Some thoughts about deception

Journal of Instructional Psychology, Dec, 2004 by Ken Petress

Deception is defined and explained as a value, not just as a behavior. This essay advocates truthfulness as a unit of instruction in the elementary and middle school grades, in secondary schools, as well as in college. Deception is shown to be ubiquitous in our culture and is defined as a corrosive cultural element in need of correcting. Deception is seen as a learned behavior and value; truthfulness in promoted over deception.

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Deception is the denial of honesty; honesty is a learned value. Values are temporal and transitory; they change with age, maturity, situations, (1) and cultural change. Some educators claim it is unethical to teach values in school; that values belong in churches and homes. This essay agrees with Arthur Schwartz in his argument in favor of teaching values in the classroom. (2) Caution must be taken not to suggest that values are static, universal, or that they must be adopted or changed. Only teachers with demonstrated sensitivity and proven ethical teaching strategies ought attempt teaching values. I believe values can and should also be presented in the lower grades as well with caution, care, sensitivity, and with a non coercive approach.

Values are embedded in our culture, interpersonal relationships, organization cultures, politics, religions [ours and others'], and our legal system. (3) Most homes and churches do not present this spectrum of values, especially honesty vs. deception; therefore, our schools have to pick up the slack lest our children inherit a value void that may haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Recently, I visited two third grade elementary school classes, and two high school classes, (4) and I took a poll in my freshman college class: each was asked about lying. Many responses from each group were almost identical in wording and intensity. This shocked me as I anticipated some change in attitude and value and in sophistication from students in these various levels would occur with age and advanced learning. All these groups agreed that lying was common; that they, themselves, sometimes lied; that they were aware that they were frequently lied to--even sometimes while the lies were being spun: and that they rarely did anything about these lies. Some students in each group expressed curiosity about why I was making a big deal of lying. Lying seemed not to be much of a big deal for the students or their teachers. Most of the teachers openly deplored lying but claimed they were "powerless" to do much about most lies. It seems that deception is not a major value issue or an overt concern in today's classrooms or by parents as measured by the dearth of questions or comments from parents and teachers during periodic conferences. Several teachers have told me that rarely does this topic arise except in the most egregious cases. Students are being harmed in the long run by not being taught about lies and lying. They grow up assuming that since everyone lies and is frequently lied to, the practice of deception is acceptable; even desirable, as a means of social interaction. Since it is rarely discussed and since observed and experienced lying is rarely confronted or criticized, students come to see lying as a competitive game where the best lies and liars are winners. Lying is thus not seen as a practice to avoid and condemn, but one to strive to sharpen and to receive praise for when it is done successfully.

Deception is pervasive; we all lie and are lied to daily. Lies are so common that we often do not recognize them for what they are. Strictly speaking, any statements that are made that are knowingly untrue, exaggerated, intentionally incomplete or masking needed details, or evasive are lies. Some people have lied so often and have been so seldom confronted with their lies, they no longer recognize lies from truth. Some individuals are incapable of discriminating between lies and truth; such individuals are called "pathological liars." (5)

Lies are so pervasive and are frequently accompanied by reasonable sounding motives that we have constructed names for "types" of lies. (6) These types are masked rationales for deception. These labels are compound lies in that they are lies about lies. They claim to be other than lies, but in reality, they, too, are lies.

Such labels as: "white lies," "little lies," ways to "soften the blow." statements meant "not to hurt someone," and "tact" are examples of these "non-lie" lies. Each of these deception types have a noble sounding motive; however, they are not the truth: therefore, they are lies. Such efforts to mask lies make detecting other lies harder. Distinguishing truth from deception is thus fudged. (7) Parents and classroom teachers need to take the responsibility to include lessons about deception so as to inculcate honesty in young minds and hearts. Honesty is not mere practice; it is a value that requires frequent nourishing, support, and affirmation.

Lies occur for varied reasons. (1) Some lies are formed to cover up misdeeds or omitted deeds. (8) These generally are stated to avoid detection, criticism, or punishment. An example is a child claiming the wind broke a window instead of admitting he broke it. Another example is when an employee or a student calls in sick when she really wants to do something other than work. (2) Other lies are told ostensibly to avoid being seen as blunt, cruel, embarrassing, or impolite. An example of this lie type occurs when we tell others our relative is "fine" when, in fact, she is very ill. Another example occurs when we say a movie is "alright" when we really think it stinks. (3) Yet another lie type exists when we try to cover for or protect another. (9) An example of this is when an older sibling protects a mischievous younger brother by taking the blame for a small incident to avoid the younger boy's punishment. Another example would be if a retired worker took the blame for an industrial decision to protect currently active decision makers. (4) A less common but forceful lie type is scapegoating. (10) Scapegoating occurs when some individual, group, or institution becomes the blame target for others' wrongs. An example is when the media was blamed for losing the Vietnam war: another example of scapegoating is blaming Nixon for endemic Washington corruption. Scapegoating puts genuine blame off on a dead. defenseless, despised, or demonized other rather than accepting all or partial blame yourself.