Broadly defined, 'lying includes intentional falsification and deceitful concealment'. Also defined, lying is a perfectly ordinary event. Whether willing or not, People lie about 1.5 times each day. When we have first encounter with someone, we lie three times in ten minutes. Liars lie, but they are not alone. Ordinary people who value and practice a high degree of honesty also lie. Physicians and nurses lie to patients to ease their distress. Social psychologists lie to research subjects in studies of human behavior. Lie is inevitably needed and lie is instinct of human to achieve or protect something.
Research
Through extensive empirical studies of adults' and children's motives for lying, researcher Paul Ekman compiled a list of nine different reasons people lie. According to Ekman, common reasons people lie are to avoid punishment and to obtain rewards. People also lie to protect others from punishment, to protect themselves and others from the threat of physical harm, to get out of an awkward social situation, to avoid embarrassment, to maintain privacy and to exercise power over others. People lie to maintain their privacy. Philosopher David Nyberg has also recognized the privacy motive, noting that "we have learned to use deception and to gain and protect the privacy."
Many experiments have shown that people do indeed burnish their estimation of their talent, autonomy, and rationality. One example is the Lake Wobegon effect, named after the mythical town in which all the children are above average： a majority of people rate themselves above average in any trait that matters to them. This example can show that we want to have our cushion to protect us from being hurt from the harsh realities: we have optimal margin of illusion to protect us.
Intellectual evolution of human is established by lying is social intelligence hypothesis. In 1976, Nicholas Humphrey who is psychologist brought forward this view in Social Skill Of Intelligence. Man's remote ancestors are ensured their safety because they were a complex group compared to other primates. However, competition for food and mate became more fiercer. The more bigger a group is, the more complex lie is. Thanks to this process, intelligence of human is also developed. Self deception was favorable to survival and spread to an evolutionary process. Because of self deception we became 'born liar.'
Refutation
Lying to protect the privacy is not always a morally acceptable departure from the general principle of truthfulness. Crime such as child molestation, sexual harassment or exploitation, privacy is no excuse or justification for lying.
My qualified defense is that lying sometimes is a morally justifiable response to others seeking information. Not only do we make exceptions to the prohibition against lying; sometimes we enthusiastically approve of it. If a doctor tells a bereaved husband that his wife died instantly in the crash, rather than the truth – that she spent her last hours in horrific pain – we applaud the doctor’s compassion. When a football manager convinces his team of his complete confidence in their ability to recover from two goals down at half-time, even though he is inwardly despairing, we call it inspirational leadership. We call the lies we like ‘white lies’. White lies can be morally acceptable from the general principle of truthfulness.
conclusion
What’s certain is that our ability to deceive is innate, and false speech comes naturally to our lips. ‘The human capacity to lie,’ says the literary critic and humanist philosopher George Steiner, is ‘indispensable to the equilibrium of human consciousness and the development of man in society.’ Like it or not, we are all born liars. However we have to use lie at accurate circumstance. Even though we are born liars, we should not justify lying.
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