Lying or Political Deception?

Jessica Dorcelien
News Editor

          Lying is a part of human nature because the brain is wired to do what is simple and what is easy. If, after trial and error, one finds that the truth won’t allow them to reach their desired outcome, then psychology's idea of positive reinforcement will cause people to lie. And if this method works, then why change it? Therefore, the behavior, in this case lying, will become recurrent.
            Yes, everyone lies. But no, not all lies are equal. The most common type of deception is when there is problematic information involved. In simpler terms, Stanford University’s Jeff Hancock states that the most common form is “people just leaving stuff out”; with this, he presented the supporting scenario: “I don’t want to tell you certain elements of what happened last night, but I’ll tell you everything else.” “Classic human lying” is categorized as protective deception that involves leaving things out and providing false information after being pressed into answering; whereas “padded, false” lying is categorized as the speaker lying because they do not care for the truth.

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            Every day people normally say between zero to three small “white lies” a day. The interesting thing is that lies are often pulled from either memory or previous experience and are rarely ever completely “made-up”. Within the political sphere, the frequency of telling bald-faced lies have increased in the past few years. This arguably could be a result of new politicians like Donald Trump who reportedly tells lies 70% of the time, compared to the normal politician who is often in the 20% range.
            When someone’s rate of lying has reached past 50%, one inevitably has to question why lies are being told or what is being hidden. Are they lying with the intent to lie? Are they saying things that they actually believe to be true? Do they even know that they’re lying?
            The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Steven McCornack, a Ph.D professor who studies communication and deception, was asked “Can an honest politician actually succeed?” and he easily answered “No.” Especially during debates, it is evident that Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s forms of deception are very different. According to critics, Clinton’s deception falls under the category of “classic human lying”. Nonetheless, everyone is a liar at times, but when the truth makes itself known (which it will), will we find that the lies were told for the intent of tricking us or for protecting us?