I recently watched a presentation by Dan Ariely, a bestselling author and professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. His talk ("Free Beer: The Truth About Dishonesty", 10 July 2012, www.thersa.org) was about the mechanisms at work behind dishonest behavior, or "cheating", and the implications this has for all aspects of our social and political lives. Out of many conclusions he presented after several social experiments in different countries, I found the "Robin Hood" syndrome to be an important one in order to understand why politicians lie so much.
Ariely points out that cheating is triggered by social acceptance; when somebody from our own social group cheats, then we tend to cheat as well. It has also been proved that people are more willing to cheat when the benefits of the lie also impact other persons. This appears to be the case with politicians, who tend to over-promise and be creative with facts and information because they believe these lies will be beneficial to the people at the end, as if saying "Just vote for me and you will see what I can do."
In some countries such as Argentina, where I come from, cheating has become such a natural part of culture that not cheating is often seen as a sign of weakness or stupidity. And when talking about politicians, the usual thing you hear is that "this one cheats more or less than that one", because cheating has become the standard measuring system for politicians down there.
Link to video: http://www.thersa.org/events/video/vision-videos/free-beer-the-truth-about-dishonesty
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