Omission lying can be defined as the deliberate withholding of pertinent facts or information regarding a person, event, life history or scenario which leads the person receiving this incomplete information to perceive and act differently than they would if they had been given the full relevant information. In other words, a person deceiving someone else not by what is said, but by what is not said, what is left out, of the information they give about something.
In this sense omission lying can be just as damaging, if not more damaging, than straightforward lying, since it is more covert, sneaky and can take longer to uncover, sometimes not being uncovered at all.
“I’m not upset that you lied to me; I’m upset that from now on I can no longer believe you” Friedrich Nietzsche.
The effect of omission lying can be devastating to those deceived, leading to broken relationships and mental health issues if the deception is uncovered after being kept alive for a long period of time.
Being aware of this kind of lying is the first important step, followed by being more astute and critical in the way we assess the often incomplete information some people often give us. Verify, verify, verify needs to be the rule whenever we are not sure about something someone tells us.
Not trusting our gut feel or intuition can often lead us to being deceived by omission lying, and learning again to trust our gut feel that “something isn’t right” with someone is often the way we get back to spotting omission lying and being more resistant to it in the future.
“I didn’t lie; I just didn’t tell you” Omission lying is still lying, because it leads the other person to think and act differently than if they had all the information.
Omission Lying is Very Common With Psychopaths & Narcissists
Omission lying is something psychopathic and narcissistic personalities are very good at. They are very adept at weaving narratives and spinning stories in a way that either benefits them or undermines someone else. They are very good at deception.
Omission lying is a very common tactic used by toxic personality disordered people – psychopaths, narcissists and borderlines. Lying by omission often, though not always, signifies deep character problems that a simple disclosure and apology often won’t fix.
Personality disordered people have often been practicing deceiving others their entire lives, and don’t feel bad about it. They have the full toolkit of deception at their disposal, including omission lying.
They can so glibly and smoothly deliver their lines and feed you a certain narrative that you can be totally convinced it’s true even though it’s a complete fabrication (straightforward lying), or leaves our massive chunks of unflattering information that would leave you to perceive them very differently (omission lying).
Omission Lying in Politics & Media
Once we understand omission lying, perhaps the place we see this the most is in politics and the media. This kind of deception by omitting certain key facts is so common in politics and news that there are too many cases of it to even know where to start, from all sides of the political spectrum.
Omission lying in politics and media is so widespread that it deserves its own article. It is practically built into both areas of modern life. Here are just a few examples of how this can show up in these areas:
- Politicians and media displaying certain statistics, graphs, “facts”, figures and so on, but omitting certain other key facts and figures which would paint a very different picture to the conclusion they are trying to make you draw.
- Media reporting on certain stories – covering certain facts but omitting other key facts that would lead the viewer to draw a very different conclusion. Omission lying is ubiquitous in mainstream media on all sides of the political spectrum.
- Again too many examples of this to even start listing them – watch any mainstream media outlet or politician’s prepared speech on any day and you’ll likely find omission lying in there somewhere.
- When politicians/bureaucrats are called in for questioning over some scandal/crisis and cross examined, again wording the answers they give in such a way that certain information/facts are omitted in a way which either misleads the questioner or helps them avoid painting themselves in a bad light.
Is Omission Lying Ever Acceptable?
Some people may question whether omission lying is really that bad a thing. Don’t we all have to tell lies at some point? Is it not true that what a person doesn’t know about can’t hurt them?
Whilst it is true that we could come up with some very minor day to day example scenarios where omission lying may not cause any harm, omitting anything truly significant and impactful about people, situations or past life history is not acceptable or justified under any circumstances, since it represents a covert form of dishonesty which is a) Ethically wrong in and of itself; and b) Can cause serious damage to the people lied to if the truth is revealed, especially after a long period of time.
The very act of omitting certain key facts about situations or people demonstrates that the person lying does know that the other person would not approve or would react differently if they knew all the information.
The omission is most often deliberate and shows that the person knows they have something to hide. There is consciousness of guilt there, to use a legal standard.
What person with any kind of conscience really wants to live with this kind of deception hanging over them? The answer should be clear; however the real reason to not engage in omission lying is the damage it causes to the other person, the person being deceived.
Here are some things to take into account regarding the negative impact of omission lying:
- It causes people to draw radically different conclusions about people and situations than they would if they had all the relevant information.
- Depending on the length of time involved here, the person lied to can have their life fall apart, completely lose their trust in other people, and suffer from anxiety, depression and other mental problems, when they were not even the ones that lied. The effects of “living a lie” over a long period of time can be brutal on the person deceived.
Hopefully we have shown in this article that this kind of omission lying – deliberate withholding of information in a way which misleads – is not acceptable under any circumstances where the person deceived would act differently if they had the full story.
Acknowledgement – Psychopaths-in-Life https://psychopathsinlife.com/omission-lying/
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