Not long ago, I was returning from a party shortly before midnight when a police officer manning a speed trap pulled me over. As I rolled down my window, I thought about my options. I’d been at a party for several hours where I’d had two bottles of beer along with a meal. From what I remembered of blood alcohol levels, I had nothing to worry about, but what if I had miscalculated? As I saw the officer approaching, I knew I had two choices when he asked me if I’d been drinking: I could say no, but something in my voice or manner might give me away, and I’d end up in the back seat of the cruiser blowing into a breathalyzer. Or I could tell the truth, but then he might figure that anyone who says they’ve had two beers has probably had four or five, and I’d end up in the back of the cruiser anyway.

I believe that lying both erodes my own character and devalues the delicate fabric of our culture’s integrity. But when the officer took my driver’s licence and asked me if I’d been drinking, I responded instinctively. Although I’d like to think that my nature to be truthful would trump deceit, I looked him straight in the eye and said, “No.”

People have come to expect falsehood in all aspects of life, as science journalist Jeremy Campbell points out in The Liar’s Tale: A History of Falsehood, one of many recent books on the subject of lying in contemporary culture. Politicians’ false statements, “truth-challenged” media reports and dubious autobiographies and scientific claims have created an environment of cynicism. “It is a creeping assumption at the start of a new millennium that there are things more important than truth,” Campbell writes. Ralph Keyes, who has written extensively about social science, calls it an “ethical twilight zone” and says we live in a “post-truth era.” But is society really abandoning honesty and adopting lying as an accepted way of life?

The night of my encounter with the police, I was rewarded for my fib. (The officer ran my data through the system and sent me on my way.) I’m not proud of what I did, but I ask myself: What harm did that lie do? And at least I’m in good company, according to a wealth of books and research published over the past dozen years or so. One study found that people tell an average of 13 lies a week; another estimated that some form of lying occurs in almost two-thirds of all conversations. More than three-quarters of us are said to pad our resumés, and a survey revealed that between 20 and 30 percent of business managers had written fraudulent internal reports.

But researchers can’t seem to agree on how often we lie. Robert S. Feldman, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, estimates that we tell three lies for every 10 minutes of conversation. In a 1996 study, Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist, found that people tell about two lies every day, and both men and women lie in approximately 20 percent of social exchanges lasting 10 minutes or more. DePaulo also learned that whom you talk with may influence if you lie. (College students lied to their mothers in 50 percent of conversations.)

Lies range from harmless (“No, you don’t look fat in that outfit”) to dishonourable (“I was working late” and “She’s just a good friend”) to criminal (“I did not take money from the company”). Not surprisingly, men and women lie differently. Feldman’s study of college students revealed that women are more likely to create a false impression than to tell an outright lie (usually to ease awkward social situations), while men tell whoppers, especially for self-aggrandizement.

We’ve come to expect public figures like politicians and business executives to lie. Kenneth Lay and many senior managers at Enron Corp. denied filing five years of bogus financial reports. Martha Stewart lied to cover up evidence of a stock sale following an insider tip, and she still insists she told the truth. Two years ago, Finnish Prime Minister Anneli Jaatteenmaki resigned after admitting she lied about obtaining secret documents to smear her political rival. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton, referring to Monica Lewinsky, famously said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Then there’s the Nortel debacle and the Canadian government’s current sponsorship scandal with its allegations of lying ad executives and corrupt politicians.

But lying has seemingly become as ubiquitous as reality television. In the U.K., a term called “gazumping” refers to someone selling property who implicitly agrees to an offer from a buyer – even if contracts have not yet been signed – then stealthily accepts another, higher offer. (The term is thought to come from a Yiddish word meaning “to swindle.”) While not illegal, it’s regarded as breaking one’s word. Gazumpers would be welcome in Moncrabeau, in the Gascony region of France, which is known as the Village of Liars and hosts an annual festival in August celebrating falsehood. Or perhaps the whole lot of them should be enshrined in the National Liars Hall of Fame in Dannebrog, Neb.