None of us could live with a habitual truth teller; but, thank goodness, none of us has to. -- Mark Twain, "On the decay of the art of lying" (1896), p. 360
             The epigraph above suggests that no one tells the truth all of the time, but many people would probably agree that lying is morally wrong. In Tom Jones (1749), Henry Fielding refers to the Earl Anthony Ashley Cooper as being, "The elegant Lord Shaftsbury" who "objects to telling too much truth: by which it may be fairly inferred, that, in some cases, to lie is not only excusable, but commendable" (Battesin, 2000, p. 132). To determine whether this assertion holds up under careful scrutiny, this paper provides a review and discussion of when, if ever, it is excusable to prevaricate, and when, if ever, doing so can be considered commendable. A summary of the research and salient findings will be provided in the conclusion.
             By some accounts, it would seem that the tendency to tell lies, or at least not to tell all of it or to shade it somehow is as natural as drawing a breath, particularly when people are very young. For example, in an effort to determine whether it was moral to lie or not, Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget characterized children's propensity to tell lies as being a completely natural tendency that was "so spontaneous and universal that we can take it as an essential part of the child's egocentric thought" (1932, p. 139). When children lie, though, it is typically done in a defensive way because they do not want to get in trouble. These lies are told spontaneously, without guile, malevolence, or cruelty intended, and it can be assumed that these types of lies are transitory in nature and will diminish as children mature and learn the importance of telling the truth. The harsh reality of the human condition, though, suggests that people do not merely learn the importance of telling the truth as they mature, they ...