![]() One 2016 poll found that the British public trust politicians less than estate agents, bankers and journalists.Īnd despite the fact that we now frequently expect lies from those in power, it remains challenging to spot them in real time, especially so if they lie by paltering. The public are clearly sick of being lied to and trust in politicians is plummeting. We can see the problems this sort of thinking can cause reflected in society today. "We show evidence they are making a mistake," says Rogers. "We want to achieve our narrow objective – – but we also want people to see us as ethical and honest." He says these two goals are in tension and by paltering, people believe they are being more ethical than outright lying. It happens because we constantly have so many competing goals, suggests Rogers. Paltering is perhaps so commonplace because it is seen as a useful tool. Both statements are true but mask the reality of the unpopular property and the dodgy car. Or the used car salesman who says a car started up extremely well on a frosty morning, without disclosing that it broke down the week before. Consider the estate agent who tells a potential buyer that an unpopular property has had "lots of enquiries" when asked how many actual bids there have been. While it's common in politics, so too is it in everyday life. And this happens more often than you might think. It is when individuals use lies to manipulate others or to purposely mislead that it is more worrying. DePaulo, a psychologist at the University of California Santa Barbara, says that the participants in her study were not aware of how many lies they told, partly because most were so "ordinary and so expected that we just don't notice them". ![]() ![]() Many of the lies were fairly innocent, or even kind, such as: "I told her that she looked good when I thought that she looked like a blimp." Some were to hide embarrassment, such as pretending a spouse had not been fired. Out of the 147 participants in her original study, only seven said they didn’t lie at all - and we can only guess if they were telling the truth. ![]() She discovered this by asking participants for one week to note down each time they lied, even if they did so with a good intention. She found that each of us lies about once or twice a day. In 1996 one researcher, Bella DePaulo even put a figure on it.
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