When Is a Lie a Good Thing?

Did you know people may lie to appear to be honest?

Hmm.  Who do we know who might do that (or maybe just lie because they're breathing)?  It's the same person who always says, "Honestly," then follows it with a lie.

Anyway, a new study has discovered that people may lie to appear honest if events that turned out in their favor seem too good to be true, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association, as reported by newswise.com. 

“Many people care greatly about their reputation and how they will be judged by others, and a concern about appearing honest may outweigh our desire to actually be honest, even in situations where it will cost us money to lie,” the web site quotes lead researcher Shoham Choshen-Hillel, PhD, a senior lecturer at the School of Business Administration and Center for the Study of Rationality at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

“Our findings suggest that when people obtain extremely favorable outcomes, they anticipate other people’s suspicious reactions and prefer lying and appearing honest over telling the truth and appearing as selfish liars.” 

The study found similar findings about lying to appear honest in a series of experiments conducted with lawyers and college students in Israel, as well as online participants in the United States and United Kingdom. The research was published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 

"In one experiment with 115 lawyers in Israel, the participants were told to imagine a scenario where they told a client that a case would cost between 60 and 90 billable hours," newswise explains. "The lawyer would be working in an office where the client wouldn’t know how many hours were truly spent on the case. Half of the participants were told they had worked 60 hours on the case while the other half were told they worked 90 hours. 

"Then they were asked how many hours they would bill the client. In the 60-hour group, the lawyers reported an average of 62.5 hours, with 17% of the group lying to inflate their hours. In the 90-hour group, the lawyers reported an average of 88 hours, with 18% of the group lying to report fewer hours than they had actually worked.   

"When asked for an explanation for the hours they billed, some lawyers in the 90-hour group said they worried that the client would think he had been cheated because the lawyer had lied about the number of billable hours."

So I guess this doesn't really apply to our liar-in-chief.  But is lying ever a good thing?

Here are some: When

-- your best friend if these jeans make her look fat

--your husband asks if you'd like to have lunch with his mother 

--you cracked up the car and said it was the other driver's fault

--your husband asks if you think he's a failure because he just lost another client

Oh my.  I'm guilty on all of these.

But there are, of course, white lies, and that's where being honest would probably hurt someone's feelings.  

According to Google, we lie when "the good consequences of the lie are much greater than the bad consequences. Such lies are told to protect innocent persons who would otherwise suffer injustice. Such lies are told to prevent irreversible harm being done."

So I guess some lies are good, and some, not so good.  Just wish people in power would figure that out.