Lies are more fortunate: they write about it, distinguish its types and subspecies, describe the process and signs by which it can be recognized.
It is assumed that a lie is a deviation from the property of honesty. But if honesty is such an anti-lie, then this means that, for example, parents do not want honesty from their children at all (since they themselves lie all the time — including children and in front of children); they want to control what they cannot fully control. And for children, lying becomes a way to evade control. But suppose that honesty refers to some moral quality.
We can then expect an honest person to have it in most situations. Is it so? In the 1920s, American psychologists Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May conducted a unique study of children’s honesty. They had to come up with and act out dozens of different tasks for hundreds of children. There was a temptation in everyone to lie or cheat. And everything was arranged so that the children (10-12 years old) would not guess that there is a catch here, that they are being watched all the time.
The tendency to be honest always and with everyone scientists have not found. as well as a tendency to total lies
Here is an example of one experiment: children were given boxes with a designer to assemble some kind of simple device, and then they returned the boxes to their place on the shelves that were behind the “teacher”. In drawers in one of the compartments, among small parts, washers and nuts, there were coins, as if someone had forgotten them here. The children carried the boxes to their place themselves and were sure that no one saw where they put them … There were many other tasks with the possibility of cheating.
And what? No «common denominator» in the behavior of children was found. The tendency to be honest always and in front of everyone was not observed, as well as the tendency to total lies. Someone preferred not to deceive their parents, someone — teachers, someone could cheat, but could not steal, and someone, on the contrary, could embezzle money, but did not take the opportunity to lie.
So, the first lie is a lie as a reaction to control, as a fear of punishment … And here a lot depends on whether we have other ways of protecting and avoiding control. The second level is a situational lie, a lie-resource. Few people can be called a hardened liar, but absolutely honest too. There is a third level — honesty as a value. And if honesty is important to us, then we will strive to act honestly and expect the same from others. Honesty will begin to regulate relationships, rather than determine the way of behavior. She will begin to bring satisfaction, and telling the truth will really become easy and pleasant.
But this is a completely different honesty: it does not require speaking nasty things in person, it does not become a rigid principle, it remains a value — perhaps one of the most important, but not the only one. This allows us to be flexible and at the same time not break what we cannot afford to break. Because we will pay for the deviation from our own values not with the shame of exposure and not with the fact that we will be punished, but with the destruction of the core of the personality. That is, we punish ourselves.