Why Do People Lie?

9 Motives for Telling Lies

Original excerpt from “Telling Lies” (p. 329-330) September 26, 2018 Reading between the lies Why do people lie? Such a simple question should come with a simple answer (but doesn’t, unfortunately). There are indications, however, that most of us share the same the motives for telling lies. Numbers don’t lie My data collected during interviews with children and from questionnaires completed by adults suggests that telling …

Verbal Deceit - Paul Ekman Group

Verbal Deceit

Why liars choose their words carefully

Excerpt from Telling Lies by Paul Ekman, PhD What liars pay attention to When lying, people usually do not monitor, control, and attempt to disguise all of their behavior; they probably couldn’t even if they wanted to. Instead, we tend to participate in verbal deceit, showing the most concern about choice of words. Liars censor what they say, carefully concealing messages …