Posted on: Saturday, May 15, 2004

EXPRESSIONS OF FAITH
Dishonesty a growing epidemic

By Bill Tammeus

Religions teach people not to lie. Yet evidence suggests that lying is now a deeply ingrained habit among Americans.

A recent mini-scandal in which a sorority member urged her sorority sisters at the University of Missouri-Columbia to lie so they could donate blood in a competition was simply new evidence of this disheartening reality.

Every two years, the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics in Los Angeles does a survey of cheating, stealing and lying by high school students. The results are horrifying. The most recent study, released in 2002, confirms a decade-long trend of more unethical behavior.

In 1992, 61 percent of the 12,000 high school students surveyed admitted cheating on an exam at least once in the previous year. By 2002, the figure was 74 percent.

Lying was even more prevalent. More than 80 percent of students admitted they lie to teachers. And get this: Students at private religious schools were even more likely to cheat on exams (78 percent versus 72 percent) and more likely to lie to teachers (86 percent to 81 percent) than students at other types of schools.

"The evidence," concluded institute president Michael Josephson, "is that a willingness to cheat has become the norm. ... The scary thing is that so many kids are entering the workforce to become corporate executives, politicians, airplane mechanics and nuclear inspectors with the dispositions and skills of cheaters and thieves."

Boys and girls, can you say "Enron"? How about "Jayson Blair"?

Lying has become a regular subject for researchers. It's not that deception is new. But in some cultures, including ours, the practice is now so widespread that it affects how we live, how we relate to each other and whom we trust (hardly anyone, it seems).

At a congressional briefing a few weeks ago on "International Deception: Research to Secure the Homeland," Texas Christian University psychology professor Charles F. Bond released findings on deception in various cultures and religions.

In America, Bond said, people believe they can get away with lying 56 percent of the time, whereas for residents of Moldova and Botswana the figure is more than 75 percent. Protestants, Bond reported, think 55 percent of their lies go undetected, while for Catholics the figure is about 50 percent.

"Muslims rate themselves the worst at lying," Bond said. They believe they get away with it only 47 percent of the time.

Sacred texts are full of warnings about lying. In fact, lying made the Top Ten list of commandments: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."

Ethicists, philosophers and theologians have wrestled for ages with such questions as whether it is right to lie for a greater good, which some Christians did in the Holocaust to protect Jews. The Josephson survey and other evidence makes me think that families and faith groups should join this discussion, starting with admitting to lying sometimes.

The most distressing thing about the sorority case was that the student who urged others to lie could have put other people's health in jeopardy. People who are sick

or recently had tattoos or piercings are told not to donate blood. She asked them to give anyway. (The Red Cross said that donations are tested before they are used and that blood supplies are safe.)

Lying often leads to harm to people who, religions say, are precious to God.

Bill Tammeus is a columnist for The Kansas City Star.