Liar! Liar! Your Pants Are on Fire: Deceptive Communication in the Workplace

ABSTRACT We live with lies in the workplace every day. From everyday paperclips to the billions in corporate accounts and from the hollow commitments made to new recruits to the increasingly wistful search for the relationship between performance and reward, work is a showcase for human duplicity And, anyone under enough pressure, or given enough incentive, will lie. Lies, for the most part, are more prevalent in the business world than at home because the work environment is viewed more impersonally. In the workplace, where high performance is everything, lies are told to put a better light on a situation or a result, to justify an action, to be reassuring, or for our own protection. And the cost of dishonesty ranges from $6 billion to as much as $200 billion annually in the United States. This paper will give a definition of lying, discuss who lies and the reasons why people lie, describe if people can actually detect lies, discuss the costs of lying in business, and describe what managers can do to help their organizations. INTRODUCTION "A lie would have no sense unless the truth was felt as dangerous. " Alfred Adler Several centuries before the era of suspicion and performance indicators, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal noted that "mutual cheating is the foundation of society. " Today, anyone who works knows what he means. From everyday paperclips to the billions in corporate accounts; and from the hollow commitments made to new recruits, to the increasingly wistful search for the relationship between performance and reward, work is a showcase for human duplicity (Overell, 2003). Deception is a pervasive element of daily working life. Sometimes it is an official part of one's work. Workplace cultures socialize individuals into using deception as a tool in performing their everyday work (Shulman, 2006). We live with lies in the workplace every day. There are the lies we use to ease out of an uncomfortable situation. "I have to leave now, got to pick up the kids at day care. " "My boss insists we rotate suppliers, so we won't be doing business with you this year. " "No, that stain on your tie isn't noticeable. " Often we don't refer to these statements as lies, but as fibs, which sounds gentler and less deceptive. After awhile, however, we have trouble distinguishing between reality and the embroidered information we have put out to the world (Penson, 1997). This paper will give a definition of lying, discuss who lies and the reasons why people lie, describe if people can actually detect lies, discuss the costs of lying in business, and describe what managers can do to help their organizations. BACKGROUND "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. " Sir Walter Scott In English medieval courts truth was tested by ordeals of fire and water, on the basis a truthful person would be protected by God. Someone suspected of lying would have to carry a redhot iron bar for nine paces. Alternatively, s/he could opt to walk across nine red-hot ploughshares. Either way, if the suspect was burned, then this was proof that s/he was lying and so could be promptly hanged. Other courts went in for trial by water. In the ultimate "no-win" situation, the person accused of lying was put into a sack and thrown into a pond. If the accused sank, this showed s/he was innocent, but s/he might drown anyway. If s/he floated, this was taken as proof that s/he was lying and s/he would be hanged (A Brief History, 2002). In the 19th Century, a "new science" called phrenology entailed measuring "bumps" on a person's skull. Supposedly, it led to the idea that lies could be detected by looking at physical symptoms. In the 20th century, the search for "scientific" ways of spotting liars moved from bumps on the head to brain chemistry, with the search for a "truth serum" drug. In 1963, The US Supreme Court said "serum-induced confession" was in effect a form of torture and the practice was ruled unconstitutional, In the 21st Century, makers of the latest lie detector machine which measures supposedly tell-tale changes in temperature around the eye sockets when somebody is telling a deliberate untruth claim a success rate of 83% in detecting liars. …