Today I wore a ring on the finger usually reserved for wedding rings. I felt something: I felt guilty. I was lying to everyone who looked at me. I made a false first impression; that of a married man. It didn't matter if the people talked to me, or even noticed the ring, but I was portraying myself as something I'm not.
When we see someone, we immediately make up a story about them in our minds. we imagine their house or their car, or the job they do. All of this is done in the first two seconds of meeting someone. (See the work of Malcolm Gladwell here)
This Mini-Project is a performance in the minds of onlookers. I am effectively acting as a character, who is married, or a businessman, or a homeless guy, or is having an argument on the phone, or is overly-stressed. Whether they know it or not, I am lying.
'Let's suppose you are talking to a friend about how terrible you felt when the vet told you that your dearly loved dog would not survive his illness. Telling the story causes you to re-experience and show grief, and as your friend listens, she also begins to look very sad. That is not uncommon, even though it is not your friend's dog, not your friend's loss. All of us can feel the emotions that others feel, feeling emotions empathetically...
It doesn't always happen; it won't happen if we don't care about the person, if we don't in someway identify with the person. And sometimes we witness someone's emotions and feel an entirely different emotion. For example, we may be contemptuous of them for getting so angry or afraid, or afraid of the anger they show.
It need not be a friend whose misfortune sets off our empathic emotional reaction. It could be a perfect stranger, and that stranger may not even be in our presence.'
(Ekman, P. 2004 Emotions Revealed 2nd ed. UK: Orion Books)
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What It Is To Tell A Lie
To tell a lie is to reinvent yourself in the moment.
To tell a lie is to attack.
To tell a lie is to miss bits out.
To tell a lie is to save someone.
To tell a lie is to make-believe.
To tell a lie is to start something.
To tell a lie is to become paranoid.
To tell a lie is to mislead.
To tell a lie is to disrupt decency.
