Headlines from the past few months suggest that Americans wince when they think their heroes are lying to them.

News reports plead for honesty: Did the Bush administration lie about an Iraqi weapons program? Did John Kerry lie about throwing away his Vietnam War metals? Did Pentagon brass lie about orders given to torture Iraqi prisoners?

Though the public expects truth and bristles when fed lies, wider trends indicate those same outraged Americans are increasingly telling lies of their own to get ahead in school, business, and relationships - and apparently feel OK about it. For example:

• 74 percent of high school students, in a 2002 survey of 12,000 respondents, said they had cheated on an exam at least once in the past year, according to the Josephson Institute of Ethics. In 1992, 61 percent of students reported having cheated. The latest craze is to use cellular phones to photograph exams and show friends in the following class.

• After doing 3.8 million background checks, Automatic Data Processing Inc. announced in April that 52 percent of job applicants had lied on their résumés.

• The list of corporate executives accused of lying to defraud investors now includes those of Tyco, Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat.

In the high-pressure, high-stakes environment of 21st- century America, lying has for many apparently become a way of life, even among those whose faith demands truth-telling. People may know it's wrong to lie in theory, researchers say, but in practice they feel the success they want will be out of reach if they admit their flaws and sins along the way.

"They think, 'If I'm playing by rules that no one else plays by, then I'm disadvantaging myself in a way that's apt to play out over a lifetime,' " says David Callahan, author of "The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead." "When various pressures come together, it's enough to push aside those other strictures people follow with regard to honesty."

In today's religious smorgasbord, where more than 80 percent of Americans pray regularly, most traditions still regard honesty as a core virtue. From the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments, which prohibit the bearing of false witness, to the Zoroastrian belief that lying destroys holy order, the faiths that guide Americans almost universally insist on truth-telling as a necessity for respectable living.

This professed code, however, seems to be holding little sway against what some call "pressures" and others call "temptations." Explanations for today's lying crisis vary according to the implications.

For instance, those who help clerical job seekers find work say they often hear clients speak of marketplace pressures to exaggerate their skills. Both Neil Wilson and Pat Peterson say their Newburyport, Mass., clients sometimes feel "forced" to falsify their résumés, and the frequency of such deception has increased in the current economic drought. At Priority Personnel Inc., Ms. Peterson says, 25 percent of those who claim a particular level of competence turn out to be lying when she tests them on a computer.

Those with limited skills "feel they're forced to be better than they really are to get a job," Mr. Wilson says. "Desperation does nasty things to people. It makes them go beyond their normal threshold."

In Callahan's analysis, it's not just the unskilled who are buckling under mounting pressures to lie. Today's "winner take all" incentive system, he says, pays barely a living wage to workers in journalism, the arts, and minor league professional athletics, for instance, while top achievers make millions. The result: Some figure, why not take a chance if a little plagiarism or steroid use can make me rich?

"It's now more lucrative to lie," says Diane Swanson, professor of professional ethics at Kansas State University. "People must know there is a risk, but the payoff is potentially enormous.... Conversely, if you admit you had a flat quarter or a flat year, then the market will penalize you."

Though enticements and pressures to lie may be stronger than in the past, another factor has cultural observers equally concerned: Individuals, it seems, are getting weaker when faced with temptation. Or put another way, many seem to know right from wrong, but material success has become more important to them than the task of sculpting moral character.

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