While deceiving or duping romantic partners about situations to telling the police official that we didn’t realize how fast we were going away, we are all lying all over the place all the time. Now, before you criticize yourself and give your word never to lie again, calm down and take a breath.
Some lies are not damaging.
A few days ago, a documentary on Discovery channel showed a man comforting a terrified woman on a turbulent flight and lying to her that he was an aeronautics engineer. Not quite a lie? Isn’t it?
Well, some lying may be socially useful. But the problem is, we lie too much in an indiscriminate way. We lie way too much. Most lies start out fairly innocently before falling victim to a slippery slope that ends in a consequential ditch. What’s more, we tend to rationalize our lies.
The more we lie, the more our brains adapt to accommodate our deception. The....
