When Pinker talks about the social psychologists asking people if they ever fantasize about killing someone they don't like, he concludes the paragraph with the phrase, "And more than 60% of women and about three-quarters of men at least occasionally think about killing people they don't like. And the rest of them are lying." This may be stretching it a bit for the purpose of this assignment, but this phrase really struck me. Are surveys really that useful, or do people give the answer they know others want to hear?
I agree with Pinker in this statement. I think in general, people lie because they want to impress other people to make them believe they are someone else, someone better. It is no surprise that people don't want to admit they have had the desire to kill someone. I know that Dr. House is not real, and was never quoted in this article, but as a frequent watcher of the show, Pinker agrees with Dr. House, everybody lies. I feel like lying has also become more acceptable in our society today. I've heard to tell a little "white lie" in job interviews to become a better candidate, people lie about their age, and people lie to their friends about that new haircut they just got. These lies are considered harmless or even beneficial, but regardless, it is a lie. I am guilty of this too, but why do we feel the need to lie to be someone we're not? Is it our biology or is it the way we were raised? To Pinker, he would say something along the lines of our genes playing a larger role. Pinker himself doesn't go on to discuss why these people are lying when it comes to killing people, but I though it was interesting enough to dive in to the topic myself.
Your discussion of the ubiquitous “white lie” and its role in society got me thinking. People generally don’t like liars, at least the idea of a liar. If so, you’d think that society would have come up with something to end that behavior, right? After some thought, I’ve come up with an idea that may add a biological basis to the tradition of the white lie: an instinct, if you will. Assuming that people lie in order to make themselves look good, lies would generally end in impressing the other members of society. Could this behavior then be explained by an instinctual desire to be more successful? Or, even further, a desire for higher Darwinian reproductive fitness?
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