How Often Do People Lie?
By the end of the week, the 147 participants had recorded a total of 1,535 lies in
their diaries (see Table 1). This amounted to two lies a day for the college students, or
one lie in every three of their social interactions, and one lie a day for the people in the
community, or one lie in every five of their social interactions. Of all of the different
people with whom they interacted over the course of the week, the college students lied at
least once to 38%, and the community members lied to 30% .
Of the 77 college students, only one claimed to have told not a single lie. Of the
70 people from the community, only six claimed complete honesty during that one week.
I thought I knew how many people could make that claim if they recorded their lies for a
much longer period of time. And, although the participants in these studies were not
politicians, I knew I had a response to Governor Weickerís insistence that we should
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throw out with the rest of the garbage the idea that all politicians lie. Indeed. We should
replace it with the presumption that all people lie.
But was Governor Weicker and so many others correct in implying that lying is
wrong and unacceptable? Is it reasonable to construe lying as one of the "forms of
deliberate assault upon human beings," as did Bok? To consider these question in an
informed way, it is important to look closely at the specifics of the lies that people tell.