The Real Truth About Lies(谎言的真谛)

1、The Real Truth About Lies谎言的真谛At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, psychology professor Bella DePaulo got 77 students and 70 townspeople to volunteer for an unusual project. All kept diaries for a week, recording the numbers and details of the lies they told. One student and six Charlot

2、tesville residents professed to have told no falsehoods. The other 140 participants told 1,535.The lies were most often not what most of us would call earth-shattering. Someone would pretend to be more positive or supportive of a spouse or friend than he or she really was, or feign agreement with a

3、relatives opinion. According to DePaulo, women in their interactions with other women lied mostly to spare the others feelings. Men lied to other men generally for self-promoting reasons. Most strikingly, these tellers-of-a-thousand-lies reported that their deceptions caused them little preoccupatio

4、n or regret . Might that, too, be a lie? Perhaps. But there is evidence that this attitude toward casual use of prevarication is common.For example, 20,000 middle-and high-schoolers were surveyed by the Josephson Institute of Ethics-a nonprofit organization in Marina del Rey, Calif., devoted to char

5、acter education. Ninety-two percent of the teenagers admitted having lied to their parents in the previous year, and 73 percent characterized themselves as serial liars, meaning they told lies weekly. Despite these admissions, 91 percent of all respondents said they were satisfied with my own ethics

6、 and character. Think how often we hear the expressions Ill call you or The check is in the mail or Im sorry, but he stepped out. And then there are professions- lawyers, pundits, PR consultants-whose members seem to specialize in shaping or spinning the truth to suit clients needs. Little white lie

7、s have become ubiquitous , and the reasons we give each other for telling fibs are familiar. Consider, for example, a Southern California corporate executive whom Ill call Tom. He goes with his wife and son to his mother-in-laws home for Thanksgiving dinner every year. Tom dislikes her special pumpk

8、in pie intensely . Invariably he tells her how wonderful it is, to avoid hurting her feelings.Whats wrong with that? Tom asked Michael Josephson, president of the Josephson Institute. Its a question we might all ask. Josephson replied by asking Tom to consider the lie from his mother-in-laws point o

9、f view. Suppose that one day Toms child blurts out the truth, and she discovers the deceit. Will she tell her son-in-law, Thank you for caring so much? Or is she more likely to feel hurt and say, How could you have misled me all these years? And what else have you lied to me about? And what might To

10、ms mother-in-law now suspect about her own daughter? And will Toms boy lie to his parents and yet be satisfied with his own character? How often do we compliment people on how well they look, or express our appreciation for gifts, when we dont really mean it? Surely, these nice lies are harmless and

11、 well intended, a necessary social lubricant. But, like Tom, we should remember the words of English novelist Sir Walter Scott, who wrote, What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.Even seemingly harmless falsehoods can have unforeseen consequences. Philosopher Sissela Bok warns

12、 us that they can put us on a slippery slope. After the first lies, others can come more easily, she wrote in her book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. Psychological barriers wear down; the ability to make more distinctions can coarsen ; the liars perception of his chances of being ca

13、ught may warp. Take the pumpkin pie lies. In the first place, it wasnt just that he wanted his mother-in-law to feel good. Whether he realized it or not, he really wanted her to think highly of him. And after the initial deceit he needed to tell more lies to cover up the first one.Who believes it an

14、ymore when theyre told that the person they want to reach by phone is in a meeting? By itself, that kind of lie is of no great consequence. Still, the endless proliferation of these little prevarications does matter.Once theyve become common enough, even the small untruths that are not meant to hurt

15、 encourage a certain cynicism and loss of trust. When (trust) is damaged, warns Bok, the community as a whole suffers; and when it is destroyed, societies falter and collapse.Are all white lies to be avoided at all costs? Not necessarily. The most understandable and forgivable lies are an exchange o

16、f what ethicists refer to as the principle of trust for the principle of caring, like telling children about the tooth fairy, or deceiving someone to set them up for a surprise party, Josephson says. Still, we must ask ourselves if we are willing to give our friends and associates the authority to l

17、ie to us whenever they think it is for our own good.Josephson suggests a simple test. If someone you lie to finds out the truth, will he thank you for caring? Or will he feel his long-term trust in you has been under-mined? And if youre not sure, Mark Twain has given us a good rule of thumb. When in

18、 doubt, tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.译文:谎言的真谛在夏洛特斯维尔的弗吉尼亚大里，心理学教授贝拉德帕罗组织了一次由77名学生和70名市民志愿参加的特别活动。所有参加者要记一周的日记，记录下自己撒谎的次数和细节。1名学生和6名夏洛特斯维尔的居民自称没有撒过谎。另外140名参加者共汁撒谎1535次。大部分谎言我们大多数人常常不认为是什么惊天动地的。有人对配偶或是对朋友表现出虚情假意，或对某位亲属的观点佯装赞同。依德帕罗之见，女土们在相互交往中主要是为不伤对方面子而撒谎，男士们一

19、般则是为了抬高自我而说谎。令人极为惊奇的是，这 1000多条谎盲的制造者们声称，他们对自己的欺骗行为“不大在乎或不觉愧疚”。难道这也是在撒谎?或许是吧。不过，确有证据表明，人们对随便使用谎言的这种态度是很常见的。例如，加州马里纳-戴尔雷的一个致力于人格教育的非营利性组织约瑟夫森伦理道德研究所对两万名中学生进行过调查。92的青少年承认一年中对父母撒过谎，73把自己视为“连续撒谎的人”，也就是说他们每星期都撒谎。尽管如此，受测人中“对自己的道德和人品表示满意”的却占到了91。想想我们是多么经常地听到这些话：“我会打电话给你”、“支票马上汇来”、“对不起，他出去了”。还有那些以律师、专家和公关顾问为

20、职的人们，他们的专职似乎就是编造事实以满足客户的需要。无关紧要的小谎言无处不在，而我们撒谎的理由也大同小异。看看这个例子，是关于南加州的一个公司经理的，我就叫他汤姆吧。他每年感恩节都要携妻带子回岳母家吃饭。汤姆十分不喜欢岳母做的“风味独特”的南瓜馅饼，但为了不伤她面子，他总是对她说那是多么好吃。“这有什么不好？”汤姆问约瑟夫森研究所的所长迈克尔约瑟夫森。可能我们每个人都会问这样的问题。约瑟夫森要汤姆站在岳母的立场上考虑一下他的谎言。假设有一天，汤姆的孩子一不小心说漏了嘴，使她了解了实情。她会对女婿说“谢谢你考虑这么周到”吗?还是更有可能感到受了伤害并说“你怎么能骗我这么多年?你还对我撒了哪些谎?”汤姆的岳母现在对她自己的女儿又会有什么看法呢?汤姆的儿子会不会也对自己的父母撒谎同时还对自己的品行沾沾自喜呢?我们恭维他人如何漂亮，对收到的礼物表示感激，其实心里并不这么想，这种情况多么司空见惯?毫无疑问，这些“美丽的谎言”于他人无害且初衷良好，是社交中不可缺少的润滑剂。但是，像汤姆一样，我们应该记住英国小说家沃尔特司各脱爵