3.2 What Is Lying?

When it comes to ethical communication, the most obvious problem is lying: instead of using our ability to communicate to create shared meaning and accurate perception, we use it to mislead. When humans developed the ability to speak, the ability to “mis-speak” and deceive came right along with it. (Humans are not alone in this: animals make good liars, too — from birds who feign a broken wing to draw predators away from a nest to dogs that put on a good show of being ashamed when they’re caught getting into the garbage). Well, you might think: along with our ability to deceive, we also developed the ability to detect deception, so it all evens out, right? Not exactly: our ability to pull off a convincing lie is far more advanced than our ability to tell when others are lying to us, which is usually no better than chance (see Box 12.9: SPOTTING LIARS). Even with training, polygraph machines and fact-checking, much of the time we still have to just trust that others are not lying to us.

How do you define “lying”? If the definition is simply “Saying things that you know are factually untrue,” then you are missing many other forms of deception. Here are ten forms to consider:

Factual lies: intentionally stating facts that are inaccurate (“I wasn’t speeding”)

Emotional lies: misrepresenting your emotional or inner state (“I’m fine” or “I love that sweater you knitted for me”)

Rationalizing or excusing your actions or motivations (“I was only trying to protect you” or “I didn’t mean to offend you”)

Lies by omission: not telling “the whole truth”; leaving out information that the listener probably would deem important (“I didn’t use AI to write that term paper” … I had my friend do it for me)

Paltering^[1]: telling the truth with the intention of misleading (“made with FDA-approved ingredients,” which sounds like the product itself is “FDA approved”).

Exaggeration: stretching the truth (“I’ve had five years of experience in the field” on your resume, instead of the more accurate “I’ve occasionally gotten a few days of experience doing that work in the summers, starting five years ago”)

Speaking beyond your expertise: pontificating about things you don’t really know much about, sometimes because someone asked you a question and you don’t want to sound ignorant (“Yes, the paleo diet is the most healthy because it matches what humans used to eat 50,000 years ago”). Note: this is an occupational hazard for college professors.

White lies: telling small lies that are considered harmless, for the sake of preserving social harmony (“So sorry we have to leave your party; we’re picking up a friend from the airport.”)

Polite fictions: closely related to white lies, a polite fiction is “a social scenario in which all participants are aware of a truth, but pretend to believe in some alternative version of events to avoid conflict or embarrassment” (Wikipedia). The difference is that the listener may not know that a white lie isn’t the truth, but in polite fictions, everyone knows the actual truth. In the 2016 film Florence Foster Jenkins, a wealthy patron of the arts wants to try her hand at opera singing, and in her debut concert most of the audience humors her, except for Mrs. Stark, who bursts into laughter, saying “She is the worst goddamn singer in the entire world!” When someone asks if she is “unwell,” Mr. Stark says it is a “coughing fit” and they escort her out because “she needs fresh air.” Sure, we’ll go with that.

Unmet promises: “I’ll come to your play next Saturday.” The speaker may or may not mean it when they make a promise, but if they don’t show up on Saturday, what they said earlier wasn’t true.

Do all of these forms constitute unethical communication? Do any of them automatically count as unethical? It is not hard to imagine scenarios where any one of them could be excused — including intentional factual lies, if the circumstances are right. It can be fascinating to discuss the ethics of specific situations, and it is relatively easy for participants in the discussion to reach their own conclusions. What is much more difficult is to articulate guidelines that everyone can agree on, and use those guidelines to explain to others why Scenario A is acceptable but Scenario B is not.

One approach to finding such guidelines is to look to the law, since there are many laws that address communication issues: fraud, false advertising, defamation, hate speech, obscenity, etc. There will always be a problem, however, with the relationship between laws and ethics, and it is important to understand the difference between the two.

Laws are, by their nature, perimeters: they draw fences that delineate acceptable from unacceptable behavior. If a behavior falls on one side of the fence, it’s illegal; if it falls on the other side, it’s legal. One purpose lawyers serve is to instruct on exactly where that fence is, and if a client wants to push right up against that fence, it’s okay as long as they don’t go over it. Ethics, on the other hand, are about core principles, and are usually expressed as “You should act this way.” If the principle is “Be kind to people,” and you try hard to act kindly to everyone, you are very ethical; if you are “polite but a little aloof,” that’s further from kindness so less ethical; and if you are “snarky and mean-spirited,” that’s unethical behavior because it’s far from the core. But “snarky and mean-spirited” isn’t illegal, as long as you don’t commit assault (the fence). The law can never define what “kind” is, or exactly how kind you need to be; that’s the domain of ethics. The nice thing about ethical principles is that they theoretically make laws unnecessary: if everyone is trying to stay close to those core principles, they’ll never get near the fences. I say “theoretically” because it seems unrealistic to create a world where everyone is trying to be good all the time, so laws will always be needed. Still, it doesn’t work very well to work backwards from laws to determine what those core principles should be. Where can we turn instead for those principles?