Unit 5 The Real Truth About Lies课文翻译综合教程三

Unit 5

The Real Truth about Lies

Randy Fitzgerald

At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, psychology professor Bella DePaulo got 77 students and 70 townspeople to volunteer for an unusual project. All kept diaries for a week, recording the numbers and details of the lies they told.

One student and six Charlottesville residents professed to have told no falsehoods. The other 140 participants told 1,535.

The lies were most often not what most of us would call earth-shattering. Someone would pretend to be more positive or supportive of a spouse or friend than he or she really was, or feign agreement with a relative's opinion. According to DePaulo, women in their interactions with other women lied mostly to spare the other's feelings. Men lied to other men generally for self-promoting reasons.

Most strikingly, these tellers-of-a-thousand-lies reported that their deceptions caused them "little preoccupation or regret". Might that, too, be a lie? Perhaps. But there is evidence that this attitude toward casual use of prevarication is common.

For example, 20,000 middle- and high-schoolers were surveyed by the Josephson Institute of Ethics--a nonprofit organization in Marina del Rey, California, devoted to character education. Ninety-two percent of the teenagers admitted having lied to their parents in the previous year, and 73 percent characterized themselves as "serial liars", meaning they told lies weekly. Despite these admissions, 91 percent of all respondents said they were "satisfied with my own ethics and character".

Think how often we hear the expressions "I'll call you" or "The check is in the mail” or "I'm sorry, but he stepped out". And then there are professions-- lawyers, pundits, PR consultants--whose members seem to specialize in shaping or spinning the truth to suit clients' needs.

Little white lies have become ubiquitous, and the reasons we give each other for telling fibs are familiar. Consider, for example, a Southern California corporate executive whom I'll call Tom. He goes with his wife and son to his mother-in-law's home for Thanksgiving dinner every year. Tom dislikes her “special” pumpkin pie intensely. Invariably he tells her how wonderful it is, to avoid hurting her feelings.

"What's wrong with that?" Tom asked Michael Josephson, president of the Josephson Institute. It's a question we might all ask.

Josephson replied by asking Tom to consider the lie from his mother-in-law's point 1

of view. Suppose that one day Tom's child blurts out the truth, and she discovers the deceit. Will she tell her son-in-law, "Thank you for caring so much?" Or is she more likely to feel hurt and say, "How could you have misled me all these years? And what else have you lied to me about?"

And what might Tom's mother-in-law now suspect about her own daughter? And will Tom's boy lie to his parents and yet be satisfied with his own character?

How often do we compliment people on how well they look, or express our appreciation for gifts, when we don't really mean it? Surely, these "nice" lies are harmless and well intended, a necessary social lubricant. But, like Tom, we should remember the words of English novelist Sir Walter Scott, who wrote, "What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."

Even seemingly harmless falsehoods can have unforeseen consequences. Philosopher Sissela Bok warns us that they can put us on a slippery slope. "After the first lies, others can come more easily,” she wrote in her book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. “Psychological barriers wear down; the ability to make more distinctions can coarsen; the liar's perception of his chances of being caught may warp."

Take the pumpkin pie lies. In the first place, it wasn't just that he wanted his mother-in-law to feel good. Whether he realized it or not, he really wanted her to think highly of him. And after the initial deceit he needed to tell more lies to cover up the first one.

Who believes it anymore when they're told that the person they want to reach by phone is "in a meeting"? By itself, that kind of lie is of no great consequence. Still, the endless proliferation of these little prevarications does matter.

Once they've become common enough, even the small untruths that are not meant to hurt encourage a certain cynicism and loss of trust. "When (trust) is damaged,” warns Bok, “the community as a whole suffers; and when it is destroyed, societies falter and collapse."

Are all white lies to be avoided at all costs? Not necessarily. The most understandable and forgivable lies are an exchange of what ethicists refer to as the principle of trust for the principle of caring, "like telling children about the tooth fairy, or deceiving someone to set them up for a surprise party," Josephson says. "Still, we must ask ourselves if we are willing to give our friends and associates the authority to lie to us whenever they think it is for our own good."

Josephson suggests a simple test. If someone you lie to finds out the truth, will he thank you for caring? Or will he feel his long-term trust in you has been under-mined?

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And if you're not sure, Mark Twain has given us a good rule of thumb. "When in doubt, tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends."

谎言的真相

兰迪·菲茨杰拉德

1. 在夏洛特斯维尔的弗吉尼亚大学里，心理学教授贝拉·德保罗组织了77名学生和70名市民志愿参加一个特别的项目。所有参加者写了一周的日记，记录下自己撒谎的次数和细节。

2. 1名学生和6名夏洛特斯维尔的居民声称没有撒过谎。其他140名参加者共计撒谎1535次。

3. 他们说的谎言里绝大多数在大众眼中都不属惊天动地的那一类。其中有人假装对自己的另一半或朋友表示肯定或支持，或对某位亲戚的观点佯装赞同。依德保罗之见，女性在相互交往中说谎主要是为了不伤对方感情，而男性间撒谎则多半属于自吹自擂。

4. 最惊人的是，这些撒了数以千计谎言的人声称，欺骗行为并没有让他们十分“纠结或愧疚”。这会不会也是谎言？有可能。不过，确有证据表明，这种撒谎也不眨眼的态度是很常见的。

5. 例如，加州马里纳-戴尔雷有一个致力于性格教育的非营利性组织——约瑟夫森伦理道德研究所曾对两万名初、高中学生进行过调查。92％的青少年承认在过去一年中对父母撒过谎，73%将自己描述为“连续撒谎的人”，意即每星期都撒谎。尽管如此，91％的参加者称“对自己的道德和人品还是感到满意”。

6. 想想我们是多么经常地听到这些话：“我会打电话给你”、“支票已寄出”、“对不起，他不在。”还有一些职业——律师、专家和公关咨询师——其成员似乎专门歪曲或编造事实以满足客户的需要。

7. 无伤大雅的小谎言无处不在，而我们撒谎的理由也大同小异。看看这个例子，是关于一个公司经理的，我就叫他汤姆吧。他每年都和妻儿到岳母家参加圣诞晚宴。汤姆非常不喜欢岳母做的“特色”南瓜馅饼。不过，他每次总是对岳母说南瓜馅饼多么好吃，免得伤了她的心。

8. “这有什么不对？”汤姆问约瑟夫森研究所所长迈克尔·约瑟夫森。这个问题我们都有可能会问。

9. 约瑟夫森的回答是要汤姆站在岳母的立场上考虑一下他的谎言。假设有一天，汤姆的孩子一不小心说漏了嘴，使她了解了实情。她是会对女婿说“谢谢你考虑得这么周到”呢？还是更有可能地，觉得受了伤害，说“你怎么能骗我这么多年? 你还对我撒过哪些谎?”

10. 汤姆的岳母现在对她自己的女儿又会起些什么疑心呢? 汤姆的儿子会不会也对父母撒谎的同时满意于自己的品行呢?

11. 我们违心地恭维他人如何漂亮，对收到的礼物表示感激，这种情况是不是早已司空见惯？毫无疑问，这些“善意的谎言”于他人无害且初衷良好，是不可缺少的社交润滑剂。但是，像汤姆一样，我们应该记住英国小说家沃尔特·司各特爵士曾写下的句子：“一朝开口编谎言， 3

此生安宁便无缘。”

12. 即使一些看似无害的谎言也会导致无法预料的后果。哲学家希塞拉·博克警告我们，谎言会使我们一错再错，无法收手。“撒过头几次谎后，后面的谎言就会来得更容易了，”她在《撒谎——公众场合和私人生活中的道德选择》一书中写道，“心理障碍渐渐克服；分辨是非曲直的能力会变得迟钝；撒谎人对谎言可能被揭穿这一常识的认知也会扭曲。”

13. 再以南瓜馅饼的谎言为例。首先，汤姆撒谎不仅仅是想让岳母感觉良好。无论自己是否意识到，汤姆其实是希望岳母对他有好感。撒了第一个谎之后，他需要用更多的谎言来掩盖第一个谎言。

14. 现在有谁还相信他们打电话要找的人“在开会”？就其本身而言，那种谎话无伤大雅。然而，这种小谎言无休无止地扩散的确会引起严重的问题。

15. 谎言一旦泛滥，即使并无恶意的谎话也会使人们变得多少有些悲观怀疑，不再彼此信任。博克告诫说：“一旦信任被破坏，整个社区就会受害；一旦信任被摧毁，社会就会动摇并崩溃。”

16. 那是不是连善意的谎言都不能说，哪怕要付出极大的代价？那倒未必。那些最能令人谅解的谎话是将道德学家们所谓的信任原则替换为关怀原则，“比如给孩子们讲牙仙女的故事，或是瞒骗某人以便给他一个惊喜聚会。”约瑟夫森说，“即使这样，我们也必须扪心自问，是否乐意给朋友和同事向我们说谎的权利，只要他们自己认为是为我们好就可以？”

17. 约瑟夫森推荐了一个简单的测试方法。如果别人发现你对他撒谎，他是会感激你为他着想呢，还是会觉得长期以来他对你的信任遭到了破坏呢?

18. 如果你没有把握，马克·吐温给过我们一条经验法则：“拿不准的时候，就实话实说。实话会迷惑敌人，震惊朋友。”

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