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Why We Lie
Why do we lie?
Because we are frightened of being humiliated, being treated like an object, being rejected, losing control of things, and, most of all, we are frightened of uncertainty. Often we get our lies in before any of these things can happen. We lie to maintain our vanity. We lie when we call our fantasies the truth. Lying is much easier than searching for the truth and accepting it, no matter how inconvenient it is. We lie to others, and, even worse, we lie to ourselves.
In both private and public life, we damage ourselves with our lies, and we damage other people. Lies destroy mutual trust, and fragment our sense of who we are.
Lies have played a major part in climate change and the global economic crisis. Fearing to change how they live, many people prefer to continue lying rather than acknowledge that we are facing a very uncertain but undoubtedly unpleasant future unless we learn how to prefer the truths of the real world in which we live rather than the comforting lies that ultimately betray us. We are capable of changing, but will we choose to do this?
Because we are frightened of being humiliated, being treated like an object, being rejected, losing control of things, and, most of all, we are frightened of uncertainty. Often we get our lies in before any of these things can happen. We lie to maintain our vanity. We lie when we call our fantasies the truth. Lying is much easier than searching for the truth and accepting it, no matter how inconvenient it is. We lie to others, and, even worse, we lie to ourselves.
In both private and public life, we damage ourselves with our lies, and we damage other people. Lies destroy mutual trust, and fragment our sense of who we are.
Lies have played a major part in climate change and the global economic crisis. Fearing to change how they live, many people prefer to continue lying rather than acknowledge that we are facing a very uncertain but undoubtedly unpleasant future unless we learn how to prefer the truths of the real world in which we live rather than the comforting lies that ultimately betray us. We are capable of changing, but will we choose to do this?
364 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2010
10 people are currently reading
123 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy Rowe
56 books41 followersThe psychologist who has changed how we understand depression and happiness
"Dorothy Rowes is the calm voice of reason in an increasingly mad world"
Sue Townsend
Dorothy Rowe is a world-renowned psychologist and writer. Her explanation of depression gives the depressed person a way of taking charge of their life and leaving the prison of depression forever.
She shows how we each live in a world of meaning that we have created. She applies this understanding to important aspects of our lives, such as emotional distress, happiness, growing old, religious belief, politics, money, friends and enemies, extraverts and introverts, parents, children and siblings.
Her work liberates us from the bamboozling lies that mental health experts and politicians tell in order to keep us in our place and themselves in power.
"
"Dorothy Rowes is the calm voice of reason in an increasingly mad world"
Sue Townsend
Dorothy Rowe is a world-renowned psychologist and writer. Her explanation of depression gives the depressed person a way of taking charge of their life and leaving the prison of depression forever.
She shows how we each live in a world of meaning that we have created. She applies this understanding to important aspects of our lives, such as emotional distress, happiness, growing old, religious belief, politics, money, friends and enemies, extraverts and introverts, parents, children and siblings.
Her work liberates us from the bamboozling lies that mental health experts and politicians tell in order to keep us in our place and themselves in power.
"
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
September 19, 2011
The book started out great. The author built up a good theory on why we lie; to maintain a constant sense of Self. But then she started interpreting her own version of reality (which is always subjective, even you one of the greatest minds on Earth), and starts attributing various different reasons as to why she thinks that certain people and political parties behave the way they do. I'm all for deconstruction, but what the author does is not merely deconstruction; she actively constructs a whole new world according to her hopes, dreams, aspirations and beliefs.
I wish this book was more scientific (or at least mentioned why they drifted out of the scientific method like how David Livingstone Smith does in his book with the same title), because the first chapter promised so much more than the whole.
I wish this book was more scientific (or at least mentioned why they drifted out of the scientific method like how David Livingstone Smith does in his book with the same title), because the first chapter promised so much more than the whole.
November 17, 2012
Why We Lie is as philosophical as it is scientific, and there’s clear bias on the author’s part. When reading, be careful separating scientific fact from her own experience, because she presents both as absolute. However, as the basis of her argument is how difficult it can be to find absolute truth, her own attempts to manufacture the truth are understandable! We just have to read carefully and see if we agree.
Mostly, I do agree with her. She presents compelling arguments, both scientific and anecdotal, towards the idea that human beings create the truth they want to believe, partly through vanity, and partly because what we call “truth” is shaky and constantly changing, which scares us.
However, even when I don't agree with her, she makes me think, and forces me to examine why I don't. This is a good book to read if you're interested in doing the same.
-Elizabeth Reuter
Author, The Demon of Renaissance Drive
Mostly, I do agree with her. She presents compelling arguments, both scientific and anecdotal, towards the idea that human beings create the truth they want to believe, partly through vanity, and partly because what we call “truth” is shaky and constantly changing, which scares us.
However, even when I don't agree with her, she makes me think, and forces me to examine why I don't. This is a good book to read if you're interested in doing the same.
-Elizabeth Reuter
Author, The Demon of Renaissance Drive
September 5, 2015
I always trusted my instincts to be able to tell when a person is deceiving me. Though after learning a hard lesson that I'm no expert, the curiosity as to why someone lies sparked my interest more than gathering my pride from the floor. This book explains the birth of a lie no better than the existence of mankind. The author takes examples from the animal kingdom to explain deception in one chapter, and then fills the rest of the book rewriting that chapter over and over again. After spending time one can never get back, Rowe effectively makes the point that everyone lies for one reason or another, just why is anyone's guess.
June 13, 2021
Dorothy Rowe damns lying, which she says we do to preserve our "sense of being a person". She uses the term to include white lies, concealment, all kinds of deception and wilful ignorance, includes lying to ourselves as well as to others, and blames it for just about every mental illness. Nazis, the 2008 financial crash and climate change feature largely in this book, but she includes Tony Blair, Sartre & Beauvoir, and the CIA among her many examples of personal and corporate lying.
Whereas she emphasises the need for us to honestly perceive our "uncertain" world, of which she says all our knowledge is "guesses", ironically her final chapter is a long sermon or harangue I can only describe as dogmatic and full of certainty.
Still, a good read with many interesting points. I would have liked her to unpack the idea of "our sense of being a person".
Whereas she emphasises the need for us to honestly perceive our "uncertain" world, of which she says all our knowledge is "guesses", ironically her final chapter is a long sermon or harangue I can only describe as dogmatic and full of certainty.
Still, a good read with many interesting points. I would have liked her to unpack the idea of "our sense of being a person".
August 18, 2022
I was really engaged by the first chapter, which presents some fascinating ideas about the nature of perception and how it is developed in infancy. I looked forward to more of this kind of writing in the rest of the book.
Instead, it became rather unstructured, meandering even, and I felt it to be light on interesting or novel ideas.
Sorry to say, I did not feel sufficiently engaged to complete the book.
Instead, it became rather unstructured, meandering even, and I felt it to be light on interesting or novel ideas.
Sorry to say, I did not feel sufficiently engaged to complete the book.
January 7, 2019
Loved this book. As I saw Dorothy Rowe at the Edinburgh book festival talking about this book. She was so interesting, down to earth, approachable and passionate. I was absorbed.
July 23, 2019
Dorothy provided a glaring truth about lies. Provoking and tantalizing facts, revealing our habit of lying withoit knowing. Strongly recommended for reading .
June 10, 2025
Interesting read
April 19, 2026
Has forever changed the way i see lying and liars.
September 15, 2011
When was the last time you told a lie? Why did you do so? This interesting and carefully researched book delves into a destructive aspect of human nature that most of us spend a lot of time not thinking about. Rowe’s extensive experience as psychologist and evident interest in history, politics and science gives her a very broad basis for her fascinating insights into why we resort to lying from a very early age. Our sense of self is so precarious, argues Rowe, that we will do anything to preserve it – even lie to ourselves.
She has some sharp observations to make about those in her own profession who insist on continuing to follow the practices of Freud, even though his observations and studies have been superseded by modern techniques such as brain scans, which shows us that there is no inherent ‘inner core’ within each of us. Rather, our brain receives a mass of external information about the world around us and resolves this input into a pattern that we think of as ‘self’. However your ‘self’ is nothing like my ‘self’ because my touch, taste, hearing, vision and imagination that constitutes my sense of who I am, are quite different to your various sensory impressions. I found this first section of the book profound and absorbing as she explains just how we use lies to defend ourselves, make ourselves more likeable and bolster our own self esteem, in addition to preserving our fragile ‘self’. The explanations as to what impels people to lie were riveting and illuminating – I certainly recommend any student of human nature reading the book for this section, alone.
However, Rowe extends her analysis to the professions, business, religion and politics. By citing recent events, such as America and Britain’s ill-planned war on Iraq under the guise of seeking weapons of mass destruction, she contends that lies have cost lives and billions of dollars. She goes on to denounce the hypocrisy of bankers and businessmen who become enmeshed in scandals like that of Enron and more recently, the selling of sub-prime mortgages that led to the financial crisis which is currently making all our lives miserably insecure. Rowe is an Australian and it shows. She doesn’t pull her punches as she points the finger and wags it reprovingly at a number of well-known statesmen and financiers for their dishonesty and complete lack of guilt.
Whether you agree with her analysis or not, this book is a readable, thought provoking reflection on our society and a basic faultline in human behaviour that Rowe argues, we should all consider taking more seriously.
8/10
Want to Read
April 12, 2011I heard a saying last year that I thought was so clever and insightful:
"If we never lie, we never have to remember anything."
Today in the introduction to some stories of one of my very favourites, Guy de Maupassant
I read of his summation of society as being nothing but sham, betrayal and exploitation.
Alas,recently, in regard to a close friend of 40 years,I have found this to be horribly true.
Things that have bothered me over the years concerning this friend, I finally put together,like pieces of a jigsaw,spoke to a couple of other friends and when I felt calm confronted this person, only to hear them say "I can't remember." To me this was yet another lie in a whole tissue of lies, betrayals and exploitation.I felt I had let a monster into my house who has consistently used and abused my generosity, friends and family and done his utmost to either destroy my other relationships or compete with me for them in a most insidious and destructive way.
I recently heard Dorothy Rowe being interviewed in Australia about her new book.
At 80, she is like an unpretentious little old housewife, down to earth and straight from the shoulder in her talk, which contains no jargon or weasel words so beloved of the phoneys abundant today, but is lucid and simple and has rarely a word of more than 3/4 syllables.
I hope to learn about myself and a world I have come to suspect and mistrust to some degree.
Happily there have been only a couple of casualties or losses among friends and family,
women who revert to some monstrous sentimentality when faced with the facts.
I am curious about why people lie to themselves and lie to others.
I hope Dorothy may have some healing words for a problem that has caused much personal grief and to which I have devoted a couple of years in fear of a rush to judgement.
who
"If we never lie, we never have to remember anything."
Today in the introduction to some stories of one of my very favourites, Guy de Maupassant
I read of his summation of society as being nothing but sham, betrayal and exploitation.
Alas,recently, in regard to a close friend of 40 years,I have found this to be horribly true.
Things that have bothered me over the years concerning this friend, I finally put together,like pieces of a jigsaw,spoke to a couple of other friends and when I felt calm confronted this person, only to hear them say "I can't remember." To me this was yet another lie in a whole tissue of lies, betrayals and exploitation.I felt I had let a monster into my house who has consistently used and abused my generosity, friends and family and done his utmost to either destroy my other relationships or compete with me for them in a most insidious and destructive way.
I recently heard Dorothy Rowe being interviewed in Australia about her new book.
At 80, she is like an unpretentious little old housewife, down to earth and straight from the shoulder in her talk, which contains no jargon or weasel words so beloved of the phoneys abundant today, but is lucid and simple and has rarely a word of more than 3/4 syllables.
I hope to learn about myself and a world I have come to suspect and mistrust to some degree.
Happily there have been only a couple of casualties or losses among friends and family,
women who revert to some monstrous sentimentality when faced with the facts.
I am curious about why people lie to themselves and lie to others.
I hope Dorothy may have some healing words for a problem that has caused much personal grief and to which I have devoted a couple of years in fear of a rush to judgement.
who
July 20, 2012
Penjelasan Dorothy Rowe, psikolog dari Australia yang praktik di Inggris, sangat menarik untuk direnungkan. Konsep yang disampaikan cukup lengkap dan penjelasannya juga mendetail sehingga memberikan banyak pemahaman baru tentang manusia. Yang dibahas bukan cuma tentang 'apa yang bikin kita berbohong', tapi juga ada pembahasan tentang konsep diri, keyakinan diri, serta beberapa konsep dari Psikologi Perkembangan.
Meskipun demikian, ada beberapa bagian yang saya rasa terlalu spesifik, misalnya bagian yang mengkritik pemerintah Inggris dan Amerika saat krisis finansial terjadi.
Meskipun demikian, ada beberapa bagian yang saya rasa terlalu spesifik, misalnya bagian yang mengkritik pemerintah Inggris dan Amerika saat krisis finansial terjadi.
December 16, 2013
Well now, very long winded getting to the point at times; appeared to lose bearings and have a tendency to veer off track, and, having put certain protocols in place for certain situations, ignored them in others. I have beliefs for which I can find some evidence, but I will concede that I could be wrong. Am I lying to myself? Or just keeping my options open?
Want to Read
May 4, 2011Recommended by a colleague.
September 9, 2016
Very interesting book! Very insightful and thought provoking.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews