How White Are Your White Lies? (2024)

Telling “white lies” suggests— at times would even appear to advocate—taking certain liberties with the truth. But just how “innocent” a white lie warrants being viewed depends on the motivation of whoever is employing that term to explain their behavior. It therefore makes sense to begin this piece by examining the definitions various dictionaries have proposed to identify it.

Below are some standard ones. Note their common emphasis and how they complement each other. Note too, however, their frequently waffling aspects, which intimate that historically this idiom has been used to characterize people whose intentions for lying may not be as pure (or “lily white”) as that term implies:

The Free Dictionary: To tell a seemingly small, insignificant, or harmless lie, often presumably in order not to offend or upset someone [and observe here the hedging words “seemingly,” "often," and “presumably,” scrupulously leaving room for less favorable interpretations].

American Heritage Dictionary: An often trivial, diplomatic or well-intentioned untruth [and note again that qualifying, or advisory, word “often”].

Your Dictionary: a harmless fib or a small untruth, often done to spare someone’s feelings or for some other diplomatic reason. . . . The lies are told out of kindness rather than to deceive or to be malicious [i. e., though (connotatively, at least) they are deceptive, their intention isn’t exploitative].

Webster’s New World Dictionary: a lie that is only partially untrue, or one that consists of a deliberately misleading ambiguity [and this two-part, “split” definition is itself ambiguous, attesting to the various uncertainties embedded in this so-common idiom].

Finally, the esteemed Oxford English Dictionary (OED), tracing the term “white lie” back some 600 years when the connotations of the phrase were unequivocally (and non-racially) positive, states that the modifier “white” was designated to mean “free from malignity or evil intent; beneficent, innocent, harmless.”

So, from this synopsis it would seem that over the centuries the original meaning of this idiom has expanded to include lies not wholly devoted to protecting the feelings, or welfare, of another. What is needed, therefore, is a finely nuanced depiction of white lies that captures not only its universality and its overall favorable semantic standing, but the reservations that must accompany such a generally benign viewpoint. And here I’d like to quote one of its more accurate characterizations:

Everyone tells a white lie on occasion, it’s just a question of why. Some white lies save relationships, some ease a hectic situation, and others buy time. The list could go on forever. Stretching the truth is a natural component of human instinct because it’s the easy way out [i.e., it’s taking “the line of least resistance”]. . . . Honestly, I think the world is probably a better place because of our white lies.

As long as we aren’t hurting others or breaking the law, these innocent lies can make life more pleasant. They can absorb potential friction between our varying personalities and vacillating moods (M. Chernoff, “The 15 Most Common White Lies and Why,” 10/04/07).

Compare this qualified but sympathetic endorsem*nt with the far more negatively biased words of Rev. Billy Graham who, in 1955, opined: “Sin was malice, gossip, the white lie, anger.” And to the author Merrill Perlman, reporting his statement in the Columbia Journalism Review (“The True Origins of 'White lies,’” 03/05/18), in Graham’s condemning view: “A white lie was a sin, pure and simple.” However inadvertently, such a dogmatic theological view suggests that directly imparting a cruel truth is still better than communicating a white lie—which, to Graham, “gets into the holy eyes of God.”

What all this seems to come down to is that some white lies aren’t really that white but tinged (or even suffused) with gray. These are lies told at least as much for the liar’s sake than for the benefit of another. So, for example, if your white lie gets you out of jury duty, usually it’s to your advantage alone. Or, if out of loyalty and caring for a close friend, you lie to protect them from a legitimate charge leveled against them, how innocent is your well-meaning fib? Are you not tilting the scales of justice in the wrong direction?

Or further, if your supportive lie helps another yet harms an innocent third party, how honorable, finally, is your “benign” behavior? Or if you regularly shield another person from truths that could possibly endanger your relationship with them, yet by so doing seriously compromise your integrity, is it mentally healthy for you to be operating in such a (codependent) way? And so on, and so on.

Moreover, as Perlman aptly puts it: “To go overboard with overly appeasing or complimentary speech may not serve either you or the other person because essentially you’re deceiving them about something that they might be better off knowing the truth about.”

To offer one trivial example, if your friend gave you a fruit pie for Christmas that was way too saccharine for your tastes (prompting you, unceremoniously, to toss it down the disposal), your unreservedly praising them for its “excellence” could end up being not only gratuitous but problematic. Just consider how your relationship might be affected if your friend responds: “Really?! I was worried that I’d accidentally added too much sugar to it.” Do you then tell them you didn’t really mean it, or do you double down on your falsehood? That is, there are many times that honest feedback, tactfully delivered, ultimately will serve your relationship better than committing yourself to prevarications designed to protect another’s ego.

Routinely defaulting to white lie alternatives can lead to accumulated falsities and fabrications that undermine another’s trust in you and, as a result, weaken the relationship you’ve so (“white-lyingly”) endeavored to safeguard. In close relationships, sincerity is crucial, so that if you’re taking so much responsibility for the other person’s feelings that you can’t authentically be yourself in it or feel free to make known your own personal needs, you have to question whether your constrained—or highly edited—communications ultimately benefit either one of you.

This is why if a lie is to be espoused as harmless, it’s crucial before telling it to explore all its manifold ramifications—which, regrettably, much of the time may be unknowable or ambiguous. And that's why this whole phenomenon of “white lying” can be so ethically tricky. Such lies may appear both caring and judicious but in various instances, however well-meaning your objectives, they can boomerang on you, .

It’s something like the also ambiguous expression, “What [he/she/they] don’t know won’t hurt them.” Withholding the truth from another—if it’s not merely about protecting yourself (such as hiding an affair from your partner) can be the kind, considerate thing to do. But all too often it’s a justification for questionable, or downright shameful, behavior. And (presumably) white lies, too, need to be assessed from this somewhat cynical viewpoint.

Being brutally truthful when there’s no compelling reason to be could, frankly, be appreciated as morally negligent or abusive. To me, it might almost be understood as self-indulgent, implying more a sense of personal righteousness or superiority than a thoughtful deliberation of another’s emotions. If the very essence of white lies is to spare another’s feelings, then all such lies would deserve to be perceived as virtuous, reflecting our common humanity. But unfortunately it’s frequently much more complicated than this.

As one author concludes: “There are benefits to telling the truth and benefits to telling lies. Whenever we are faced [with] such a choice we do a bit of mental algebra, balancing the benefits of truth and lies before we decide which to use and what exactly to say” (no author or date, “White Lies,” Changing Minds.org).

In short, probably more often than not, honesty still remains the best policy. The challenge then is to develop the social skills to share the truth in a manner that optimizes the other person’s ability to emotionally handle it. For only then is it likely that their defenses will be neutralized and they’ll be able to learn something that could clearly assist them going forward.

If, for instance, you know why others have been avoiding a particular individual—namely, that they have a bad habit of going on and on about themselves, without showing much genuine interest in others—their being made privy to such knowledge might well be hard for them to take. Nonetheless, if they’re to sustain friendships better than, to date, they’ve been able to, it’s essential that they learn how they’ve been turning others off. And such knowledge can be conveyed to them “softly”—with tact, diplomacy, discretion, and sensitivity.

Remember that if you tell someone a white lie but are later obliged to “come clean” with them, your delayed honesty could wind up being more damaging to you, them, or the relationship than having been forthright with them in the first place.

It may seem safer to tell a white lie than to share the unvarnished truth. But there are risks either way. So the question is which risk is less likely to damage your integrity—and possibly your reputation with others as well.

© 2019 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.