LIARS AND THE PEOPLE WHO ARE LIED TO

Excerpt from: Truth About Lies: They Tell a Lot About a Liar

By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/05/health/psychology/05BEHA.html?ex=1375416000&en=5e44c47e987396ad&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

"For some, the aim of lying is to feel better about themselves. A successful businessman told me that he routinely exaggerated his accomplishments. He would inflate his test scores and claim that he had won athletic competitions when he had really placed only second or third."

"Perhaps the most interesting liars are people with antisocial personality disorder. Antisocial people have deficient or absent consciences that allow them to engage in all kinds of mischief with little or no guilt. What's intriguing is that antisocial people seem to have fundamentally different emotional and biological responses from others. For example, researchers have found that antisocial subjects have diminished responses to facial expressions of sadness or fear and that their response to fear is generally blunted."

This is very interesting. I believe that lies tell a great deal about the liar who tells them. The crazy part is, once the lies begin, it's like eating just one Oreo, it simply doesn't stop. Now, the liar must exert the energy to cover one lie with another and another. It becomes much easier and more commonplace to lie. It doesn't seem like that big of a deal to lie to that person anymore.

The whole concept of lies and why they're told is so interesting to me, that I had to do my project on something relating to that.

Please feel free to blog and add to this interesting topic!

Dennis-"Mark Twain used to say, when in doubt tell the truth. It's obviously a lot easier than lying." I follow this rule, almost to the T (except for acceptable little white lies).

anthropological_linguistics_view_of_lying

secret clearance (don't lie)