High Stakes Lies Essay

1810 Words8 Pages

One of the most common types of misbehavior adolescent commits is lying. According to DePaulo and Kashy (1996), it is the act of making an intentionally false statement with the intention of decieving other people. It was supported by Gozna, Vrij and Bull (2001) that low-stakes lies are those that do not involve risk, and represent mundane dishonesty that is common- place in social interaction. In contrast, high-stakes lies involve risk in which the liar can gain or lose something of substantial magnitude such as lying about cheating on an exam is considered a high-stakes lie (Gozna 2001). In addition, Merton (1968) another misconduct is disobedience; it becomes prosocial when it is enacted for the sake of the whole society, including all its different levels and groups. Pro-social disobedience promotes social change addressed to everyone. On the contrary, anti-social disobedience is enacted mainly in favor of one’s own group, in order to attain individual rights. Researchers …show more content…

Yet despite a wealth of empirical research, their unique implications remain ambiguous (Cohen, Wolf, Panter, &Insko, 2011). Guilt describes a negative feeling about the adverse impact of one’s actions on others: feeling personally responsible for harming others, violating justice principles, and failing to meet others’ expectations (McGraw, 1987). The importance of guilt in the regulation of social behavior, defining guilt as a negative affective experience that is evoked when one’s behavior falls short of personal or societal standards and that motivates reparatory behavior (Tangney, Miller, Flicker, & Barlow, 1996). On the other hand, guilt also has a positive side: An alternative theoretical account suggests that guilt functions primarily to facilitate prosaically behavior (Baumeister, Stilwell, & Heatherton,