Communication is a functional, purposeful, and strategic aspect of human socialization. Individuals have the ability make conscious decisions to control their expressive language to manipulate the perceived interpretations of others (Burgoon, Callister, & Hunsaker, 445). As people acquire language, they develop sensitivity to the Gricean maxims of conversation. The first of these maxims is “Quantity I”, or the failure to provide enough information. The second of these maxims is “Quantity II”, or the provision of too much or redundant information. The third of these maxims is “Quality”, or veracity (Siegal, Iozzi, and Surian, 2009). These three Gricean maxims of conversation alone encompass the prevalence of various forms of lying in the context of human communication.
The significance of lying is that it can change various outcomes that negatively impact various circumstances. In the realm of health care, patients may lie to health professionals for a number of reasons including to acquire unnecessary or excessive medications, to avoid embarrassment or judgment, and to reduce expensive medical charges that may accumulate over time. “No matter how well intentioned the doctor faced with a patient in need of help may be, it is he who has the advantage resulting from the knowledge he has (the truth) and his skills: a disproportion occurs between these two parties” (Tanasiewicz, 2005, 16). Regardless of the motivation patients may have for lying, they may be jeopardizing personal wellness by risking physiological harm as a result of their actions.
According to a study conducted by DePaulo et al. (1996), as cited in Serota, Levine, & Boster (2010), “Participants in the community study, on average, told a lie everyday; participants i...
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Burgoon, M., Callister, M., & Hunsaker, F. (1994). Patients who deceive: An empirical investigation of patient-physician communication. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 13(4), 443-468.
DePaulo, B. M., Kashy, D. A., Kirkendol, S. E., Wyer, M. M., & Epstein, J. A. (1996). Lying in everyday life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 979–995.
Serota, K., Levine, T., & Boster, F. (2010). The prevalence of lying in america: Three studies of self-reported lies. Human Communication Research, 36, 2-25.
Siegal, M., Iozzi, L., & Surian, L. (2009). Bilingualism and conversational understanding in young children. Cognition, 110(1), 115-122. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2008.11.002
Tanasiewicz, M. (2005). The truth, misunderstanding, or lie? Different forms of doctor-patient relations. Bulletin Of Medical Ethics, 209, 13-17.
Richard Gunderman asks the question, "Isn 't there something inherently wrong with lying, and “in his article” Is Lying Bad for Us?" Similarly, Stephanie Ericsson states, "Sure I lie, but it doesn 't hurt anything. Or does it?" in her essay, "The Ways We Lie.” Both Gunderman and Ericsson hold strong opinions in regards to lying and they appeal to their audience by incorporating personal experiences as well as references to answer the questions that so many long to confirm.
Although it is considered wrong to tell lies, it seems that literature has offered us situations where telling lies isn’t necessarily bad. Of course, lying often has a tragic outcome, but not always for the person or people who told the lie or lies. Oftentimes, these unfortunate outcomes are directed at the person about whom the lie was told. Furthermore, these stories have explained that dishonesty can result in success for both the liar and the target. Maybe we have been teaching the wrong values to our children.
As John Ruskin once said, “The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.” This essence is debated in “The Ways We Lie”, written by Stephanie Ericsson, and “Doubts about Doublespeak”, written by William Lutz. In “The Ways We Lie”, Ericsson talks about the different ways people lie on a day to day basis. By comparison, in “Doubts about Doublespeak”, Lutz discusses the different forms of doublespeak that many individuals frequently use. Lutz considers doublespeak as a language that distorts the meaning of words in order to deceive another person, and only “pretends to communicate” (83). Although both authors agree that lying is about the use of deceptive language, Ericsson describes this use of language as occasionally being necessary,
The people who claim that they do not lie are probably lying when they say it. Whether it is to deceive authority or just to play a joke on a friend, it is part of human nature to lie. In the novel The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby takes on a character of wealth and luxury. Gatsby wants to win back his love interest from five years ago, so he secretly becomes wealthy through owning an illegal drug business, using his abundance of money to impress her. In contrast, in Tobias Wolff’s “The Liar,” he tells a story of teenage James as he lies about his life to appear more fascinating. He lies not because he wants to, but because it comes naturally to him. Both stories convey people struggling to find the purpose of their
Richard Gunderman and Stephanie Ericsson each have written a piece explaining the impacts of lying on society. In Gunderman’s article, “Is Lying Bad for Us?” he outlines the health effects of lying, and how there are serious “mental and physical consequences,” (Gunderman 1). Ericsson’s essay, “The Ways We Lie,” focuses more on the different types of lying, and how each has a different impact. Although Gunderman’s and Ericsson’s pieces of literature both relate to the negative impacts of lying, their different thoughts of how lying impacts society, including types, health, and solutions, outweigh their similarities.
Lying is simply an act of not telling the truth, and this definition of lying will be used in future sections of this paper. There are three groups of lies t...
When initially asked about the morality of lying, it is easy for one to condemn it for being wrong or even corrupt. However, those asked are generally guilty of the crime on a daily basis. Lying is, unfortunately, a normal aspect of everyday life. In the essay “The Ways We Lie,” author Stephanie Ericsson makes note of the most common types of lies along with their consequences. By ordering the categories from least to most severe, she expresses the idea that lies enshroud our daily lives to the extent that we can no longer between fact and fiction. To fully bring this argument into perspective, Ericsson utilizes metaphor, rhetorical questions, and allusion.
Sutliff, Usha. “‘Liars’ Brains Wired Differently.” USC News. USC University of Southern California. 19 Sept. 2005. Web. 11 December 2013.
But one may wonder when DPB is necessary and what the benefits of such practice are. Cullen and Klein state that “this deception-to-benefit-the-patient view has a prima facie (at first glance) appeal,” although some may argue that this line of thinking has not yet been proven with positive results. One illustration to this theory is when a doctor tells a kidney transplant recipient that he is doing good and that the prognosis looks promising with the justification that the patient, although the kidney is not functioning at all, but after hearing the positive feedback from the physician, it may lift his spirit and regain full health. The physicians with this type of ideology presume that “a sick person isn’t made better by gloomy assessments.” This type of DBP is intended to be used in order to benefit the patient, however, there are no proven cases to confirm that this method works, and it’s merely intended as an effort for the physicians to make the patient feel better, furthermore, as stated by Cullen and Klein “In all but rarest cases, deceiving a patient ‘for his own good’ is an unacceptable way for a physician to try to help her patient.” (Cullen & Klein
Truth in medicine is a big discussion among many medical professionals about how doctors handle the truth. Truth to a patient can be presented in many ways and different doctors have different ways of handling it. Many often believe that patient’s being fully aware of their health; such as a bad diagnosis, could lead to depression compared to not knowing the diagnosis. In today’s society doctor’s are expected to deliver patient’s the whole truth in order for patients to actively make their own health decisions. Shelly K. Schwartz discusses the truth in her essay, Is It Ever Ok to Lie to Patients?. Schwartz argument is that patients should be told the truth about their health and presented and addressed in a way most comfortable to the patient.
Stephanie Ericsson’s The Ways We Lie, analyzes and reflects on how lying has simply become the norm in our society. We all lie, there is not one person in the world that does not lie. Most people lie because they are afraid of telling the truth, however what they do not know is telling a lie can lead them in the wrong direction because many things can happen when lying to a person. The person can find out when everything unravels that person will not have trust in you and you would be known as a liar. To every action there is a consequence, so why not deal with just one consequence when telling the
From the utilitarian’s side, lying might be a good choice, since it brings more happiness to the patient. In fact, truthfulness can actually do harm. Patient’s health situation becomes worst when he knows that he have a serious disease. He will become depressed and might suffer from psychological disorders like anxiety which reduces the efficiency of healing. For example people suffering from Nosophobia , Hypochondriasis or Nosocomephobia: “which are an irrational fear of contracting a disease, a fear of hospitals or refers to excessive preoccupancy or worry about having a serious illness ” are most likely to be affected by truth of having a serious ill or undergoing a dangerous medical operation. That’s why some doctors use lying as way of curing; they don’t try only to heal the disease, but also they make sure that the patient is in his most relaxed state, in order not to harm him. Roger Higgs in his article “On telling patients the truth” argues that doctors have no exemption from telling the truth. I other words, when a doctor lies he needs to give justifications. For the maleficence argument, Higgs argues that the truth actually does not harm; but the way the doctor tells the truth a...
Healthcare professions have codes of conduct and ethics that address the issue of honesty and trust in relation to patient encounters yet truth-telling (or being honest) versus deception (or being dishonest) has been identified as an ethical issue in hospitals, particularly about diagnosis and prognosis disclosures. Dossa (2010) defines being honest or telling the truth as relating the facts as one knows them. Furthermore, Dossa (2010) states that deception can be an act of dishonesty but also can be without lies. In other words, forms of deception include not giving any information, not giving information of the truth, withholding information, selecting what information to give and not give, and giving vague information.
The writer discusses a situation of the doctor failing to disclose the nature of important medical condition which can jeopardize several of the patient’s family members and puts the doctor at odds with them. The problem is also discussed by Sutrop (2011) who show how protecting the patient’s confidentiality and self- decision capacity has actually caused severe hindrances to the field of scientific development and research.
We lie a lot, says behavioral economist Dan Ariely. The central thesis of Dan Ariely’s The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty is that human behavior is driven by two conflicting motivations, and that most human values are not compatible all of the time. On one hand,