If we must call it lying, then we need a new word for when someone tells an intentional untruth with the intent to deceive.
And there is some deception involved, even if unintentional. Describing a restaurant you didn't like as what a great place simply reinforces the speaker's (monologuer's) impression, even though his interlocutor obviously believes it to be false. In the second part of the paragraph I quoted, the second person is basically just holding a mirror for the speaker in which he (the speaker) can admire and enlarge his own self, while the listener encourages and cheers him on.
They are both fooled.
When Americans ask me where I was born, I don't say the actual country that no longer exists (USSR) nor the country that it is called now (Kazakhstan). I simply say Russia. The reason is that it's simpler for Americans to understand Russia.
Maybe you wish to have imparted your culture or something, however I don't expect most people have any reasonable idea what the culture is like in neither Russia nor Kazakhstan.
Are you just hoping they know where it is on the map?
> ... we lie, on average, three times during a routine ten-minute conversation with a stranger or casual acquaintance. Hardly anyone refrains from lying altogether, and some people report lying up to twelve times within that time span.
It sounds like there's a large variance; maybe the author is on the "twelve times" side of the distribution. Or maybe I'm naive. I can't imagine telling someone I like a restaurant just because he does, or giving a false compliment without a concrete reason.
(I'm American.)
Or maybe I'm a freak in my own culture. I don't lie like this article describes.
I've always associated low self-esteem with the need to rampantly lie. The inability to properly deal with reality, so the person prefers to fake it and avoid any potential mental or emotional confrontations. That's just an opinion of course.
I know an awful lot of people that will 'tell it how it is' rather than pretending to eg like a restaurant when they really don't. In fact, there is a historical stereotype about Americans that we're direct / blunt. The reality is, America has possessed a relatively large population + diverse culture for a long time, and accordingly it makes little sense to broadly stereotype the people that live here.
It's going to be different in Eastern Europe because there's more tradition. Compare it to older generations in America. I know my grandparents would never sugar coat a story, and if I said I had a great time at a restaurant, they would have no trouble interrupting to talk about that time they got food poisoning there, or saw a mouse on the floor.
Is this an American trait? I think it's the opposite in Eastern Europe. People would stop you to tell you they've had a bad experience at the restaurant, usually don't compliment and interrupt you immediately to tell you what they think about your line of work.