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Theories Of Lying

Decent Essays

There are various reasons for a person to lie. Floyd states that one reason people lie is to help the person they are lying to. One may tell their friend that they think their friend’s new glasses look nice when the person saying this honestly doesn’t feel that way but they do not want to upset their friend. Another reason Floyd mentions is that lies allow people to become acquainted with others. For example, some may lie to a person they may have just met that they have nothing going on while they, in fact, have an event they could go to only so they have a chance to get to know the other person better. One may also lie in order to preserve one’s privacy. Floyd explains this reason by using an instance when one person may ask another …show more content…

When people manufacture or inflate certain facts they are participating in acts of simulation. One telling a story about their safari trip in Africa and saying that they were chased down by a lion for five miles only to provide more excitement in their otherwise average story is an example of a person engaging in acts of simulation. Acts of simulation include falsification and exaggeration. According to Floyd, falsification is “a form of deception that involves presenting false, fabricated information as though it were true” (Floyd 285). Falsification would include lying on one’s resume in order to have a better chance at getting the job, lying about how one actually feels about something, as well as an abundance of other examples. This act of simulation has been shown to be “one of the most common ways that people deceive others” (285). Exaggeration is when one “inflates or overstates facts,” as stated by Floyd (286). Floyd uses the example of a person interviewing for a job and them exaggerating all that they had to do for their previous job in order to make themselves look more capable and experienced. Acts of dissimulation, on the other hand, involve omission and equivocation. Excluding or withholding particular specifics about certain information is omission. An example of this would be a child telling their parent that they had a good day at school and painted a dog and the …show more content…

One is that “false information is often inconsistent,” meaning that a made up story is usually changed or there is other information that contradicts that story. Information inconsistency can either revealed by the perpetrator himself or herself or another person that they have talked to. People find out more through the latter reason than the former, scholars say (290). Another common behavior committed by people who lie is speech errors. These speech errors, according to Floyd, consists of unreasonably lengthy lapses while talking, using an abundance of vocal fillers, suddenly ceasing to talk when they had just begun, and finally answering a person’s questions following an interminable period of time (291). Deceivers commit these errors due to “feel[ing] guilty or nervous (or both)” and this causes abnormalities in their speech. A person’s vocal pitch tends to become higher due to these emotions as well, creating another behavior for people to look for in determining whether a person is being deceptive. There two specific eye behaviors that people can use to identify lying. While lack of eye contact is not the surest way of recognizing when a person is lying eye blinking and pupil dilation are signals to look for. Eye blinking is when one blinks more often than usual. Floyd explains that someone blinks more while lying because it is “a way for [their] body to

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