We all were raised not to lie. Lying is bad. We have been taught that way since we were children. A unique paradox exists between telling a lie and speaking your mind. If you do something wrong, it is expected that we fess up and admit the wrongdoing. However, what about when we receive a gift we do not like, or a friend tries a new recipe that is a total flop? We lie. We tell them we love the dish, or we like the new gift to avoid being rude when in reality we may have just wanted the gift receipt. But we also lie to protect people. There are times when dishonesty is the best policy in the interests of our relationships and a growing body of research shows this to be true.
Deception and trust are directly related in a relationship. In a cross-disciplinary paper about trust, trust was simply defined as “a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another.” When we deceive people it is expected that trust is lost, however there are a variety of circumstances when trust is gained or stays the same.
There are many different types of lies and they serve different purposes. Research done by professors at The Wharton School studied prosocial lies. Prosocial lies deceive people but result in increased trust. Many different types of trust and deception scenarios were examined; lying that benefits both parties in an interpersonal exchange was deemed beneficial for trust on both sides. In fact, a corresponding study done with lottery tickets and cash prizes demonstrated that individuals that were deceived trusted the individuals that lied to them but yielded a greater reward more than they trusted the the individuals that were honest to them but came with a weaker reward.
Research done in Management Science showed that people are less willing to lie about things that provide no benefit to them but provide value to others. It is worth noting that this research demonstrates that people are willing to lie to others when it has specific benefits. This goes against the cultural norm that honesty is always the best policy.
Benevolence based trust is essentially trust that is based on good intentions and when we believe that our deceiver was well intentioned we are more likely to trust them after that. That is the exact phenomenon that is occurring here. Outside of rewards and mutual benefits, we deceive people to avoid harm. Anti-Absolutism is a term used in philosophy to state that even though lying is deemed morally wrong it is not always wrong. Philosophers have long stated that aversion to feeling harm is at the root of ethics and we are certainly willing to lie to avoid feeling this harm.
Lastly, common questions arise surrounding what causes this desire to lie. Compassion and empathy emotions are felt by the brain and severely impact how the brain makes decisions. Compassion is what increases the probability that someone will prosocially lie. The American Psychological Association showed in two joint studies that compassion drives prosocial lying. When we feel empathy toward someone we are more likely to lie in their favor. Lying is often taught as a moral fallacy, however, there are certain circumstances where lying can be beneficial.
