People are "taught" to lie since the childhood and passed as "good manners". Ex:

>How are you feeling. >Good.

Or my favourite: >Wow, good job!

People learn by example, and they see these lies (in their technical definition) as acceptable and even encouraged behaviour and hence follow. Then we have parents lying to their children all the time, and then later when they learn the truth they will likely carry on their tradition of lying (aka Santa, Monster Under The Bed ... God) to their kids because, hell, my parents did it.

The list goes on and on.

Or maybe I'm just a sad cynic.

Lying/deception is practiced by virtually all life forms, both for constructive and destructive purposes. It is a necessity for the resilience of complex organizational behavior.

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