The Theory of Lies: Political and Anthropological Aspects

“To avoid lying is also to deceive,” says an Arabic proverb. While people often declare their commitment to honesty, in practice, they lie almost constantly. Lying is a complex psychological and social phenomenon—an inherent part of daily human interaction and an immanent form of our social behavior. Formally, to lie means to make a false statement about oneself or an external event, intending others to accept it as true.

Our tendency to lie can be explained by various psychological theories, including psychodynamic, humanistic, and behavioral approaches. The prevailing view is that lying arises from the hedonistic nature of humans: we seek to avoid pain and increase pleasure. Notably, we lie not only for personal gain but also for the benefit of others—to avoid harm to ourselves or to prevent harm to others. Many consider lying acceptable if it saves lives—our own or someone else’s.

Since the groundbreaking research of American scholar Bella DePaulo in 1996, studies have consistently shown that we lie in at least one out of every five sentences. In daily communication, on average, we make false statements in 20-30% of cases; in some situations, every third statement we make may technically be a lie.

However, the distribution of lies is not uniform. Teenagers aged 13-17 tend to lie the most, while children aged 6-8 lie the least. Between the ages of 25 and 45, people make extensive use of their ability to lie, but after age 50, the frequency of lying in daily communication drops significantly. People who are highly concerned with others’ opinions—such as those with demonstrative behavior or members of tightly knit, hierarchical communities (“what will people say?”)—are more prone to lying.

Why Do We Lie?

Most human lies are purely instrumental: in nearly 45% of cases, we lie to present ourselves favorably, promote ourselves, or gain some advantage. Only about 15% of these benefits are financial or economic. Another 35% of lies are aimed at self-protection: 20% to hide the consequences of our mistakes, and about 15% to avoid dangerous situations or people.

Only 10-12% of our lies are directed at others: up to 5% serve as a tool of politeness, about 4% are meant to maintain our social roles, and 3% are intended to cause harm to others. The remaining 8% of lies have an uncertain nature, and likely at least 3-4% help us ignore unpleasant realities by creating imaginary worlds. It is at this intersection—where lies serve both as a tool for social communication and as a personal means of ignoring reality—that interesting contexts for social construction emerge.

Lies as an Institutional Mechanism

The use of lies as an institutional mechanism for social construction was first successfully implemented by corporatist states—specifically, the Nazi and Stalinist regimes. Through powerful and extensive state propaganda machines, and by eliminating social institutions and diversity through repressive terror, these regimes used lies to build mass illusions and direct people’s thoughts and actions as desired.

However, the state mechanisms of lying employed by repressive regimes remained largely external to society, even in societies deeply damaged by repression. As a result, such constructions could not be stable or long-lasting, which ultimately led to the collapse of ideocratic systems and their corresponding authoritarian states.

Yet, the idea of using lies institutionally to manage collective behavior did not disappear. A much more sustainable mechanism was developed by corporate marketers, who introduced a self-replicating model of lying known as “selling doubt.” This model enables the creation and maintenance of stable constructs based on false beliefs, collective misconceptions, mass phobias, and hysteria.

This approach is less about directly implanting false beliefs and more about undermining established value systems, blurring criteria, and fostering total distrust. Tools of this strategy include creating false messages, discrediting, humiliation, and orchestrated public shaming.

The “Selling Doubt” Strategy

The “selling doubt” marketing strategy was first used in the late 1960s by tobacco companies fighting evidence that smoking harms health. In his book Doubt is Their Product (2008), American researcher David Michaels cites a 1969 memo from British American Tobacco: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”

This was the first time a massive body of pseudo-scientific disinformation was created to deny the link between tobacco and disease, a malicious strategy that delayed tobacco regulation for decades and protected corporate profits. Later, this strategy was used to discredit research on toxic emissions and, eventually, to deny climate change.

The result was a powerful machine for producing “alternative facts,” involving numerous consulting firms, paid experts, pseudo-scientific journals, and influential media outlets. Amid the noise they create, anything can be labeled “fake news,” and any professional opinion can be discredited by a flood of loud, unsubstantiated claims.

Consequences and Challenges

This has several dangerous consequences. First, it corrodes the scientific method: in an environment of growing chaos, data verification and achieving expert consensus require much more time and effort. Second, the public mind becomes dominated by a misunderstood form of “critical thinking,” which, without rational thinking, turns into a tool of destruction and chaos. Third, the apparent success of “doubt merchants” tempts many to apply these methods in politics, leading to catastrophic consequences in governance.

It is on this ground—of total distrust, widespread “alternative facts,” the collapse of values, and blurred criteria—that modern political populism grows, as well as new methods of influence in contemporary conflicts, where information becomes a weapon.

There is no universal solution for this situation: demanding honesty, meticulously fact-checking, or spreading refutations is ineffective or even counterproductive.

Most of the information we receive about the world comes from those around us. Therefore, trust in our environment is a fundamental tool of social communication and a means of human survival in a complex world. Manipulating collective trust in the era of mass electronic communications and global social transformations will undoubtedly have short-term success. At the same time, our species’ success lies in our ability for abstract thinking, distinguishing criteria and signs, which creates a balance of values and interests and leaves no room for the institutional triumph of lies.

The real question is how successfully we can overcome the current stage of value chaos, and whether the adaptive mechanism of collective trust will prove stronger than the adaptive mechanism of lying in a society undergoing complex transformations.

One way or another, in our time, it is worth remembering another Arabic proverb: “Be twice as careful when persistent liars start telling the truth.”