10. Fibbing Common in Everyday Conversation

Meeting new people can spark nervousness and dread in some individuals; it can elicit eagerness and enthusiasm in others. Most of these folks share a surprising trait, however: they lie. According to study results detailed in the current issue of the Journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 60 percent of the participants lied at least once during a 10-minute conversation, and most fibbed two or three times. Furthermore, when confronted with their falsehoods, many subjects did not even realize that they had been telling tall tales.

To probe this form of social lying, Robert S. Feldman of the University of Massachusetts and his colleagues directed 121 pairs of undergraduates to engage in 10-minute conversations. Telling the students only that the study analyzed how people behave when meeting someone new, the team instructed some subjects to appear likable, some to appear competent, and gave no direct instruction to others. The researchers videotaped the subsequent interaction between each pair of students and then showed them the tape individually, asking both to identify any inaccuracies or lies in their speech. Subjects exhibited surprise at their own dishonest behavior. "When they were watching themselves on videotape, people found themselves lying much more than they thought they had," Feldman notes. The investigators also discovered that women and men seem to tell different sorts of fibs. "Women were more likely to lie to make the person they were talking to feel good, while men lied most often to make themselves look better," Feldman remarks.

Researchers found that untruths ranged from harmlessly agreeing with a partner's views to outrageously claiming to be a rock star. "It's so easy to lie," Feldman says. "We teach our children that honesty is the best policy, but we also tell them it's polite to pretend they like a birthday gift they've been given. Kids get a very mixed message, and it has an impact on how they behave as adults." From stroking egos to puffing oneself up, it seems that as people's social competence grows, so do their noses.

Why Kids Lie?

A behavioral scientist at the University of Arizona is now recommending parents have a serious talk with their kids about lying—but not to tell them that it's always wrong, rather to explain when it can be okay. "We have to get a handle on lying in social relationships early on in kids because it has implications for how they behave down the line," says Wendy Proctor. "A tendency to lie or deceive will affect the way children form and maintain relationships with others. Honesty is the basis of effective communication and healthy relationships. Rather than dismiss all lying as bad, however, we should tailor our socialization messages to reflect that deception is common and frequently socially acceptable."

Proctor bases her advice on research she and her colleagues conducted to learn why children lie. In all, they interviewed 98 schoolchildren last year in Tucson, studying both positive and negative types of lies. They presented the children with different scenarios—say, a bully looking for a child's friend—and then asked whether it would be appropriate to lie. In most cases, the children opted to tell the truth. But when they did choose to fib, it was generally for pro-social purposes—or aimed to benefit someone else, such as a friend confronting a bully. Although the tendency to lie increased with age, children as young as first grade seemed to know the difference between black and white lies. There were no gender differences.

One interesting trend in the data was that children seemed more likely to tell pro-social lies to their peers, but selfish or self-enhancing lies to their mothers. This difference also turned up in a study of college-age students. Proctor cautions that the findings are preliminary. In the future, she hopes to investigate further the roles that parents, culture and socioeconomic factors play in the patterns of lies kids tell.