Why do people lie?
What diary and survey counts show about how often people lie, what the lies are for, and why a small untruth rarely feels like lying.
Answer to the question
Why do people lie?
People lie to meet a goal that the truth would block, most often to protect their own image or avoid embarrassment. In a week-long diary study of 147 people, lies were common, small and mostly about the teller, and a national survey of 1,000 US adults found that a small group tells a large share of them.
Key takeaways
- In a week-long diary study of 77 students and 70 community adults, students averaged 1.96 lies a day and community adults 0.97 (DePaulo and colleagues, 1996).
- Lies that served the teller were about twice as common as lies told for someone else, and most were about the teller's own feelings, opinions or image.
- In a national survey of 1,000 US adults, 59.9 per cent reported no lies in the previous 24 hours, and about 5.3 per cent of adults accounted for half of all lies reported (Serota and colleagues, 2010).
- Mazar, Amir and Ariely proposed that people gain a little from bending the truth while keeping a view of themselves as honest.
- Aja Raden's The Truth About Lies treats duplicity and credulity as two sides of one coin.
A colleague asks how the presentation went. The answer comes back that it went fine, though the speaker lost his place 2 times and skipped the last 3 slides. Nothing was gained by saying so, nobody was harmed, and the conversation moved on within seconds. Why do people lie in moments like this? The studies that counted such moments found that people lie in small ways on an ordinary day, and that the lie is usually about the person telling it.
How often do people lie?
Seven days of diary keeping gave the first detailed count. In a study of 77 college students and 70 adults from the community, each person recorded every lie they told for a week. The students averaged 1.96 lies a day and the community adults 0.97. About one social interaction in three among the students contained a lie, and about one in five among the adults. Bella DePaulo and her colleagues also asked how the lies felt to the people who told them. Participants rated them as not very serious and only lightly planned, and most said they would tell the same lie again.
An average hides how unevenly lying is spread. When Kim Serota, Timothy Levine and Franklin Boster surveyed 1,000 adults across the United States, the mean was 1.65 lies in the past 24 hours, yet 59.9 per cent reported none at all. Among those who did lie, the mean was 4.11. About 5.3 per cent of adults accounted for half of all the lies reported, and the top 1 per cent for 22.7 per cent.
The same team reanalysed earlier diary and experiment data and ran a survey of 225 students, and the shape held. In the student survey the mean was 2.34 lies a day and the median was 1, and the 13 heaviest liars, 5.8 per cent of the sample, told 22.4 per cent of the lies. Most people lie a little and a few people lie a great deal. Older respondents reported fewer lies than younger ones, and the students reported more than the national sample.
That spread is part of why listeners tend to start from belief, a habit measured in How Good Is Human Lie Detection. Most of the people we talk to on a given day told us the truth, and those who do not are not spread evenly across the population. When people lie often, they are a small part of the group, and when most people lie, they do so rarely.
What are lies for?
In the diaries, lies that served the teller were about twice as common as lies told for someone else. Self-centred lies made up 45.5 per cent of the students' lies and 56.7 per cent of the community adults', and other-oriented lies made up 25.7 and 24.5 per cent. Most of the self-centred lies were told for psychological reasons, such as protecting an image or avoiding embarrassment, and not for material gain. Nearly all lies, 88.3 per cent for students and 90.8 per cent for adults, were at least partly about the liar, and feelings and opinions were the most common subjects. When people lied about feelings, they usually claimed to feel more positively than they did.
Timothy Levine's Duped describes the motive behind this pattern in plain terms: the goals behind lies are the same goals behind honest speech, and a lie appears when the truth stands in the way of one of them. The presentation answer fits. The aim was to close the topic and keep a good standing, and the truth would have worked against both. Claiming to feel more positively than we do is also a way of agreeing, and the pull to agree with those around us is the subject of Why do people conform.
The diaries add a small detail about setting. Interactions containing a lie were rated as slightly less intimate than those without one, and a larger share of them took place by telephone than of the interactions without a lie.
Why do small lies feel small?
Nina Mazar, On Amir and Dan Ariely proposed that people want to see themselves as honest and also enjoy the small gains of bending the truth, so they overstate only as far as lets them keep both. They called the idea self-concept maintenance. Across six experiments they pointed to two mechanisms: attention to moral standards drifts away, and people can categorise their own behaviour flexibly. The experiments concern small gains from overclaiming more than everyday talk, and applying them to speech is our reading. Read alongside the diary counts, the idea suggests why a small untruth that protects a good impression leaves the teller's picture of themselves as an honest person untouched.
Aja Raden's The Truth About Lies comes at the question from the listener's side. She argues that duplicity and credulity are two sides of one old coin: the readiness to accept what we are told is what lets knowledge pass from person to person, and it is also what lets a lie work.
The answer about the presentation draws on that readiness. The colleague had no reason to check, and checking would have cost more than the answer was worth. Most listeners in most conversations do the same, which is why a small untruth about a feeling passes without a second thought. Whether people lie more effectively after first persuading themselves is a separate question, examined in Is Self-Deception a Persuasion Tool, and the diary counts do not depend on it.
What do the counts say about trust?
The counts support a small set of plain readings of everyday lying:
- Most people tell few lies on a given day, and many tell none.
- A small group accounts for a large share of the lies told.
- Everyday lies are mostly about the teller's own feelings, opinions and image.
- The people who tell them rate them as minor and lightly planned.
Taken one at a time, these readings are modest. People lie in order to meet a goal the truth would block, and in daily life that goal is mostly social: a smooth exchange, a better impression, an embarrassment avoided. Across the sources, the lies that were tallied served an exchange, an image or a relationship, and the same people told the truth whenever it served those aims equally well. When the diary participants were asked whether they would tell the same lie again, most said they would, which suggests that to the teller the lie had done its job and the exchange could move on.
Common questions
Why do people lie?
People lie to meet a goal that the truth would block, most often to protect their own image or avoid embarrassment. In a week-long diary study, self-centred lies were about twice as common as lies told for someone else.
How often do people lie?
It varies by person. In a diary study, students averaged 1.96 lies a day and community adults 0.97, while in a national survey of 1,000 US adults 59.9 per cent reported no lies in the previous 24 hours.
Do a few people tell most of the lies?
In a national survey, about 5.3 per cent of adults accounted for half of all the lies reported, and earlier diary and experiment data showed a similar skew.
Do honest people ever lie?
Researchers who studied small overclaims found that people tend to gain a little while keeping a view of themselves as honest. The work was on overclaiming for small gains, so it is a guide to everyday untruths and not a measure of them.
Sources
Raden, A. The Truth About Lies. Seed book; vault hub Books/The Truth About Lies.
DePaulo, B. M., Kashy, D. A., Kirkendol, S. E., Wyer, M. M., & Epstein, J. A. (1996). Lying in everyday life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(5), 979-995. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.70.5.979 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.5.979
Serota, K. B., Levine, T. R., & Boster, F. J. (2010). The prevalence of lying in America: Three studies of self-reported lies. Human Communication Research, 36(1), 2-25. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01366.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01366.x
Mazar, N., Amir, O., & Ariely, D. (2008). The dishonesty of honest people: A theory of self-concept maintenance. Journal of Marketing Research, 45(6), 633-644. doi:10.1509/jmkr.45.6.633 https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.45.6.633
Levine, T. R. (2020). Duped. University of Alabama Press. Vault hub Books/Duped.