"Those participants who were not given the chance to tell a white lie (regardless of whether they were primed to think about honesty) selected the experimenter's study about 40 percent of the time, and they were willing to donate about $35 to the experimenter if they won the raffle.
For those participants who were given the chance to lie, the results were quite different depending on whether they were primed to think about honesty. Those who were not primed to think about honesty acted like those people who did not lie. Those people who did think about honesty, though, acted much more favorably toward the experimenter. They selected her study 88 percent of the time, and were willing to donate an average of $53 to her research. That means that these participants were actually willing to give away more money than they would keep for themselves in order to make up for having told a lie.
These findings suggest that white lies aren't simply a form of social grease that we apply to make our social interactions go more smoothly. We really do recognize them as being lies. As a result, we need to be quite careful about how these lies affect our future behavior toward the people we have lied to."
- More Here
For those participants who were given the chance to lie, the results were quite different depending on whether they were primed to think about honesty. Those who were not primed to think about honesty acted like those people who did not lie. Those people who did think about honesty, though, acted much more favorably toward the experimenter. They selected her study 88 percent of the time, and were willing to donate an average of $53 to her research. That means that these participants were actually willing to give away more money than they would keep for themselves in order to make up for having told a lie.
These findings suggest that white lies aren't simply a form of social grease that we apply to make our social interactions go more smoothly. We really do recognize them as being lies. As a result, we need to be quite careful about how these lies affect our future behavior toward the people we have lied to."
- More Here
May be this social science experiment sounds mundane but Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature makes a much better and an important case on how our language affects who we are and what we become.
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