Ralph Keyes - The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life

Many have already reached that conclusion on their own. There is a growing suspicion that more lies than ever are being told. To paraphrase the great social commentator Jerry Lee Lewis, a feeling is widespread that theres a whole lotta lyin goin on . Until fairly recently there was little data to confirm or deny this hunch. Now, studies such as Feldmans are putting it to the test. Preliminary results are disconcerting. One researcher after another has confirmed that lying has become as common as scratching itches.

When they had several hundred subjects record every lie they told in the course of a week, California sociologists Noelie Rodriguez and Alan Rygrave were as surprised as Robert Feldman was by the sheer volume of lies recorded. Even those who had assured the researchers they were truth tellers turned in journals filled with falsehoods. One woman promised a friend that shed watch him play basketball when she had no intention of doing so. Another assured her husband that their tedious lovemaking was terrific. A mother told her child that they couldnt go swimming because the pool was closed when it wasnt. A healthy young man had his mother tell a friend he was too sick to go to the movies as hedpromised. Another said hed help a friend move, then pretended he couldnt because of a previous engagement. What struck researchers and subjects alike was how casually these lies were conveyed. Few were planned in advance. They slid into the conversational flow as easily as a car merging onto an uncrowded freeway. Based on their findings, Rodriguez and Rygrave speculated that during any conversation at all it could be that lying is not only a possible action, but a preferred one.

I think its fair to say that honesty is on the ropes. Deception has become commonplace at all levels of contemporary life. At one level that consists of Hes in a meeting or No, that dress doesnt make you look fat. On another level it refers to I never had sexual relations with that woman or We found the weapons of mass destruction. High-profile dissemblers vie for headlines: fabulist college professors, fabricating journalists, stonewalling bishops, book-cooking executives and their friends the creative accountants. They are the most visible face of a far broader phenomenon: the routinization of dishonesty. Im not talking just about those who try to fib their way out of a tight spot (I wasnt out drinking last night; I had to work late) but casual lying done for no apparent reason (Yes, I was a cheerleader in high school).

Ludwig Wittgenstein once observed how often he lied when the truth would have done just as well. This Viennese philosopher has many modern disciples. The gap between truth and lies has shrunk to a sliver. Choosing which to tell is largely a matter of convenience. We lie for all the usual reasons, or for no apparent reason at all. Its no longer assumed that truth telling is even our default setting. When Monica Lewinsky said shed lied and been lied to all her life, few eyebrows were raised. Our attitudes toward lying have grown, to say the least, tolerant. Its now as acceptable to lie as it is to exceed the speed limit when driving, observed British psychologistPhilip Hodson. Nobody thinks twice about it.

The tattered condition of contemporary candor is suggested by how often we use phrases such as quite frankly, let me be frank, let me be candid, truth be told, to tell you the truth, to be truthful, the truth is, truthfully, in all candor, in all honesty, in my honest opinion, and to be perfectly honest. Such verbal tics are a rough gauge of how routinely we deceive each other. If we didnt, why all the disclaimers?

Most of us lie and are lied to on a regular basis. These lies run the gamut from I like sushi to I love you. Even though were more likely to deceive strangers than friends, we save our most serious lies for those we care about most. Many have to do with sex. One priest said he rarely hears a confession that doesnt include some element of sexual deceit. A colleague of his said its a rare day that a parishioner doesnt confess to telling lies, sometimes with figures in hand (twenty times to the same person, Father). He couldnt believe that they actually keep track.

A regard for honesty or disdain for lying has not disappeared altogether. Quite the contrary. Pollsters detect rising concern about falling ethics, especially among older cohorts. Surveys in the United States and elsewhere confirm that truthfulness is still one of our most highly valued traits. As the new millennium began, for only the second time in half a century those polled by Gallup put ethics and morality near the top of the list of problems facing Americans. An earlier poll of citizens in ten western European countries found that honesty headed the qualities they most wanted to instill in children. (Confounding stereotypes, Italians were the least tolerant of lying, Belgians the most.) The problem is that a commitment to honesty in principle too often goes hand in glove with routine lying in practice. In biannual surveys conducted by the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina Del Rey, California,the vast majority of thousands of middle school, high school, and college students express satisfaction with their ethics and character. Yet nearly three-quarters admit to being serial liars. Most say theyd lie to save money, almost half to get a good job. Nearly all of the students are confident they can get away with telling such lies. Granted this is a young, cocksure cohort. But, as institute head Michael Josephson has pointed out, these students cannot have been raised with much ethical rigor. And as they enter the workforce, their problem will become our problem.