The Truth About Lying

The Truth About Lying is a book about how and why people lie, how we respond when others lie to us, how to tell when someone is lying, and what to do about it. The book includes a questionnaire to determine your own Lie-Q Score: how much you lie. As the book illustrates, we lie for all kinds of reasons-to protect ourselves, gain an advantage, avoid punishment, protect other's feelings, escape blame, or get out of something we don't want to do. Though philosophers, religious leaders, teachers, and parents tell us lying is morally wrong-at some time, everyone does it. And in the last decade, we have seen more and more examples of lying in the daily news.


The Truth About Lying provides a broad overview of the subject in a book that has become a classic. It begins with an overview of the pervasiveness of lying today and throughout history. Then, it discusses the range of lies, reasons people lie, and different types of lies in different situations, using many stories from ordinary, respectable people to illustrate.

The concluding chapters discuss how readers can deal with lying in their own lives.