Question: why do people lie

Karen Reed answered on 19 Jun 2012:

Hiya,

to cut and paste what I answered to someone else who asked the same question…

this is a great question and no simple answer I fear.
There are loads of reasons why people lie, but more often that not its for personal gain. In other words its to try and better themselves and in fact its recently been shown that people who are good at telling the little white lies to sell themselves actually do do better in life in terms of jobs and income. So in evolutionary terms, its actually good to know how to tell the convincing lie, and you could argue the abilty to lie has been selected for.
And that’s no word of a lie
http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=9&article=1459