1. The Real Truth about Lies
Unit 11
The Real Truth about Lies
Randy Fitzgerald

2. Pre-reading Questions:
If your friend is in a new dress or buys a new mobile phone which you dislike intensely, and asks for your opinion about it, what will you say? Why do you think people lie?
If somebody lied to you for your own good, how would you feel?

3. Read paragraphs 1-6, answer the following questions:
What is the result of Professor Bella DePaulo’s survey? What conclusion can we draw from the result?
What is the result of the survey conducted by Josephson Institute of Ethics? What can we learn from it?
reference

4. Reference:
According to the survey done by professor DePaulo, 140 out of 147 people admitted having told lies. As some of the lies are well-intentioned, people may not regard them as lies. This result shows that telling lies is common.
According to this survey, among 20,000 students surveyed, 92 percent professed to have told lies and meanwhile, 91 percent never doubted about their own ethics or character. Again, this result shows that telling lies is common and people seldom relate telling lies to morality.

5. [1] At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, psychology professor Bella DePaulo got 77 students and 70 townspeople to volunteer for an unusual project. All kept diaries for a week, recording the numbers and details of the lies they told.
[2] One student and six Charlottesville residents professed to have told no falsehoods. The other 140 participants told 1535.

6. [3] The lies were most often not what most of us would call earth-shattering. Someone would pretend to be more positive or supportive of a spouse or friend than he or she really was, or feign agreement with a relative’s opinion. According to DePaulo, women in their interactions with other women lied mostly to spare the other’s feelings. Men lied to other men generally for self-promoting reasons.

7. [4] Most strikingly, there tellers-of-a-thousand-lies reported that their deceptions caused them “little preoccupation or regret.” Might that, too, be a lie? Perhaps. But there is evidence that this attitude towards casual use of prevarication is common.

8. [5] For example, 20,000 middle- and high-schoolers were surveyed by the Josephson Institute of Ethics — a nonprofit organization in Marina del Rey, California, devoted to character education. Ninety-two percent of the teenagers admitted having lied to their parents in the previous year, and 73 percent characterized themselves as “serial liars,” meaning they told lies weekly. Despite these admissions, 91 percent of all respondents said they were “satisfied with my own ethics and character.”

9. [6] Think how often we hear the expressions “I’ll call you” or “The check is in the mail” or “I’m sorry, but he stepped out.” And then there are professions — lawyers, pundits, public relations consultants — whose members seem to specialize in shaping or spinning the truth to suit clients’ needs.

10. Read paragraphs 7-11, answer the following questions:
What are little white lies?
According to the writer, what could be considered “nice lies”?
What does this sentence mean: “What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”?
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11. Reference:
Little white lies are those harmless lies that are told so as not to hurt someone else.
According to the writer, all these could be considered “nice lies”: complimenting people on their appearance, expressing appreciation for gifts or food.
When we tell a fib, very likely we will have to tell more lies to cover up the like we have told. One lie will lead to more lies. Then we will get ourselves entangled with the web weave.

12. [7] Little white lies have become ubiquitous, and the reasons we give each other for telling fibs are familiar. Consider, for example, a corporate executive whom I’ll call Tom. He goes with his wife and son to his mother-in-law’s home for a holiday dinner every year. Tom dislike her “special” pumpkin pie intensely. Invariably he tells her how wonderful it is, to avoid hurting her feelings.

13. [8] “What’s wrong with that
[8] “What’s wrong with that?” Tom asked Michael Josephson, president of the Josephson Institute. It’s a question we might all ask.
[9] Josephson replied by asking Tom to consider the lie from his mother-in-law’s point of view. Suppose that on day Tom’s child blurts out the truth, and she discovers the deceit. Will she tell her son-in-law, “Thank you for caring so much”? Or is she more likely to feel hurt and say, “How could you have misled me all these years? And what else have you led to me about?”

14. [10] And what might Tom’s mother-in-law now suspect about her own daughter? And will Tom’s boy lie to his parents and yet be satisfied with his own character?
[11] How often do we compliment people on how well they look, or express our appreciation for gifts, when we don’t really mean it? Surely, these “nice lies” are harmless and well-intended, a necessary social lubricant. But, like Tom, we should remember the words of English novelist Sir Walter Scott, who wrote, “What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

15. Read paragraphs 12-15, answer the question:
What is the grave consequences of telling lies?
reference

16. Reference:
The ubiquitousness of lies may cause people to be distrustful of each other, thus leading to the collapse of the whole society.

17. [12] Even seemingly harmless falsehoods can have unforeseen consequences. Philosopher Sissela Bok warns us that they can put us on a slippery slope. “After the first lies, others can come more easily,” she wrote in her book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. [S1]“Psychological barriers wear down; the ability to make more distinctions can coarsen; the liar’s perception of his chances of being caught may warp.”

18. [13] Take the pumpkin-pie lies
[13] Take the pumpkin-pie lies. In the first place, it wasn’t just that he wanted his mother-in-law to feel good. Whether he realized it or not, he really wanted her to think highly of him. And after the initial deceit he needed to tell more lies to cover up the first one.
[14] Who believes it anymore when they’re told that the person they want to reach by phone is “in a meeting”? By itself, that kind of lie is of no great consequence. Still, the endless proliferation of these little prevarications does matter.

19. [15] [S2]Once they’ve become common enough, even the small untruths that are not meant to hurt encourage a certain cynicism and loss of trust. “When [trust] is damaged,” warns Bok, “the community as a whole suffers; and when it is destroyed, societies falter and collapse.”

20. [16] Are all white lies to be avoided at all costs. Not necessarily
[16] Are all white lies to be avoided at all costs? Not necessarily. [S3]The most understandable and forgivable lies are an exchange of what ethicists refer to as the principle of trust for the principle of caring, “like telling children about the tooth fairy, or deceiving someone to set them up for a surprise party,” Josephson says. “Still, we must ask ourselves if we are willing to give our friends and associates the authority to lie to us whenever they think it is for our own good.”

21. [17] Josephson suggests a simple test
[17] Josephson suggests a simple test. If someone you lie to finds out the truth, will he thank you for caring? Or will he feel his long-term trust in you has been undermined?
[18] And if you’re not sure, Mark Twain has given us a good rule of thumb. “When in doubt, tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.”

22. profess: to make a claim (of/about)
James professed to know everything about sculpture.
He professed the greatest respect for the law.

23. earth-shattering: of the greatest importance to the whole world
After years of hard work, they finally made an earth-shattering discovery.
The new invention is of earth-shattering importance.

24. feign: to pretend to have or be; to put on a false air of
She feigned to be ill in order not to do the exercises.
He feigned surprise and they all believed him.

25. spare one’s feelings: to avoid doing something that would upset somebody
He simply wished to minimize the fuss and to spare her feelings.
We carefully avoided mentioning the news to spare his feelings.

26. preoccupation: the state of constantly thinking or worrying about something
Because of his preoccupation with his books, he didn’t realize we were already back.
Such preoccupation with your work isn’t healthy.

27. prevarication: the state of avoiding giving a direct answer or making a firm decision
After months of prevarication, a decision was finally made.
When we questioned the authorities on the subject, we were met by prevarication.

28. devote… to: to give all or a large part of one’s time or resources to (a person, activity, or cause)
I want to devote more time to my family.
He devotes himself to philanthropy.

29. profession: a form of employment, especially one that is possible only for an educated person and that is respected in society as honorable
She intends to make teacher her profession.
According to the report, forty percent of the lawyers entering the profession are women.

30. pundit: a person who is an authority on a particular subject; an expert
Mr. Johnson is a well know political pundit.
We’ve invited a foreign-policy pundit to give us a lecture.

31. ubiquitous: seeming to be everywhere
By the end of last century, the computer had become ubiquitous.
We are now confronted with the ubiquitous spread of English.

32. fib: a small unimportant lie
Have you ever told fibs?
She told innocent fibs like anyone else.

33. invariably: always It’s invariably wet when I take my holidays.
She invariably forgets to take her keys.

34. blurt out: to say something suddenly and without thinking, usually because one is nervous or excited
To our surprise, he blurted his secret out at table.
John blurted out that he dreamed of becoming a computer programmer.

35. tangled: complicated or made up of many confusing parts
After listening to his speech I thought his ideas and opinions were so tangled that I could not vote for him.
The floor of the forest was covered with tangled growth.

36. wear down: to reduce or become weaker until useless
Heavy traffic and variable weather can wear down the surface of the road.
Your back tyres are badly worn down; you should fit new ones.

37. warp: to (cause to) turn or twist out of shape
Left in the garage where it was damp, the wooden frame had warped.
The door must be warped. It won’t close properly.

38. think highly of: to have a good opinion of
We think highly of your suggestion.
I can assure you that the management thinks very highly of you.

39. proliferation: a rapid increase in the amount or number of something
Smoking triggers off cell proliferation.
Over the past two years, we have witnessed the proliferation of TV channels.

40. associate: somebody whom you work or do business with
He is not a friend, but a business associate.
George’s party was boring — it was full of his business associates.

41. undermine: to gradually make somebody or something less strong or effective
She jealously tried to undermine our friendship.
Lack of food has undermined his health.

42. rule of thumb: a rough method of calculation, based on practical experience
I never weigh anything when I’m cooking — I just do it by rule of thumb.
As a rule of thumb, a cup of filter coffee contains about 89mg caffeine.

43. confound: to confuse and surprise people, causing them to be unable to explain or deal with a situation
His choice may confound us all.
The dancer confounded the critics who said she was finished by giving the best performance of her life.

44. astound: to make somebody very surprised or shocked
It astounds me that anyone could ever consider declaring war.
He used to astound his friends with feats of physical endurance.

45. Paraphrase of sentences:
One is less inhibited from lying; his ability to tell the truth from the falsehood is dulled; he may become less cautious against being caught.
When it becomes common enough to tell small lies, even the small unharmful ones will induce doubt and distrust.
Those lies that are most understandable and acceptable are based on what moralists call the principle of love and care rather than that of trust.

46. Translation: Hamlet feigned madness when he was hesitating what to do.
Prevarication is one of the techniques this businessman like to employ.
Sometimes the light of the truth is just too dazzling, so white lies are ubiquitous.
Many women in America profess that they are unhappy with their status of second-class citizens.

47. On the impulse of the moment, he blurted out the secret.
You should get rid of any prejudice, resist temptations and let nothing warp your judgment.
Being over-sensitive and imaginative, he often weaves a tangled web in mind.
He is very popular among his peers as he always tries to spare others any trouble.