So you're going to tell a lie.
Before you do, ask yourself the following question: Is there any video footage, transcript, text message, e-mail record or living person that could expose you as a fraud?
A string of high-profile liars have been caught out recently, having made false statements or bold pronouncements only to be contradicted by the evidence.
U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said this week that she "misspoke" about a trip to Bosnia in 1996, having said her plane landed under sniper fire.
It depends what your definition of 'sniper fire' is. Hillary Clinton repeatedly cited a 1996 visit to Bosnia as demonstrative of her foreign policy experience. Problem is, video footage disproves her story about landing under enemy fire. (AFP/Getty Images)
The story was disputed by journalists who accompanied her on the trip, as well as the comedian Sinbad, who also went along.
Archival video footage shows the then-first lady strolling off the plane amid a noticeable lack of gunfire and calmly listening to a young girl recite a poem on the tarmac.
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick also fell victim to his own untruths, charged with eight felonies including obstruction of justice this week after text messages revealed he lied under oath about an affair with his aide.
And earlier this year, memoirist Margaret B. Jones was exposed as a fraud when her sister revealed that her real name was Seltzer, and that she was not a Latino former gang member as she had claimed in her book, Love and Consequences.
But getting busted is not just the domain of the rich, powerful and deliberately delusional.
The Internet allows for on-the-spot fact checking of even the most innocuous claims, and electronic records of financial transactions, phone conversations and e-mail forwards make it harder to get away with fibbing about anything.
So in an age when it's so easy to get caught, why do people still lie?
"From the very beginning, probably from the point when we acquired language, there's been an arms race between our ability to misrepresent ourselves and our ability to catch each other out," said David Livingstone Smith, author of Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind. "I think what will happen is that people will find more and more clever ways to lie."
Mr. Livingstone Smith said that developments in technology have made it easier to confirm facts, but do not seem to have discouraged people from fudging them, no matter who they are talking to. And that's because lying is still seen as a way to get ahead, whether in careers, relationships or other social interactions.
"It enhances opportunities, our status, our attractiveness," he said. "So the fact that it's easier to get caught out on lots of stuff doesn't affect that aspect of human nature, that disposition to manipulate others' perception of us."
Robert Feldman, associate dean in the college of social and behavioural sciences at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said that many lies are inadvertent as people simply "misremember" the past, and that "once you say something it becomes even more real in your mind."
But most people simply don't believe they will be caught in a lie, he said.
"Even though there is the Internet and ways of checking on these things, I think very often people think they're going to get away with it," he said. "People do a sort of calculus in their minds and think 'what are the chances of being caught and if I am caught what consequences am I going to suffer?' "
One egregious example of this is the Food Network chef Robert Irvine. On his show Dinner: Impossible, the British chef repeatedly made impressive claims about his past, saying that he baked Diana, Princess of Wales' wedding cake and worked in the White House kitchen. A newspaper investigation found he had lied about these and other aspects of his résumé, revelations that appear to have led to the end of his Food Network career.
But Mr. Irvine had been peddling his fictional past for months before he was confronted, and Mr. Feldman said that most people still do not take the time to check the veracity of other people's stories.
"I think a lot of times we're willing to let things slide because it really makes dinner parties and everyday conversations go a lot more smoothly," he said. "We don't spend the time it takes to ferret out when someone's telling the truth."
Mr. Livingston Smith agrees that technology has done little to promote honesty, even as it makes it more difficult to lie. "I think we're just as deceptive as we have been for the last couple million years," he said. "There are just more and more sophisticated ways to be honest and dishonest."
HILLARY CLINTON ON LANDING IN TUZLA
It depends what your definition of "sniper fire" is. The presidential candidate repeatedly cited a 1996 visit to Bosnia as demonstrative of her foreign policy experience. Problem is, video footage disproves her story about landing under enemy fire.
ROBERT IRVINE ON BAKING DIANA'S WEDDING CAKE
The chef and host of Food Network's Dinner: Impossible said he was a knight, a White House chef and instrumental in the construction of Diana, Princess of Wales' wedding cake. But apparently the chef had cooked up all those claims.
MARGARET SELTZER ON BEING IN A LATINO GANG
In her memoir Love and Consequences, Margaret B. Jones (aka Seltzer) wrote about growing up on the streets of L.A. Then her sister revealed her as a white girl from the suburbs, ruining her street cred.
When you're busted
Mis-speak
- verb
1. speak wrongly or improperly.
2. fail to convey the meaning
one intends by one's words.
If you've been caught in a contradiction, take a cue from the experts and say you "misspoke." It's not admitting you lied, but it shows people you know you were wrong.
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