WHAT DO MEDIATORS DO WHEN PARTIES LIE?

I’m often asked if parties during meditation sessions ever intentionally lie.

Before I answer that, let’s first consider the bigger picture. Deception not only includes omission or concealing critical information and commission or misleading someone by making a false statement, but also paltering or intentionally making a truthful statement to mislead someone. For example, assume you are attempting to sell your car that you’ve owned for a year. Two times in the past year it wouldn’t start and you had to have a mechanic make repairs. Other than that it worked fine. A potential buyer says, “This car seems like it works perfectly. I expect it hasn’t had any mechanical problems.” If you reply by saying, “The car drives great. Last month when the temperature was near zero it started with no problem.” You would have engaged in paltering, meaning, you didn’t make a false statement, but you used a truth to mislead.

Two decades ago social psychologist Bella DePaulo asked adults to record every instance they tried to mislead someone. The average was once or twice a day. Human beings have a talent for deceiving one another. Studies have shown that the majority of our lies are to promote and/or protect ourselves and that the age group who lies the most are teenagers, 13 to 17 years-old. The age group least likely to lie are 60 years-old and above.

In the arena of professional negotiation, studies have shown that from one-third to half of professional negotiators intentionally used deception during their sessions . So to answer the question as to whether parties in mediation lie, well, my answer is, “probably.”

But the mediators role is not to determine the truth. The mediators role is to help the parties decide what they would like to do to resolve the issues—not argue about who is right. I tell people learning to be mediators that if they ask a party in private who is right and who is wrong, they’ll answer that they to be in the right. And if they were to ask the other party the same question, they’d get the same answer.

Mediators don’t focus on the past; mediators help people focus on the future regardless of who is telling the truth.