Is Lying to Others a Form of Lying to Yourself?
A study published in the journal Emotion says that embellishing stories to friends is not really an attempt to deceive others, but rather, an attempt to express your true hopes and goals. Self-serving exaggeration, the researchers say, is psychologically very different from other forms of lying. Wendy Berry Mendes, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard, explains why a person will say he has lost five pounds when he has actually only lost three.
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