfortable not to tell someone that their work is sub-standard.
Health professionals have to reconcile the general presumption against telling lies with these other principles of medical ethics. While healthcare professionals are as concerned to tell the truth as any other group of people, there are cases where the principles of medical ethics can conflict with the presumption against lying.
Telling the truth is not an explicitly stated principle of most systems of medical ethics, but it is clearly implied by the principle of respect for autonomy - if a patient is lied to, they can't make a reasoned and informed choice, because they don't have the information they need to do so. Respect for patient autonomy is particularly important in the case of people who are terminally ill, as they are likely to be particularly vulnerable to manipulation of the truth.
So why might healthcare professionals want to lie 'for the good of patients', and what are the arguments against this sort of lying? Healthcare professionals must tell the truth and make sure that the patient understands it properly when they are obtaining the patient's consent to a procedure or treatment. If the patient is not told the truth they cannot give 'informed consent' to the proposed course of action. A patient can only give informed consent if they know such things as the truth about their illness, what form the treatment will take, how it will benefit them, the probabilities of the possible outcomes, what they will experience during and after the treatment, the risks and side-effects, and the qualifications and track-record of those involved in the treatment.
There is also evidence that patients do better after treatment if they have a full understanding of both the treatment and the illness, and have been allowed to take some participation and control of the course of their treatment. Search term:. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience.
Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets CSS if you are able to do so. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Ethics guide. On this page Lying and truth-telling Lying and ethical theory Philosophers on lying Lying under serious threat Other types of lying Lying and medical ethics Page options Print this page. Lying and truth-telling Lying A liar should have a good memory Quintilian. O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
Sir Walter Scott, Marmion. Lying and ethical theory Lying and ethical theory Different theories of ethics approach lying in different ways. Consequentialists Utilitarians and lies Consequentialists assess the rightness or wrongness of doing something by looking at the consequences caused by that act. This is hard to do, because: consequences are hard to predict measuring good and bad is hard how do we decide what is good and what is bad?
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