5 Important Things Everyone Should Know From COM 255: Lying & Deception

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” ― Abraham Lincoln maybe?

1. The #1 reason why people lie is to save face.

No one wants to be embarrassed or humiliated.

2. We are all poor detectors of lying.

We look for the wrong clues, we tend to rely on one clue or behavior, and we do not have a baseline of behaviors. We also have a discrepancy between what we think liars look like/ act like versus what they actually look/act like. Everyone is different.

3. White lies are the more common way to lie.

Trivial lies used to spare feelings or due to politeness.

4. Lying on your resume is a form of deceptive writing.

If employers find out you lied, they might fire you which would suck. Most resume lies deal with education, changing up job titles and dates/descriptions of previous employment etc.

5. Lying and Deception are two different things.

Lying is the conscious alteration of information a person believes to be true in order to significantly change another's perception fro what the deceiver thought they would be without the alteration. Whereas deception is knowingly or intentionally misleading another person.