REVISION FOR ADVENCED LEARNERS 01

I. Read the article and choose the answer (A, B, C or D) that fits best according to the text.
WHAT MAKES US WANT TO LIE?
Nowadays, it can sometimes feel as if we are trapped in a web of lies and deceit. Viewers tuning in to the evening news are likely to be confronted with political speeches peppered with half-truths and outright lies, interspersed with advertisements for products that are unlikely to improve our lives to the extent they claim.
Recent research has suggested that as few as 40% of media consumers believe that the media facilitates the separation of truth from falsehood. And when social media platforms are taken into account, this fi gure drops to 24%. Surely, then, this makes for a society of suspicious and untrusting individuals, afraid to believe a word that they read or hear in the news?
On a brighter note, it would seem that there’s less cause for concern when it comes to one-to-relations. While it is notoriously hard to determine the extent to which individuals lie, it is estimated that we tend to lie no more than once or twice a day. Furthermore, this is based on average figures and it’s likely that most lies can be attributed to a small percentage of people. While the more righteous among us may be dismayed by the fact that some people can lie with such frequency, it does also suggest that we can trust the vast majority of our friends’ and co-workers’ utterances.
Nevertheless, the ability to lie is something we develop at an early age and which most of us will engage in at various points in our lives. Children seem to develop it from around two years of age, usually with the express aim of avoiding getting into trouble with their adult guardian. Not only that, but some animals have also been known to lie. Experiments on apes have confirmed that they may also avoid ‘telling’ the truth so as not to have to share their food with others. While this proves that humans are not the only dishonest creatures, it’s not clear whether this behaviour is hard-wired into us or acquired from our peers.
Whichever it is, lying can clearly confer some sort of advantage on the perpetrator. Several hypotheses suggest that our early human ancestors would have lied to avoid physical confrontation and the risk of injury or even death. Why risk a violent end over a stolen piece of meat if you could just pretend you knew nothing about it? Of course, people still lie in order to protect themselves. For example, if someone were about to mug you and asked you to tell them the PIN number for your credit card, you might well give them a fake number. Yet, at the same time, our lies also stem from a much wider range of motivations such as personal gain, or attempting to avoid causing pain or distress to our fellow humans.
What all these situations have in common is that there’s generally something tangible to be gained through the deception. However, a small number of people seem to lie without any real need to – other than, perhaps, for self-aggrandisement. They are known as compulsive liars and their condition is manifested through the repeated fabrication of the truth. They have probably learnt to lie in their formative years as a means of surviving a diffcult childhood and, as they mature, they fi nd it hard to tell the truth about anything. It’s as if there were some sense of comfort in hiding behind their web of lies. The irony regarding compulsive liars is that, while they are given a hard time by most of us, their decision to lie is often unavoidable. Few ‘normal’ liars can say they had no choice but to lie, whereas compulsive liars often don’t have that luxury.
The fact that we are so quick to judge the actions of liars highlights the moral conundrum surrounding the act of lying. On the one hand, we’ve been conditioned to believe that we should always aspire to the truth, which forms the moral bedrock of society. On the other hand, the vast majority of us lie from time to time, and we may even feel that it’s justifiable in certain circumstances. Perhaps this tension between a rigid moral standard and individual discretion has been necessary for us to get to where we are today. While we tend to recognise the need to keep lying to a minimum, we may also choose to override that rule when we believe that it may be for the greater good.
1. In the fi rst paragraph, the writer mentions some research........
A. to explain diff erent forms of lying on a scale from minor to major.
B. to show the challenges researchers face when studying dishonesty.
C. to support his claim that lying is universal and everybody does it.
D. to demonstrate the level of public mistrust in the media.
2. What does the writer suggest in the second paragraph?
A. Some people might be upset if they knew how oft en others lied.
B. Individuals tend to lie more oft en than was