We find that as soon as people feel that their self-esteem is threatened, they immediately begin to lie at higher levels.“
Feldman has conducted studies in which people lie frequently, with 60 percent lying at least once during a 10-minute
conversation. And lying is not easy. One study concluded that lying takes 30 telling percent longer than the truth.
Recent studies have found that people lie in workplace e-mail more than they did with old-fashioned writing. It's a whole other matter whether people really mean to lie in many instances. Figuring that out requires coming up with a complicated definition of lying.
"Certain conditions have to be in place for a statement to rise to the level of a lie," explains philosophy professor James E. Mahon of Washington and Lee University. "First, a person must make a statement and must believe that the statement is false. Second, the person making the statement must intend for the audience to believe that the statement is true. Anything else falls outside the definition of lying that I have defended."