Renee Rosenow

Liar.

Liar.

Pants on fire.

Nose as long as a telephone wire.

With so many negative connotations, why would anyone choose to lie?

According to assistant professor of psychology Jeffrey Goodman, the majority of lies are for benign reasons, often to smooth social interactions.

“For example, let’s say someone says, ‘Do you want to come to my party this weekend? It’s really important to me. Will you come?’ Most of us, most people would say, ‘sure,’ even if we never plan to come,” Goodman said.

The other big function of lies, he added, is to avoid situations such as blame, harm, further accusation and being dumped, among other reasons.

“Well, whenever telling the truth is going to rock the boat, so to speak, with any of your social relationships, if telling the truth could anger your partner or if it could erode trust that you have or closeness that you have with your parents, I think those are the instances in which you see most lies happen, when it would be more hurtful to tell the truth than to simply lie,” Goodman said.

Meanwhile, Goodman said that little white lies are the most common type of lie to tell.

One form of a white lie is over exaggeration, which is something everyone is prone to, in his opinion.

Goodman said he is also interested in “bull****ing” which occurs when someone talks about subjects they do not understand fully or know at all. While he does not consider that to be intentional lying, it falls under the category of smoothing social interactions.

But for some people, lying isn’t just about deception in social interactions; it’s about making a person more worthwhile in someone else’s eyes, said senior Kaci Kufalk.

“I think people lie because they think that the real response would make them uninteresting to other people,” she said.

Calling the bluff

“Lying depends on the people you’re with at the time,” Kufalk said.

“I think if you’re sitting down . and having a long conversation with somebody you really don’t know that well, I would say that there’s a lie in there, maybe a small white lie,” she said, adding that it’s harder to lie to people who know you well.

If a person is caught in a lie, deciding whether or not to call them out on it depends on the role they play in your life and often, the status they have, according to Goodman.

“Would you call your boss out, would you call a professor out, would you call someone you respected out on the line (about a lie)?” he said.

Seeing the signs

When Pinocchio lied, his nose grew.

In real life, the signs of a lie aren’t quite as obvious, but according to Goodman, they often depend on the type of lie.

In the case of a little white lie, he said he would have a difficult time discerning the truth from the lie and that most people aren’t able to catch the lie about 50 percent of the time.

On the other hand, bigger lies have a language all their own, he said.

“Lies that people are truly trying to cover up are subject to cues that can actually leak out of non-verbal channels more than controlled verbal channels,” Goodman added.

“It is easier to concentrate on the words coming out during a lie,” Goodman said, adding that since people concentrate more on the words as they feel guilty or anxious, they often leak out bizarre body movements.

“So, if a person wouldn’t normally use their hands a lot, but suddenly they’re using their hands or if they’re averting eye contact with you more than normal, those are all . indications that people would lie,” he said, adding that people’s voices tend to raise up in octave while telling a lie.

Kufalk said she is able to tell if someone is lying when the person is uncomfortable with the conversation, or they lack enough details in a story.

A good liar, in her opinion, is someone who can control themselves and their lie.

“Being able to make a conversation as if you’re telling the truth, like maintaining eye contact and giving details that seem real and are believable,” she said. Also, it is important to remember that a lie has been told.

Kufalk discussed a time when she lied and was caught not only because it was a bad lie, but because she showed signs of lying and a lack of forethought.

“I did not plan out my lie, she said.They could read around it, there were missing pieces in the story.”

The most serious of all lies

Pathological liars, who lie for their own purposes, have a major problem in Kufalk’s opinion.

“I think it’s a problem that they unfortunately need to fix,” Kufalk said. “People may not know them really for who they are, people may know them just as a lie or what they make them believe they are.”

Pressure to succeed . by lying?

While lying isn’t encouraged by society, Kufalk said, she thinks there is a certain amount of pressure from society to succeed and some people feel they need to lie in order to do that.

This also occurs among students. Kufalk said that a common lie among students is how well they did on an exam or in a class, falsely saying that they earned an A instead of the C they actually received.

“It makes them look better, and I think there’s pressure to really succeed and probably easier for them to lie about it than to tell someone they actually didn’t do so well,” she said.

In Goodman’s opinion, common lies by students include claiming they put a lot of time into their studying or saying they tried really hard.

However, in society, Goodman said, there’s two ways to think about lying. While lying should be discouraged and the liar should be publicly shamed, it is a little bit two-faced.

“In some ways, it makes us all a little bit hypocritical when we feel