Is faking it good for you?

Graffiti

"I don't want to go to school today," he told his mother.  "I don't feel good."  One more day lost from school, as Robert fakes having a cold in order to avoid the dreaded chemistry examination.  At the same time Robert's mother offered her husband a smile at breakfast, as he whispered, "I'm glad it was good for you last night as well,"and wondered if just saying it wasn't so wonderful might be the better way.  Most of us tell these little fibs, but is faking it really good for you?

We lie throughout life.  Most of us learn at an early age that faking answers or making up stories can sometimes get us what we want.  It is something we learn, get rewarded in some ways; and those rewards reinforce our behavior and tendency to repeat the behavior and lie again.  We "fake it" in many ways and call these little white lies.  But as we go through life, many of us find that the lies become bigger and bigger and more complex, making it increasingly difficult at times to remember what story we told and when and to whom.  We then learn that lying can be rewarding and troublesome as well.

Research tells us that children learn to lie as early as two years of age.  Psychologists who reported on this research tell us, however, that lying is not all bad.  Parents worry when their children lie and when it becomes a pattern, but there are positives to the lying.  The goal is to strike a balance, teaching the child how to assess consequences to the lying.  That's because the lying behavior is indicative of the child's ability to reason, to assess the potential of a reward for the lying behavior and then respond accordingly, which is what had occurred in the research study.

Professor Lee, who authored the research study on children's lying behavior, says this about the positives of children's lying:

“Lying is quite a normal behaviour. Most of us lie at some point in our life.

“And actually, in order to lie you have to have certain ingredients to be able to do that. One of them is the ability to think of other people’s minds. When you realize, ‘I know something you don’t know,’ only then can you lie. So if a child lies, it tells you the child has reached a milestone in their development."

Yet while children advance cognitively at the stage when they lie, it is also important that they learn about the negatives in lying, according to Professor Lee.  Lying becomes a teachable opportunity for parent and child to discuss the effect of lying and why it is not a good thing to lie habitually.

Children may learn to lie at age two and continue that behavior at an 80% level or higher during their early years.  By the time they reach adolescence, however, lying behavior is about the 40% rate.  Adolescents by that time have learned that too much lying can mean they won't be believed or trusted.  They have discovered lying can bring problems socially from being rejected or punished in some way for the lying behavior, and that has brought the realization that lying can bring bad consequences that sometimes have far-reaching effects.  Their experience with lies has grown since those early childhood days, and the parent's admonitions against lying often match what they learn for themselves.

What about those little white lies?  Most people say they tell them in order to avoid hurting others or to prevent a quarrel.  "How do I look?" a wife asks her husband.  "Just lovely, "he says, when he sees a new dress that he considers unattractive but also observes his wife's happy face when she shows him her new purchase.  Why not? he thinks.  After all, it's just a dress and telling her it is unattractive would just cause a quarrel for the evening.  So he does what most folks say they do and does not offer the truth when the truth hurts.

Who lies the most?  Research in Great Britain found that men are three times more likely to lie than women.  How often do they lie and in what percentages?  52% of them maintain they lie about three times daily.  Most of them admit they lie, mostly about having done something they were asked to do but didn't.  "Did you remember to feed the dog?" she asks.  "No, of course not dear.  I did it just after I finished dinner," the husband says, then finds a time to slip Fido his bowl of food before his wife finds out the poor dog has gone hours without dinner.  It's that sort of lie the man tells in order not to look lazy, uncooperative or engender any negative feelings or beliefs he considers might be directed at him if he were to admit not doing something he had promised to do.

Women admit to lying once per day.  Most of the time they lie about their feelings.  When asked how they feel, even at those times of sadness or anger, they will still respond "I'm fine" to questions about their status.

Those little white lies, however, can be troublesome.  A salesman will emphasize the best about a product and overlook the negatives when selling that television, insurance policy or new car.  So the pattern of lying, though common, can offer concerns as folks grow older and learn to filter fact from fiction in the business world, because those little white lies can be part of the salesman's bag of tools that have a few tricks as well.

What would life be if we all told the truth about everything?  One article looks specifically at the lying behavior and research and declares that society would literally implode if people told the truth all the time.  Telling someone that new dress is awful, that you hate pork chops and wish the host had made chicken or that the boss' new desk that is far too large for the office and the person's size is just fine may save heartache and anger. So we lie.

And what about the woman who "fakes it" while her husband feels happy and is off to sleep?  Like other lies, there are good and bad times to lie.  An occasional faking it on a day when hubby just had a bad day at work or lost the tennis match at the country club to some fellow who will tell everyone at the office in he morning can be a positive.  On the other hand, always "faking it" can become a major barrier to the naturalness and health of a sexual relationship.  It can also cause folks to avoid looking at the cause of a repeating problem on the part of either partner, that may be due to poor emotional or physical health.  It is, like those little white lies we tell children to be cautious about in terms of time and place, that there is indeed a time to be forthright and honest and a time to be guarded as well.  It's a continuing challenge in learning the balance between absolute truth all the time and mostly truth most of the time, which when accomplished prevents us from being the cause of unnecessary pain to someone else while maintaining the integrity of ourselves.