Why do people lie?

I believe that people have different reasons for telling a lie. first of all, they may not be able to face the truth and a lie is easier to live. also, a lie can be a way to appease someone else. it doens't make telling a lie the right thing to do in any situation. it is all about the choices we make.

hi whisper! i try to be honest in my self and to other people, if possible i do not like to lie, i do not want to hurt other people , i do not want other to be feel sad because i lie,

They think it is due to fear. They are afraid if they tell the truth, they will get in worse trouble then if they lie. It is also about immaturity. And what happens is when they finally tell the truth, the one whom they lied to gets even angrier and instead of thinking it is because they lied in the first place, they think it is because they finally told the truth. So the wrong thing is blamed. I try to be honest, but then sometimes I think maybe if I did fib, it would have been better. Much of the time, I keep silent. The trouble is sometimes I am confused and my imagination gets the better of me so I will say I did or did not do something without intending to fib.

Many years back now, I had a moment that changed this for me. I never realized it before then, but without truth... there is nothing. There is simply... nothing. Truth is everything. I met this person online. I 'assume' it was a girl. I don't know anymore. I was not interested in this girl. It was just a friend online. But over the course of about a month, I got 3 different stories about who this person was. Each story was completely different. One story was she was just out of college and wanted to be a singer. Another was a lady that was engaged to a man, but he had broken off the engagement. The last one was a married woman with two kids. Each story contradicted the others. Finally, I asked her what was up with these stories. She told me that when she is online, she likes to pretend she is someone else. No truth. I realized... I had no interest in talking to her at all. Why bother? If she told me it was sunny outside, I would wonder if this was her made up world? Or if she was pretending to be at a sunny place? Or if it was actually sunny somewhere. What was the truth? Who knows. I had nothing to talk with her about. She was in her fictional fantasy land, who knows if anything she had said was true. Without truth, there is nothing. No relationship. No common ground. No connection between people. Nothing. Take fixing my car. I brought my car to a repair shop that I had taken it to for years. After I got it back, I found that one of the hub-caps on the tires, was broken. They broke it. I found where they had tried to glue it. Now this is a $15 cheap hub cap on a tire. When I asked them about it, they said it was broken before they got it... which I knew was wrong. (I had personally taken all the hub caps off a few weeks before. They were all fine) They lied. I have never gone back there. No Truth. If I can't trust them with something as pathetic as a $15 hub cap, how can I trust them with something more expensive, like fixing my car? I'll never take my car to that repair shop again. Without truth, there is nothing.

Very tough question! I think people lie to save themselves some temporary awkwardness or embarrassment at the moment, without thinking about what the impact of this lie may be in the future. I try very hard to never lie, if I cannot tell the truth for some reason, I would rather say nothing at all. Of course, lying by omission also exists, that is to say, if it is necessary to say the truth in some situation, and you don't say anything, that is also a type of lying.

there is no proper answer for this... Y people lie? it is not common question its uncommon question to answer so correct.. its all of nature....

I think people lie out of fear and/or selfishness. They are afraid that to tell the truth will hurt someone's feelings . They are afraid that by telling the truth they will get into trouble. Cowards lie because they are incapable of taking responsibility for their actions. Some people lie because they have no respect for anyone; they care not for anyone else nor for the consequences of their lie.

That is a good question. I believe it's best to tell the truth no matter what. I had a friend and she constantly lied about everything and I really dont know why.

Once when we had not been married very long, my husband accused me of lying to him. I just stared at him blankly. It had never occurred to me to lie. I found out later that we had been raised differently. To have me tell someone that he's not here when he was right there in his chair was perfectly all right to him, but it wasn't all right with me. We've had more disagreements about that than anything else.

I do not lie. There is no point in it. If you have to lie to avoid confronting a problem then maybe you should have never did what you did in the first place to get you into this situation. I feel people lie because the truth may hurt. Which in most cases they do. They also lie to avoid being confronted by someone you care about or of importance. I say take what is coming to you if it does not kill you it will only make you stronger and more educated.

You right, friend. Lie will make us hurt. But there is what they called white lie which is acceptable sometimes. I don't know why people lie. My opinion in that words. People lie because this is an instinct behavior by many. They lied to live and escape from any much damage into their lives...

Each person would ever lied. Lie no matter how small, ever conducted. Everyone has their own reasons, why should lie. There are people who lie, to protect yourself, you are lying for good reason, and there are still many reasons to lie.

People lie because it is easy than saying truth. Some people have habit of lie. For a one lie we have lie hundred times. But a truth solve all the problems. It is my efforts not to lie but some time I cannot avoid it.

People lie to feel better about themselves. Some make small exaggerations, improving upon their status in life. Some make larger exaggerations, expanding upon their lives into something larger than life. And then there are those who will exaggerate in unbelievable amounts, seeking to inject humor into what they view as a less than interesting life. Some people lie thinking they will gain something, or at least not loose something. Some people lie without even understanding that they are lying. While it is best to be honest, truth can sometimes be more painful than the lie...a loved one mutters something under his/her breath...words if spoken out loud that would wound a heart, words that while true for only a moment do not hold true for the entire hour. Sometimes we lie so we do not have to say or repeat things we know we will soon regret.

i know there is a psychological disorder known as compulsive/pathological lying. If a person is like that, they will need professional help because they cannot help themselves from lying. There are also people who lies because they dont want to face the consequences of their actions. there are those who are afraid to hurt others feelings so they lie. Whatever the reason is, lying is not acceptable. So I try to be honest all the time.

As a Zen practitioner and therapist, I have studied the tendency to lie. In Zen we deal in absolutes, we are either lying or telling the truth. This is done usually out of some sort of fear. The fear could be great or small. For instance if you see someone who is wearing what you believe to be an awful outfit, but they seem very proud of it, it may difficult to tell absolute truth because there is a fear. Not a big-deal fear, but a fear of offending them. It is easier to say that it's nice, than to say it is hideous and doesn't suite them at all. It is not easy to tell the absolute truth all of the time. The part of this is that the mind exists on a lie, meaning that what we may totally believe it a lie. In Zen, the truth is that whenever we judge another person, we are judging our self. But we totally believe that we are judging and perhaps blaming another person for something that upsets us. This is not so. We can only perceive the other person as part of our awareness, which is our self and then we create our ideas of what they are like, but that still isn't truth, it is only our ideas about them. So judging others is judging our own awareness which we believe to be our self! It's a neat trap, if you can understand what I'm saying. Most of life, when we are strongly identified with our self being separate from others in the world, is therefore a lie. But no-one will believe you if you were to realize this, because believing is not truth either, only realization and experiencing is! As a Zen practitioner, I am as honest as living in this world permits me to be, and to tell absolute truth is a great challenge, whilst the mind keeps interfering! Nothing wrong or right about that, so it's best not to worry about it. Can we really say that there is truth in the world everywhere we look? I think there may be more untruth than truth in the world. That's is a mystery that I love about Zen practice! _Derek

Its because their father is satan the father of a lie. John 8:44. I believe they do it for as many reason as can be thought of. A ex friend of mine was admiring my toe socks one evening and asked if he could have a pair. i gave him one pair. He put them on and announced to me thay he would tell people he got them from Jamicia. I felt insulted and asked why not just tell the truth? You know what he did? He took them off and left them and my house and never took them. Anybody who shopped at walmart would know he was telling a lie anyway. Some people just lie as easy as they breath. And for no reason.

I find most people lie every now and then...and others just don't tell the truth! I do not like to lie or be lied to. To me honesty is the best policy a lie never took any one any where.

Some call it white lies, those that you say to steer clear of hurting other people’s feelings; to stop them from worrying; to lessen the impact of a bad idea; to save someone else’s butt; to save even your own self. I think some lies are not so bad anyway.

I think human are liar by nature. Politician tell lies to the electorate. Husband cheat on their wife and wife cheat on their husband and they cover up all this with a big lies. I think most people tell lies to cover up some embarrassment which they can not stand up to.So lies give them some little comfort until the truth is know. I am a christian and my religion admonish us to always tell the truth no matter whose oxen is gored. I think truth is better but it is always good one say it. But the biggest question is how many of us are ready to tell the truth at all times. That is one of the biggest question that will continue to hurt us as human and until we change our character we can not enjoy freedom. This is because when we tell lie we are imprisoned by our conscience even though we may be temporary free from our fellow human who may not know that we have told a lie. The best advice I can give to any man, woman, or child is to always tell the truth so that your conscience can be free and you will enjoy some relief.