Effects of Lying
Effects of Telling Lies
Human beings have one thing in common – we all lie. Many of us like to think of ourselves as honest individuals, but what we do not realise is that there are many occasions when we will resort to lying, whether we are aware of it or not. Lying has become a part of our social behaviour such that most of us often think it is okay to do so, without weighing the consequences of our actions. True to what we think, lying can be acceptable, but it depends on the circumstances. There are many reasons for lying: We lie mainly because we want to avoid something from happening, or we are afraid of something; we lie as a joke, for deceptive gains and even sometimes, to protect the people around us. This is especially so when we think that telling those people the “truth” may hurt them, thus we tend to hide the truth by telling them a white lie in order to preserve the relationship. In this case, the lie is often seen as harmless, though it may not necessarily be acceptable to the person being lied at, as some people just prefer the truth, no matter how much it may hurt. There are other forms of lies and what defines a lie is anything that is not the whole truth. Thus, people may lie unconsciously either because they cannot recall the entire truth, or because they think that some information are not necessary and can be omitted. The severity of the consequences for telling lies differs, depending on the type of lie, but these consequences are usually negative.
Lying destroys trust amongst people and results in lost prestige. When trust is lost, it is difficult to earn it back because we tend to assume that a person who has lied once will lie to us again. We then start to put our defences up against that person in order not to be deceived once again. Not only that, sometimes, we also tend to bear a grudge for long periods of time and it takes a while before the person who lied is forgiven, that is, if we ever choose to forgive and forget. The
Human beings have one thing in common – we all lie. Many of us like to think of ourselves as honest individuals, but what we do not realise is that there are many occasions when we will resort to lying, whether we are aware of it or not. Lying has become a part of our social behaviour such that most of us often think it is okay to do so, without weighing the consequences of our actions. True to what we think, lying can be acceptable, but it depends on the circumstances. There are many reasons for lying: We lie mainly because we want to avoid something from happening, or we are afraid of something; we lie as a joke, for deceptive gains and even sometimes, to protect the people around us. This is especially so when we think that telling those people the “truth” may hurt them, thus we tend to hide the truth by telling them a white lie in order to preserve the relationship. In this case, the lie is often seen as harmless, though it may not necessarily be acceptable to the person being lied at, as some people just prefer the truth, no matter how much it may hurt. There are other forms of lies and what defines a lie is anything that is not the whole truth. Thus, people may lie unconsciously either because they cannot recall the entire truth, or because they think that some information are not necessary and can be omitted. The severity of the consequences for telling lies differs, depending on the type of lie, but these consequences are usually negative.
Lying destroys trust amongst people and results in lost prestige. When trust is lost, it is difficult to earn it back because we tend to assume that a person who has lied once will lie to us again. We then start to put our defences up against that person in order not to be deceived once again. Not only that, sometimes, we also tend to bear a grudge for long periods of time and it takes a while before the person who lied is forgiven, that is, if we ever choose to forgive and forget. The