Cornell Prof: Lying is a Social Lubricant

The next time you're updating your Facebook profile, feel free to throw in a few small lies. Add a major or a minor, add some cool-sounding activities, or something like that.

Today's Washington Post had an article about yet another Cornell research study about the internet. Comm Professor Jeffrey Hancock has found that it's quite common for internet users to lie about small biographic details:

The researchers found that while lies were widespread, they were generally very small -- fudging height by an inch or two, subtracting 10 pounds from the scale. Whopping deceptions about things like marital status were rare.

The study looked at dating sites, but the same basic ideas hold true for Facebook. The purpose of the information you share is to paint yourself in the best possible light. Hancock doesn't seem to think this is a problem:

"Some people call lying a social lubricant," Hancock explains. "Let's say you're short and a lot of women ignore you. You fudge a little on that and when you actually meet the person, you hope you're interesting enough that they'll overlook it."

There you have it.