The term 'white lie' arose from the practice of situational ethics when someone decided it was either not convenient to tell the truth or it might hurt someone's feelings. A 'white lie' is supposedly justifiable because 'no one gets hurt.' A 'black lie' is one that clearly damages someone, a community, or society.

Being a man, perhaps there is some justification to the occasional 'white lie' when my wife asks me questions like, 'how does this dress look on me?' The white lie response to this would be 'great,' but I can also choose to be truthful and say, 'you make the dress look better.'

The trouble with making this distinction between white and black lies is that almost no one is capable of following through and seeing the end consequences of a lie. A distortion of truth can lead to severe unintended consequences. This is one of the reasons that we should always work hard to tell the truth.

Last year, Gino, Norton, and Ariely published in Psychological Science an interesting study entitled, The Counterfeit Self: The Deceptive Costs of Faking It. This study was important because it examines the psychological cost of purchasing counterfeits. In the study it was shown that although people buy counterfeit products to signal positive traits, wearing counterfeit products makes individuals feel less authentic and increases their likelihood of both behaving dishonestly and judging others as unethical.

In four experiments, participants wore purportedly fake or authentically branded sunglasses. In the first experiment, those wearing fake sunglasses cheated more across multiple tasks than did participants wearing authentic sunglasses, both when they believed they had a preference for counterfeits and when they were randomly assigned to wear them. The second experiment showed the effect of wearing counterfeits extended beyond the self, influencing judgments of other people's unethical behavior. Experiment three demonstrated that the feelings of inauthenticity that wearing fake products engenders-what the researchers termed the counterfeit self-mediated the impact of counterfeits on unethical behavior. Finally, the research showed that people are not able to predict the impact of counterfeits on their ethical behavior; thus, the costs of counterfeits are deceptive.

Now what does this have to do with pharmaceuticals? I mean aren't people likely to make sure they put only put 'real' pills in their mouths? Well not just Dostoevsky, but many other thinkers, philosophers, and researchers have shown over the years that those that lie to themselves and lie to others are more likely to be deceived. So maybe the white lie of wearing the counterfeit scarf or counterfeit watch might have the unintended consequence of causing you to believe, 'yeah that website really is Canadian and those drugs must be real. If it's on the web it must be true.'