78 People Who Blurted Out The Most Obvious Lies And Thought They Could Fool Someone

Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad is often considered one of television’s biggest liars. He mastered this art so well that he rolled out one fib after another without feeling any remorse. In fact, if you watch the series, he sounds so earnest in his deception that anyone would believe it. 

As I said before, lying isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but some are just born with the talent for fibbing. On the other hand, some are absolutely terrible at it. But that doesn’t stop them from lying. And that’s why we have this list, which clearly shows that even their failure won’t stand in their way.

A study examined 116,366 lies told by 632 participants over 91 consecutive days. 75% of respondents did not lie much; about zero to two lies per day. Most were small white lies, like saying you like a gift you really don’t. Unlike previous lie studies, this one examined lies over time rather than a one-day survey of behavior. 

It found that “people who are usually honest have days in which they lie more than is typical for them and prolific liars have days in which they tell few lies. Generally, prolific liars exhibited much more day-to-day variation than the rest of the sample. This variance was especially true for the top 1% of liars, who averaged 17 lies per day. The only respondents who did not vary much day-to-day were the 1% who rarely lied.” 

The study also highlighted the various reasons why people tell lies. 21%: to avoid others, 20%: as humor (a joke or a prank), 14%: to protect oneself, 13%: to impress or appear more favorable, 11%: to protect another person, 9%: for personal benefit or gain, 5%: for the benefit of another person, 2%: to hurt another person, 5%: unspecified reasons or, explicitly, for no reason at all.

In 2017, Matthew Lupoli, Lily Jampol, and Christopher Oveis conducted an interesting study titled Lying because we care: Compassion increases prosocial lying. Their studies investigated whether feeling compassionate actually makes someone more likely to tell white lies.  

In the first two studies, participants were asked to give feedback on a poorly written essay. Those who felt experimentally induced compassion, or who naturally scored high in trait compassion, tended to give inflated, overly positive feedback. Their compassion led them to prioritize protecting the writer’s feelings over being completely honest.

Meanwhile, the third study added a twist by looking at financial motives. Compassion increased lying when the lie benefited a charity. However, it didn’t lead to more lying if the financial gain was for oneself. 

This suggests that compassion specifically drives us to lie when we want to help others. Ultimately, it highlights a potentially harmful side to an emotion we usually view as purely positive.

To elaborate further, we also look at what Elena Svetieva, an assistant professor of communication, and Leanne ten Brinke, an assistant professor of psychology, told Psyche. 

As social scientists studying the consequences of lies, they’ve concluded that these widespread beliefs and practices of deception are wrong and harmful. Lies, even the little ones, don’t help as much as you might think, and they cost far more than you imagine, they add.