There's this article in the New York Times today, I’m Not Lying, I’m Telling a Future Truth. Really. that puts a smiley face on white lies.
A series of recent studies, focusing on students who inflate their grade-point average, suggests that such exaggeration is very different psychologically from other forms of truth twisting. Touching up scenes or past performances induces none of the anxiety that lying or keeping secrets does, these studies find; and embroiderers often work to live up to the enhanced self-images they project. The findings imply that some kinds of deception are aimed more at the deceiver than at the audience, and they may help in distinguishing braggarts and posers from those who are expressing personal aspirations, however clumsily.
“It’s important to emphasize that the motives driving academic exaggeration seem to be personal and ‘intrapsychic’ rather than public or interpersonal,” said Richard H. Gramzow, a psychologist at the University of Southampton in England who has led much of the research. “Basically, exaggeration here reflects positive goals for the future, and we have found that those goals tend to be realized.”
Cool, more details...then this truly WTF? moment.
The findings provide another lens through which to view claims, from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s story of sniper fire in Bosnia to exaggerations of income, charitable contributions and SAT scores. As much as these are embroideries, they are also expressions of yearning, and for reachable goals.
Hillary Rodham Clinton's goal is to get shot at?
Does stuff like that actually help?
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