Most people frequently lie about this, and it negatively impacts their mental well-being.

Here’s what people lie most often about — and how it ruins mental health

In fraud we trust

According to a new study, people lie to make themselves feel better or to avoid shame or rejection, rather than to protect the feelings of others

Researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands ran four experiments to determine if liars experience psychological consequences such as lower self-esteem and negative feelings (nervousness, regret, discomfort, or unhappiness).

In one test, participants were tasked with keeping track of their lying behavior for one day. A full 22% told a self-centered lie, 8% told a lie to protect someone else, and 69% reported not lying that day.

The study findings were published last month in the British Journal of Social Psychology

In another experiment, volunteers were presented with one of eight dilemmas — four were self-centered and four were labeled “other-oriented.”

Here’s an example of a self-centered situation: “You are at a job interview. You are being asked if you have experience in a relevant aspect of the job, which you haven’t.”

An “other-oriented” situation: “Your friend is very happy about her new dress. You don’t like it.”

Nearly 42% of the participants lied in the self-centered situation whereas about 46% told a lie when faced with an “other-oriented” dilemma.

Both sets of liars reported lower self-esteem and more negative feelings compared to the truth-tellers.

In another test, volunteers were asked to share a dilemma they had experienced.

“Participants who were asked to recall a situation in which they lied … reported to have experienced lower self-esteem after the situation compared with participants who were asked to recall a situation in which they did not lie,” the researchers wrote.

“We found that the more frequently someone engages in persuasive bulls-?-tting, the more likely they are to be duped by various types of misleading information regardless of their cognitive ability, engagement in reflective thinking, or metacognitive skills,” Littrell said in a media statement.

In the final test, volunteers recorded their lying behavior over five?days.

Participants told a lie 45% of the time, with 22% reporting that they had lied each day and 19% claiming they had not lied on any day.

Those who lied experienced a decrease in self-esteem, researchers found.

collected from NEW YORK POST