Yes, that is it. Kinda boring to look at right now, or as a friend once told me "looks flat." Fortunately, I don't like flat, I like curves and I can guarantee its going to get better with better graphics as time goes by. I've learned HTML and CSS, now I'm learning JavaScript, so please, as the time goes by, let me know what you like and what you hate. Head over to the Contact section and you can send me an email on this. I don't ignore emails, ever and I do check my spam (weekly).
So, what's ED about? I'm going to say this right now with the greatest stress: Examining Deception is not a site on how to catch people lying. Read that line again, and read then read it again until you find the word "how".
OK, you've told us what it isn't, so what is it? Examining Deception is a site about why people lie. that's the plain and simple answer where the science is not. People are always, "well, I'm sure it's harder to if someone is lying other than why they're doing it." Not true at all. Here's an example: someone you love tells a very serious lie to you so you don't get distracted from any major tests, but you later find out and you're mad at them and conclude that they're selfish. Why did they lie to. Now you're thinking: "well, they did to make me more productive." Mmm... hmm... close, but no cigar.
What was it really, well for one, they obviously did it to make you more productive, but there's also another reason: most lies are told to cover up other lies. Yes, it can sometimes be that simple. Maybe in this instance the person was really lying to you, or maybe they used it to cover up something else. Maybe they told it because they had wanted you to avoid something that could harm them. This is the essence of many lies: one lie, to cover up another.
This leads into the definition of a lie. Paul Ekman, PhD, a pioneer and world leading researcher in non-verbal communication (which includes deception of course), defines a lie as either the falsification or concealment of the truth. Now, he also states that "concealing usually is easier than falsifying." (29, Ekman, 2006) Now, it is ironic how on the same page just before he stated this he also wrote "[w]hen there is a choice about how to lie, liars usually prefer concealing to falsifying."" I agree with Ekman that liars prefer to conceal, but how they lie is what can drive the difficulty of the why.
Now, in the above example, someone you love told a serious lie for you sake, but now we need to answer the real why. I wrote earlier that most lies have a chaos theory behind them, but ignore this for a second and let's just say the person lied to keep you functioning productively. What is now making it so difficult to tell why they lied is in how they did it. This in no way goes against what ED is all about as we're not about catching them, we're about explaining their actions. The valuable thing is is that we don't know how they did it. Perhaps s/he tell everyone but you and everyone s/he has told agrees to hide it or maybe s/he tells all their closest friends and relatives except you (in this case you could be husband/wife, relative, life long friend, and so on), or maybe s/he tells no one.
Is it dawning upon you? No, OK, that's good, because it shouldn't. Look at it this way, say your partner is dying of cancer and you don't want your oldest to know as they have a really big test, but you tell everyone else. Now, what happens? You've lied to protect your oldest as they have a really big test or exam and they're in Grade 12 and need these good marks to get into their first choice University. You know they can get in too as they're above the average, but it worries you if they know about your partner's cancer. Maybe you say they're in the hospital because they're having surgery and of course, this could possibly be a half-truth.
Now, we move on to a harder perspective, how the lie gets processed. Look below for a diagram and read it thoroughly, notice anything? They begin with falsify, then move to concealment, and then move to falsification and from there they have a large amount of thought to do. In the average person, this can obviously be an overwhelming amount of thought
I very much believe that the initial thought is to always falsify and then they realize that the person might not know. From this conjecture, is possibly the reason why many of us get anxious and from there, get caught in our lies. Now, in relation to the why, the person has acted to hide it and hide it some more through falsification and ultimately settled on business trip and cellphone, but then leaves the final thought "what if they ask about why the cars still here?" Reason to question: they have to be out of town because they've gone on a "trip" and travel by plane is expensive, so they'll know I'm lying from no past discussions.
Why did you leave the last one unanswered? Now this is the fun part and definitely the hard part of answering the why: self-deception! I have a deep rooted belief that the mind does not control belief, but that belief controls the mind. Here, I stopped because the liar could feel so much hubris (not pride) from their deductions that it would be impossible for the child to figure it out. But really, the steps the child takes are much smaller and there are only two falsifications occurring. Now, the more lies, the more likely it is that the truth will be revealed, but the truth is hidden farther down. They may discover from catching one of the lies that the truth is hidden and they'll try to get at it, but the more lies, the harder it'll be.
The child wakes one day, asks where the father/mother is and the liar replies: "Business trip. S/He forgot her/is phone though." Child looks out to the window, sees car... Now the liar is scrambling to think of something because their hubris got in the way. As you can see, the child did a lot less work than the liar and because of that, the liar had such a great emotional connection to their hard work, that they deceived themselves that their lengthily deduction would work. In actuality, it took them ten steps (ignoring the eleventh) and the child a successful three steps with their final one requiring them to just look out the window, no thinking needed!
So, why did the the parent lie: because they wanted to keep the child focused on school and most importantly, so that they could be a smart, ethical, and focused parent. In reality, they weren't very smart in their lie as it failed to be prepared and they certainly didn't focus too well as they stopped at the thought of the car. It is because of this, that planning for events fail most often become the deceive themselves that it won't.
And now you understand what Examining Deception is all about: why we lie.
Works Cited
Ekman, P. (2001). Telling
Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace (3 ed.). New York: W. W. Norton
& Company, Inc.
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