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Say someone points to you and accuses you of commiting cold-blooded homicide. Everyone in the immediate vicinity would turn and stare at you. Then you protest, but the person goes on ruthlessly, “You murdered the man. I saw you. I saw you with my own eyes! It was you.” People are turning away and giving you scared glances, and some are glaring at you menacingly.
Only, the accusation wasn’t true in the slightest.

This was what happened in The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. In the play, Abigail Williams, a strong-willed girl, accuses multiple women of witchcraft. A lot of the people she named were people who couldn’t protect themselves as well. This included a drunkard beggar named Sarah Osborn, and a pregnant homeless woman with no husband, Sarah Good.

These were blatant lies that Abigail made to save herself, and yet everyone believed them, because she had apparently opened her soul.

Abigail reminds me of a character from the book Divergent by Veronica Roth: Peter. In this book series, citizens are split into five factions, or are factionless, essentially homeless. Peter is Candor, which prizes itself in being honest and just. However, this character is the exact opposite of that; he lies and cheats and backstabs to get his way. There are many incidents where he gets into brawls with other teens, then claims that it was the other who started the fight. And since he is in Candor, and the other person is always from a different faction, people unanimously believed Peter.

All this demonstrates how society has a sort of natural bias when it comes to believing certain people over others. This could be due to fear, or actual belief that one sort of person is more reliable. Either way, lies have destructive results, and, in the case of The Crucible, can get you hanged.