Lying

Lying is the act of speaking falsely with the intent to deceive. It is the practice of communicating lies. A person who communicates a lie is called a liar.

There are many different types of lies – a fib, bluff, defamation, exaggeration, jocose lies, lie-to-children, white lie, etc. For simplicity of context, I will focus on lying by omission and lying by commission.

Lying by omission:

When a liar leaves out an important fact or salient part of the story to foster a misconception or derail attention from a pending problem, that shows lying by omission. Failure to correct an existing misapprehension falls under this category.

For example, when a man says to his lady, “I’m going to the mall to get a few items,” and purposely omits the part that he is meeting with a female friend and hanging out primarily before shopping.

Yes, he is going to the mall. True. By not telling the whole truth, he makes his trip seem innocent (though he has something up his sleeves.)

Lying by commission:

Entails an intentional generation of false information to mislead the hearer or gain an advantage.

For instance, a police officer pulled someone over for overspeeding. She told the officer she was hurrying up to meet her sister in labor. This statement is a lie in the absence of a sister, let alone anyone having labor pains.

Let me give you a bonus. Another variant of this subject matter is the illusory truth effect.

Illusory truth effect (or the illusion of truth effect or the reiteration effect) is the probability of believing false information to be correct following several exposures to the lie. Apart from being used by manipulative partners in relationships, the illusory truth effect is also used by news media and during election campaigns.

Lying is a vicious tool for manipulation in relationships.

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