ABSTRACT
All on their own, lies are falsehoods, untruths, fabrications, fictions, misrepresentations, fibs, whoppers, or any of the countless words all meaning in one way or another something to be seen as the opposite of “that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.” A lie all on its own, however, is of little interest or importance. It is what we do with the lies we tell that make them devious, dangerous, and sometimes deadly. The psychologist James J. Gross at Stanford University has concluded that emotions not only make us feel, they also incline us to act. At times neither wisely, nor well. Gullibility, greed, and vanity are certainly all within the realm of what are often called feelings, but can they also be what someone like Gross would call an emotion? If not, why not? More to the point, how do emotions incline us to act? Said more broadly, what do emotions do for us? And not just when they are helping somebody fool us into buying, say, the Brooklyn Bridge?
