Do people really lie 3 times within 10 minutes of meeting someone new?

    It's a statistic often quoted to show how callous and heartless people are. It's the kind of number the misanthrope TV doc Gregory House （played by Brit Hugh Laurie） should have tattooed across his forehead.

    But what kinds of lies are people telling? Are they covering up dastardly crimes or just oiling the social wheels? To find out let's have a look at the original research this number is based on.

    Feldman et al. （2002） told 121 participants they were going to have a chat with someone new for 10 minutes. Then half were divided into 3 groups, each with different goals from the conversation:

    1. Competence: try to present yourself so that the other person thinks you're are competent.

    2. Likeable: try to present yourself so that the other person thinks you are likeable.

    3. Control: no specific goal.

    All the participants were secretly videotaped during the conversation then, afterwards, asked to point out their own lies. They were told that lies include things like falsely agreeing with others and the misrepresentation of feelings. Then, while watching the video, they wrote down all the instances of their own lying.

    The tangled web we weave

    The very first thing to say is that 40% of people claim to have told no lies whatsoever. Whether you believe them or not is a different matter, but it's probably not that far from the truth, after all there wasn't that much motivation to lie in the first place. It was just a bit of chit-chat in the lab, it's not as if they were trying to cover up a murder.

    The other 60% did report some lies, though, with the average number being just under 3 in the 10 minutes. The lies they told were categorised as either subtle, exaggerations or outright lies. The most popular category of lie was the outright lie.

    Lies were also categorised as to whether they were self-oriented or other-oriented with men telling more self-oriented lies than women. Overall, though, men and women told about the same number of lies, contrary to the popular conception that men are bigger liars than women.

    But what, exactly, did they lie about? Lies were categorised by the researchers into 5 areas: feelings, achievements, plans, explanations and facts. Below is the breakdown for women and men in each of the 3 conditions: the control group, the group asked to appear likeable and the group asked to appear competent （these are averages for the 10 mins）.

    As you can see the most popular category was feelings which, in this study, included lies about emotions, opinions and evaluations. Lies about feelings were particularly pronounced when women wanted to appear competent and when men wanted to appear likeable. This is a well-known finding: people are often found to lie more about their feelings than anything else.

    White lies

    Lies about feelings are interesting because they are not something we prototypically think of as outright lies. For example when I meet you I might ask: "How are you?" and you might reply "Fine" when actually you feel like crap. Technically that is a lie. But there is also a social convention at work here; especially if you're a stranger I've just met. You understand that I don't want to know exactly how you are, it's a social nicety.

    The question is: what is the moral dimension? The kind of lies we find most detestable are those with a malicious intent of some kind: lies designed to swindle or hoodwink us, lies that will cause us some pain down the road. Yet many lies about feelings are motivated by the exact reverse, they are quite often pro-social lies.

    In this study we could just as easily argue that all the apparently 'bad' lying people are doing may well be of the 'good' pro-social sort. This may be especially true in the motivated goal conditions where people are managing their self-presentation to oil the social wheels.

    So maybe many people do lie within minutes of meeting someone new, but as Dr House vividly demonstrates, an unceasing quest for the truth in daily life is asking for trouble. Without the lies we tell each other our social lives would be a lot more painful. In fact many of our lies show what nice, well-adjusted people we are.

    在結識陌生人的10分鐘里，人們會說三次謊。

    這一統計數字時常被人引用，以顯示人們是多么地麻木無情。美劇當中厭世的豪斯醫生（英國演員休·勞里飾演）在這方面算是典型了。

    但是人們都在說些什么謊言呢？他們說謊是為了掩飾卑鄙的罪行還僅僅是為了讓自己在社會上更加吃打開？想要知道答案的話就讓我們回顧一下得出這一數據的最早的研究吧。

    菲爾德曼等人（2002年）告訴實驗參與者，他們將會與陌生人交談10分鐘。研究人員于是將一半的參與者分成3組，每一組在交談過程中都有各自不同的目標。

    1 能力組：努力表現自己以便讓他們留下你是個能干的人的印象。

    2 可愛組：努力表現自己以便讓他們覺得你是個討人喜歡的人。

    3 對照組：無特定目標。

    所有的參與者在交談過程中都會被秘密地錄影，然后再讓他們指出自己的謊言。研究人員還告知，對他人意見的茍同以及對情感的不實陳述都屬于謊言的范圍。接著，他們一邊看視頻，一邊寫下他們說過的所有謊言。

    虛虛實實

    首先要說的是，參與者當中有40%的人聲稱自己沒有說過任何謊言。這一表態或許也有自己的道理，畢竟他們沒有太多要去說謊的動機：這不過是在實驗室的一次閑聊，參與者并非是要掩飾什么罪行。當然你信不信就另當別論了。

    其他60%的參與者報告了自己謊言，然而，他們報告在10分鐘以內他們說過的謊言平均少于3個。研究人員就這些謊言分成小的謊言，夸大之詞和徹頭徹尾的謊言，而最多的是最后一種。

    同時，謊言也按照自我主導型與他人主導型進行分類。男性自我主導型的謊言要多于女性，但總體上來看，與人們普遍接受的觀點不同的是，男性與女性說的謊言數目相同，而不是說男性更愛說謊。

    但是，他們究竟都說了些什么謊言呢？研究人員講謊言分成五類：情感方面的，成就方面的，計劃方面的，解釋性的以及有關事實的。下圖顯示的就是男性與女性在三種目標下的所說的謊言數量：對照組，能力組和可愛組（每組平均都是10分鐘）.

    正如你所看到的，最多的謊言是有關情感方面的，這在這次的研究當中包括有關情緒的，觀點的以及評價方面的謊言。當男性想要表現自己招人喜歡或是女性想要表現自己的能力時，這種謊言就非常地明顯。下面這一點是眾所周知的：相對于其他類型的謊言，人們更容易撒有關情感方面的謊。

    善意的謊言

    有關情感的謊言讓人非常感興趣，因為人們一般不會把這種謊言當成徹頭徹尾的謊言。比方說，當我遇到你時我會問："你好嗎？",然后你會回答說："我很好",而事實上你感到自己糟透了。技術上這也算是謊言，但在這種情況下還有社會慣例在起作用，你明白我并不是真的想要知道你好不好，而只是出于禮貌，這在對方是一個陌生人的情況下尤其如此。

    接下來的問題是：謊言的道德底線在哪？那些最為我們所憎惡謊言就是那些存心不良的：要么是那些用來詐騙或者蒙混我們的，抑或是那些在將來會給我們帶來傷痛的。然而還有很多的謊言的動機卻完全相反，它們很多時候是有助益于社會的。

    在這次的研究當中我們可以毫不費力地有理由認為：那些表面上"壞壞的"說謊者也許是在做著一些使自己更為合群的事情。人們有時通過自我展現，自我推銷以使自己在社會交往中更為順利，在這種有目標的情況下，這種現象就更加明顯了。

    所以說，人們確實說謊，但正如豪斯醫生向我們生動地展示的那樣，在日常生活中對誠實太過追求是在自找麻煩。如果我們互相之間對自己的社會生活都毫不隱晦，這將會帶來很多的痛苦。事實上，很多我們說的謊都顯示了自己是一個令人愉快而又適應能力強的人。