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01/29/2008: "Lying as a way of life"

The results, published in "The Social Psychology of Good and Evil," showed that college students lied at least once to 38 percent of the people they interacted with. Community members lied to 30 percent.

DePaulo also found that some types of people are more likely to lie:

Manipulative people will lie to get what they want.

People-pleasers tend to say what the other person wants to hear.

Extroverts "are more tuned into others, so they notice what other people want to hear, or they want to impress them," DePaulo says.

"In the abstract, it's very easy to say, 'Oh, we value honesty, and you should never lie,'" says DePaulo. But "sometimes in our real lives, our valuing of honesty clashes with something else we also value, like wanting to be gracious or kind or compassionate."

[ Enforcing morality makes lies commonplace. ]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/01/21/social.liars/index.html

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on Wednesday, January 30th, Osama bin Laden said

The problem stems from individualism - i.e. refusal to organize society into natural communities. What we have is a society where all motivations are purely selfish and economic, hence people, often out of necessity, are motivated to deceive one another. In a sane and healthy organic society, concerns would generally be shared among the community rather than individuals.