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...
... middle of paper ...
...collegeboard.org/
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.
She admits her struggles with lying as she once attempted to go a week without lying and described it to be “paralyzing.” She also explains how lies can sometimes have positive outcomes such as when the bank calls for her deposit. Without her lie the bank would have charged her $60 in over drafting fees. Ericsson attempts to justify her lies explaining that “there must be some merit to lying.” She makes a personal connection though the lies she tells on a daily basis. Her tone is colloquial yet informational, utilizing terms such as “we.” She explains that “We lie. We all do.” She points out the obvious reasons we lie and the effortless ways we can lie, “we exaggerate, we minimize, we avoid confrontation, we spare people’s feeling, we conveniently forget.” She asks questions, “how much do we tolerate before we become sick and tired of being sick and tired?” to create a conversational tone. In paragraphs 35 through 37, her tone shift from accepting to cynical as she begins to question the limits of lying and their
In her personal essay, Dr. Grant writes that she learned that most cases involving her patients should not be only handled from a doctor’s point of view but also from personal experience that can help her relate to each patient regardless of their background; Dr. Grant was taught this lesson when she came face to face with a unique patient. Throughout her essay, Dr. Grant writes about how she came to contact with a patient she had nicknamed Mr. G. According to Dr. Grant, “Mr. G is the personification of the irate, belligerent patient that you always dread dealing with because he is usually implacable” (181). It is evident that Dr. Grant lets her position as a doctor greatly impact her judgement placed on her patients, this is supported as she nicknamed the current patient Mr.G . To deal with Mr. G, Dr. Grant resorts to using all the skills she
Author Allison Kornet in her article (1997) “The Truth about Lying: Has Lying Gotten a Bad Rap” states that deception or lying has become a part of everyone’s life. A person lies or deceives as often as he brushes his teeth or combs his hair. Many psychologists have neglected or ignored the concept of deception or lying and its effects on everyone’s life. Kornet explains that in the previous two to three decades, the psychologists started noticing or analyzing the effects of a person’s deception on others or why a person lies so many times in his day-to-day life. The person might learn lying from childhood
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.
One of the most complex, ever-changing careers is the medical field. Physicians are not only faced with medical challenges, but also with ethical ones. In “Respect for Patients, Physicians, and the Truth”, by Susan Cullen and Margaret Klein, they discuss to great extent the complicated dilemmas physicians encounter during their practice. In their publication, Cullen and Klein discuss the pros and cons of disclosing the medical diagnosis (identifying the nature or cause of the disease), and the prognosis (the end result after treating the condition). But this subject is not easily regulated nor are there guidelines to follow. One example that clearly illustrates the ambiguity of the subject is when a patient is diagnosed with a serious, life-threatening
Both Stephanie Ericsson’s essay “The Way We Lie” and William F. Buckley, Jr.’s essay “Why Don’t We Complain” analyze different ways people use lies to help and hurt themselves in their daily lives and how lies influence American culture. Through personal experience and examples Ericsson showed the way people lie to get what they want or to look more lovely. She showed that it is almost impossible to eliminate lies from people’s lives, how American culture has adopted many lies, and how so much is based on simple, "harmless" lies. In Buckley’s essay, he is uncomfortable that in some situations people do not complain. They could use their complaints to make some change. When people are used to keeping silent avoid problems or waiting someone else to solve the problem.
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...
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.
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,
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.
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...
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
Traditionally, it is agreed that any and every form of telling the truth is always the best thing to do. In the essays of Stephen L Carter and Stephanie Ericsson, this ideal is not exactly true. It is expressed in "The Insufficiency of Honesty" as well as "The Ways We Lie" that honesty is hard to come by and that there is more to it than believed. The authors convey their views by first defining what the concept is, picking it apart, and then use common occurrences for examples of the points they had made.
Henningsen, D. D., Cruz, M. G., & Morr, M. C. (2000). “Pattern Violations and Perception of Deception.” Communication Reports. Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 1-9.
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,