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Why do some people feel they need to lie? In a word: fear. Fear is a major motivator in encouraging people to lie. People lie because they are afraid of the consequences of telling the truth. People will invent and spread falsehoods in order to make their audience look at them in a positive light, or to make some other person look "bad".

One aspect of the fear motive is fear of punishment. People will lie if they have broken a rule (whether law, a more, or a promise) because they do not want other people to know that they've done something wrong. This could be as simple as a child breaking their mother's favorite vase and then inventing a story to deflect blame from themselves. The child lies in order to avoid being punished by their parent. Similarly, for many years people have hidden or lied about their ethnicity, religious or political views, or sexuality in order to avoid threats and violence (both verbal and physical). The cost of being dishonest is often outweighed by staying safe.

Sometimes we lie to friends, colleagues, or family because we are afraid of hurting their feelings. Imagine that your friend Bob asks you to attend a concert where Bob is giving a solo singing performance. Being his friend, you attend the concert and listen attentively. To your horror, you find that Bob consistently sings in the wrong key, has no sense of rhythm, and always sings in a loud voice. Afterward, Bob corners you and asks you what you thought of his performance. In this situation, many of us will be tempted to tell a white lie and try to find some positive aspects of his performance. However, we will not want to tell Bob than he sang out of tune, out of rhythm, and far too loudly: we don't want to make our friend feel bad, after all.

Fear of rejection is probably the third important motivator that leads people to lie. Similar to fear of punishment, we lie because we want to avoid pain or embarrassment. Specifically, we want to avoid losing people's love and respect by revealing some unattractive aspect of ourselves. In one example, an ambitious young executive may pretend to love football and to be knowledgeable about the sport in order to maintain friendships and acceptance among the other management peers at his company. He will be so afraid of being rejected and ostracized by his peers that he will feign interest in something he actually despises and knows little about. In another example, a girl who's started dating a boy who (coincidentally enough) loves football may pretend to be very interested in the sport when she isn't. Why? Because she's afraid of getting dumped. This girl is afraid that her new boyfriend will reject her if she doesn't share one of his passions.

Fear of hurting or being hurt drives many people to lie. It is a shame that in societies where honesty is upheld as a virtue, there are countless disincentives to being honest. The person who can freely, and respectfully, tell the truth may be the strongest of us all.

Learn more about this author, Mark Dykeman.
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