Persuasive Essay On Being A Liar

Decent Essays
“Liar, liar, pants on fire!” I’m sure you heard that one a few thousand times on the playground back in the day. It’s one of most the melodic yet taunting tunes that children have sung for ages, and at times, I still sing in my head as an 18-year-old college student. As we grow older, lying looks less like little kids fibbing to babysitters about what TV shows their parents let them watch, and more like a partner lying about who they’ve been with, or employees deceiving a boss about dishonest work. With all these newfound complicated situations, don’t you wish spotting liars could be as simple as singing a childish song? Unfortunately, even though there’s no new groundbreaking potion to make your boyfriend’s nose grow longer each time he lies to you, there are new studies that offer signs that you can look for to pick up on those sneaky little white lies. By training yourself to listen for certain nonverbal vocal cues in a …show more content…
Wait for it… No, literally. Pauses can mean more than you think. In a study led by Jeffrey Walczyk and Kevin T. Mahoney in the Psychology and Behavioral Sciences department at Louisiana Tech University, researchers examined hesitation in truthful and deceptive answers. Their results found that, “The time lapse between the presentation of a question and the answer was usually greater when lying.” This is no small coincidence. Think about it. When someone asks you about your favorite band or a lifelong family story, you can usually bounce back the facts without a second thought. Lying, on the other hand, causes us to make up some backstory which overrides our longstanding memory. In other words, coming up with a story on a first date about an unrealistic, “perfect” work life would take a lot more time to process than spitting out well-rehearsed rants about a cringe-worthy boss. If they’re pausing, they’re probably doing a bit more than thinking of a truthfully eloquent

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    1. (Summary) List and Describe or Define the different “Lies” Ericsson discusses. (Response) Would you add any? List and describe them.…

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “The Ways We Lie” by Stephanie Ericsson she discusses and breaks down the activity of lying into different kinds of lies. Ericsson goes into great detail of about 10 of them, but there are many more. Some lies are for your peace of mind and maybe still bad for both parties, and some are for the better of someone else’s feelings. Ericsson believes that even if you feel you are perfect, nobody is and still tell lies no matter big or small, we do it and at times are unaware that it is considered a lie. Individuals nowadays get to a point where they are lying and don’t know whether to believe themselves or others.…

    • 856 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In the essay The Ways We Lie by Stephanie Ericsson, she mentions on how she discovered that telling the truth all the time is nearly impossible because it would be living with some serious consequences. Throughout the history of the United States and other parts of the world, a high percentage of people tend to not be able to tell the truth when they are asked simple questions by members of their family or by their close friends. As telling the truth may have consequences, telling lies may have deeper consequences that cannot only hurt the person telling the lie, but it can affect the person being lied to. Being known as a liar can cause problems in a relationship because it will bring on trust issues and can also cause one’s partner to overthink…

    • 1449 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Lying is something that all humans do. Whether you lie for good or for bad, it is in our human nature to do so. People lie for many reasons, a lie can be big or small. For example in the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, it shows the consequences of lying. The characters, Elizabeth Proctor, Abigail Williams, Samuel Parris, and Thomas Putnam all lie for different reasons.…

    • 1341 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Most people will say that lying is never the answer, but they don’t always tell why. Lying often ends unethically, not only the can the lier be punished or feel guilty in the process, but it often goes further than anticipated. When looking back there seems to be more consequences on the result of the pretense than what the reward would have been if everything worked out and there was no lying. The Salem Witch Trials, the McCarthy Trials, and the McMartin Trials all proved that it is important to always be honest, regardless of the sacrifice.…

    • 1170 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Molly Gaglione UCWR 110 - 012 Professor Jaffe 4 October 2017 The Use of Rhetoric as a Persuasive Device in “The Ways We Lie” In the world today, lying is something that is seemingly unavoidable. Religious leaders lie to hide illegal crimes committed within the church; athletes lie about use of performance enhancing drugs; news stations lie about the credibility of their reports; the President of the United States even lies about the number of people who attended his inauguration; more commonly, however, an average person will commit an untruth over the course of their daily lives, whether it be necessarily known to them or not. These are the kinds of lies that are explored in Stephanie Ericsson’s “The Ways We Lie.” This article dives into…

    • 941 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    1. According to Ericsson, we all lie because we want to avoid confrontation, spare people’s feelings, and to get out of particular situations. To avoid confrontations, sometimes it is necessary to lie, for example, if you were talking about someone behind their back and they hear about it, you are going to deny that you ever talked bad about that person to avoid getting into an alteration. If someone is wearing an ugly outfit that they are real proud of, you are most likely going to lie to them by telling that someone that you love their outfit just to avoid hurting their feelings.…

    • 1651 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    But what exactly is lying? Lying is to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive (Merriam-Webster). Everyone has heard the story The Boy Who Cried Wolf as they grew up. Which was about a little boy who jokingly deceived everyone for help, but when he really needed help, no one believed him. As a result, a lesson was taught that lying…

    • 2008 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Most evil people in the world are described as being liars, but does this does not make all lies evil. Everyone lies and surely not everyone in the world is evil. Most people begin to lie at age four, but no one would call an innocent child evil. Many people would argue that people lie because they solely want to be deceitful, but not all lies are as simple as that. Stephanie Ericsson in The Ways We Lie discusses many different types of lies, and why people tell these types of lies.…

    • 1018 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Ways We Lie Essay

    • 684 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Everyone on Planet Earth is a liar; harsh but true. Every day we say “Yes, I am okay” or “No, I did not steal the cookie.” These are examples of the millions of lies told, big or small. In the short story The Ways We Lie, the author described ten types of lies: lies of delusion, lies of omission, lies of dismissal, or white lies (Ericsson 409-416). Upon reflection, I realized that I am guilty of telling many lies to save my image, to get out trouble, or to protect other people.…

    • 684 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    We all do. We exaggerate, we minimize, we avoid confrontation, we spare people's feelings, we conveniently forget, we keep secrets... Sure I lie, but it doesn't hurt anything, or does it?" (Ericsson, 1992, p, 159). There are certain types of lies in the world that can make us or break us.…

    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Honesty is the avoidance of knowingly deceiving yourself or others. Honesty means not lying, cheating, or stealing, whether it is done with malicious intent or not. This holds true even in situations where dishonesty seems like the easy way out. Perhaps one of the least considered, and possibly most difficult, aspects of honesty is being honest with oneself. Everyone has moments where lying may seem like the easy way out.…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This topic is critical in my generation particularly. We live in a society where everybody, including myself, lie about moronic things. I myself have discovered that it is better to come clean and be in trouble once, than to lie frequently and never hear the end of…

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Why Do People Lie Essay

    • 1453 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In an interview with Robin Roberts, Robert Feldman, someone who has researched the subject of lies and deception for twenty plus years, said “We do it because it’s easy and because we get away with it and because it helps us in life” (Firestone). The human mind often assists in lying by helping the liar believe that by not telling the truth they are protecting someone else or themselves (Firestone). People are able to put their minds at ease when lying by convincing themselves that it is not that bad and that they are not doing anything wrong (Anonymous). It is not uncommon for people to only share information that they deem “safe” to tell and not tell everything; that is still a lie. It is a lie of omission, which at times is the worst kind of lie (Firestone).…

    • 1453 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Reasons Why People Lie

    • 976 Words
    • 4 Pages

    People lie for many reasons in this world, because of the way their brain was trained and the psychological part of it, and depending on the person it could be for the better or worse. Our environment is where we pick everything up from so that contributes to how often a person lies and their reasons. Lies can become very complicated depending on the situation, there are different lies. People also lie because of the good of their heart whether they know if it’s bad or not because sometimes people don’t have a definition of the difference of the two. They want to avoid or fix something in the wrong way but the intentions are good because sometimes there is no right way.…

    • 976 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics