I see this phenomenon as similar to the noble lie, except that it's to avoid personal trouble as opposed to some other altruistic reason.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie</a><p>I've told my share of personal noble lies because many people can't let go of irrational causes behind my actions. In order for them to easily accept my eccentricities, I have to provide a rationale, even though I'm well aware that many of the thing that I do are not motivated by reason but instead my unconscious.<p>There's more minor reason that I tell personal noble lies, which is that if someone asks me why I do X thing, and I actually tell them the truth, said truth is usually ridiculously simple, in which case they think that I'm blowing them off. In these cases, it's better for interpersonal relations for me to have either a canned story , or make something up on the fly, that's more interesting than the real one.<p>The first example that comes to mind is my father, whom is a great man in my eyes but, if we haven't talked in a while, he will ask me "What do you eat these days?" Depending on whether I'm trying to lose weight, I may have literally no rhyme or reason behind my eating habits. Often times, I couldn't tell you what it is that I tend to eat or have eaten. If I told my father "I don't know. I eat lots of things and don't think about it much.", I can tell that he interprets that as me trying to end the discussion. In that case, I don't necessarily make up a total lie, but I will try and remember the things I ate in the last few days and then speak like those are the things that I eat all the time, and I might even say something like "I eat the steak and eggs a lot because I'm trying to build some muscle."<p>Another example has to do with my mode of dress. Anyone who knows me knows that I wear the exact same outfit 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I wear a black t-shirt that's well fitting, jeans, and dress shoes. This is a bit of a strange outfit to some, and the dress shoes are funny to most people. The real reason that I dress this way is that I don't want to waste time and brain power deciding what to wear and in what combination; I don't care what I look like so long as what I look like is acceptable and fits my self image. This is not a satisfactory answer to most people, in my experience, and I suspect it's because they simply don't relate. The average person doesn't see the value in removing unnecessary choice from their daily routine, and their choice to wear a particular garment may indeed be necessary to them. So what I tell them is that I like to wear black because it doesn't stain, and I wear the dress shoes because they happen to be very water resistant when I step through puddles.