Lying seems to be prevailing in our society, to prove that one need only think of the semantic field of the word: aspersion, backbiting, deceit, deception, detraction, dishonesty, disinformation, distortion, evasion, fabrication, falsehood, falseness, falsification, falsity, fib, guile, inaccuracy, invention, mendacity, misrepresentation, misstatement, perjury, prevarication, subterfuge, tale, tall story, white lie, whopper. This is not even an exhaustive list of words, since it does not consider synonyms for the verb, only for the noun ‘lie’.
The theory of moral sentiments put forth by Adam Smith deemed that: “Nature, when she formed man for society, endowed him with an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their unfavourable regard. She rendered their approbation most flattering and most agreeable to him for its own sake; and their disapprobation most mortifying and most offensive.” In other words, humans require the approval of their peers, but most of all they require self-approval: to be despised, while painful, is not as loathsome as actually being despicable. Humans are essentially social animals who feel pain on being rejected by their fellow men and pleasure in being accepted and receiving approbation, and even more so when they know they are deserving of that praise and approval. Thus, lying as a face saving mechanism is often employed.
The behavioral economist Dan Ariely, following Freud’s example, posits that in every day life, the superego controls our compliance with society’s rules. In his talk at the TED annual conference, he describes a variety of experiments regarding honesty and cheating he undertook using various groups of students. One of the conclusions he reached, was that when cheating occurs within one’s in-group, it is deemed more acceptable and cheating in that group increases since it seems appropriate to act in the same way as the group we associate with. If, however, the cheating occurs in someone from another group, we do not want to be associated with those acts, which we might deem shameful, therefore reject both that reprehensible behaviour as well as the group in itself.
Dr. Paul Ekman, a psychologist who has made lying the focus of his research for the past forty years, defines lying by mentioning two of its essential characteristics: there must be a deliberate choice and intent to mislead, and there must be no warning of it. Thus he argues that actors or poker players cannot be categorized as liars. As a result of his studies, Elkman has devised a method for the detection of lies and liars based on facial microexpressions which leads to a 70% chance of guessing correctly when someone is telling a fib. Studies regarding nonverbal behaviour as a sign of deception have been numerous in the past, in fact one such study has shown that a lack of eye contact coupled with less hand gestures and shorter answers to questions are usually associated with lying.
Another study, this time by researcher Professor Terri Kurtzberg at Rutgers University together with Liuba Belkin of Lehigh University and Charles Naquin of DePaul University found that lying via e-mail is not only more prevalent than with other written communication, but also less likely to lead to guilt. These studies showed that people using e-mail were nearly 50 percent more likely to lie than those using pen and paper. Digital deception is in fact rampant, just consider online dating services in which apparently all men lie about their height and all women about their weight, although not by much, as shown by research which checked the personal information of those involved in the study on their profiles and on their identification cards.
There are lies and lies, but the reality is that everybody fictionalizes things: some use white lies, others employ harmless fibs, while others yet tell big whoppers. The art of deception seems to be our second nature. Psychologist Jeff Hancock of Cornell University studied the way in which computer-mediated environments affected the production and practices of deception. Most studies in the field of deception have been focused on nonverbal forms of lying since speech may be controllable as opposed to nonverbal behavior. What Hancock and his colleagues set out to accomplish was to create a language-based approach to detecting lies by using expertise in natural language processing and computational linguistics.
Hancock’s study also revealed that people lie more often over the telephone than in any other form of communication. Various studies showed that every fourth of our daily interactions with others involves lying. Most often, lies are employed as a means of avoiding conflict, or to spare someone’s feelings. The subjects of the study admitted to lying about 1.6 times per day, on average, during an average of 6.11 social communications. When the scores were in, the clear winner was the telephone since it was involved in 37 percent of deceptions, while face-to-face conversations included lies 27 percent of the time, and instant messages came in at 21 percent.
An abnormality in the brain of the habitual liar was discovered by scientists in the US. This was about three years ago... According to the researchers at the University of Southern California, this was the first proof of structural anomalies in the brains of those who continually lie, steal and cheat. Previous research had shown heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex when normal people lie (the part of the brain controlling remorse and moral behaviour). But the study was the first to show that there was a structural difference in the brain of a pathological liar, to that of anyone else. The difference they discovered was that there is more of what is known as "white matter" - the brain's communication system - in the brain, and less "grey matter", which is the brain itself.One of the reasons that came forward for the difference in white and grey matter was that the more networking there was in the prefrontal cortex, the better the verbal skills of the person. Almost as if they have a natural advantage. Pathological liars have a surplus of white matter, the study found, and a deficit of gray matter, meaning that they have more tools to lie coupled with fewer moral restraints than normal people. The researchers stopped short of asserting that these structural differences account for all lying. The studies results were at the time envisaged to be used in the field of criminal justice.
Nowadays we even have a TV show all about lying, entitled ‘Lie to Me’. This new series from Rupert Murdoch's US Fox network premieres this week on Sky1, and stars British actor Tim Roth as Dr Cal Lightman, a scientist studying facial expressions and involuntary body language to discover if and why one is lying.
While parents would not disagree that children mislead them quite often, recent studies have shown that babies learn to deceive starting at a far younger age than anyone previously suspected. Behavioural experts discovered that infants begin their lying spree at six months. Apparently they start their training quite early, while still in diapers, in order to be prepared for the complex deceptions in later life. Until recently, psychologists had thought that the infant’s developing brains were not capable of the difficult art of lying, at least not before four years of age. However, studies which involved over 50 children and their parents and which were conducted by Dr Vasudevi Reddy of the University of Portsmouth's psychology department concluded that infants use tactics such as fake crying and pretend laughing in order to attract the attention of those around. At eight months babies try to hide forbidden activities by distracting their parents’ attention, while at two years of age they are even capable of bluffing in order to escape punishment.
Indeed, Darwin would be so proud – we adapt so well to this world we live in.
The theory of moral sentiments put forth by Adam Smith deemed that: “Nature, when she formed man for society, endowed him with an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their unfavourable regard. She rendered their approbation most flattering and most agreeable to him for its own sake; and their disapprobation most mortifying and most offensive.” In other words, humans require the approval of their peers, but most of all they require self-approval: to be despised, while painful, is not as loathsome as actually being despicable. Humans are essentially social animals who feel pain on being rejected by their fellow men and pleasure in being accepted and receiving approbation, and even more so when they know they are deserving of that praise and approval. Thus, lying as a face saving mechanism is often employed.
The behavioral economist Dan Ariely, following Freud’s example, posits that in every day life, the superego controls our compliance with society’s rules. In his talk at the TED annual conference, he describes a variety of experiments regarding honesty and cheating he undertook using various groups of students. One of the conclusions he reached, was that when cheating occurs within one’s in-group, it is deemed more acceptable and cheating in that group increases since it seems appropriate to act in the same way as the group we associate with. If, however, the cheating occurs in someone from another group, we do not want to be associated with those acts, which we might deem shameful, therefore reject both that reprehensible behaviour as well as the group in itself.
Dr. Paul Ekman, a psychologist who has made lying the focus of his research for the past forty years, defines lying by mentioning two of its essential characteristics: there must be a deliberate choice and intent to mislead, and there must be no warning of it. Thus he argues that actors or poker players cannot be categorized as liars. As a result of his studies, Elkman has devised a method for the detection of lies and liars based on facial microexpressions which leads to a 70% chance of guessing correctly when someone is telling a fib. Studies regarding nonverbal behaviour as a sign of deception have been numerous in the past, in fact one such study has shown that a lack of eye contact coupled with less hand gestures and shorter answers to questions are usually associated with lying.
Another study, this time by researcher Professor Terri Kurtzberg at Rutgers University together with Liuba Belkin of Lehigh University and Charles Naquin of DePaul University found that lying via e-mail is not only more prevalent than with other written communication, but also less likely to lead to guilt. These studies showed that people using e-mail were nearly 50 percent more likely to lie than those using pen and paper. Digital deception is in fact rampant, just consider online dating services in which apparently all men lie about their height and all women about their weight, although not by much, as shown by research which checked the personal information of those involved in the study on their profiles and on their identification cards.
There are lies and lies, but the reality is that everybody fictionalizes things: some use white lies, others employ harmless fibs, while others yet tell big whoppers. The art of deception seems to be our second nature. Psychologist Jeff Hancock of Cornell University studied the way in which computer-mediated environments affected the production and practices of deception. Most studies in the field of deception have been focused on nonverbal forms of lying since speech may be controllable as opposed to nonverbal behavior. What Hancock and his colleagues set out to accomplish was to create a language-based approach to detecting lies by using expertise in natural language processing and computational linguistics.
Hancock’s study also revealed that people lie more often over the telephone than in any other form of communication. Various studies showed that every fourth of our daily interactions with others involves lying. Most often, lies are employed as a means of avoiding conflict, or to spare someone’s feelings. The subjects of the study admitted to lying about 1.6 times per day, on average, during an average of 6.11 social communications. When the scores were in, the clear winner was the telephone since it was involved in 37 percent of deceptions, while face-to-face conversations included lies 27 percent of the time, and instant messages came in at 21 percent.
An abnormality in the brain of the habitual liar was discovered by scientists in the US. This was about three years ago... According to the researchers at the University of Southern California, this was the first proof of structural anomalies in the brains of those who continually lie, steal and cheat. Previous research had shown heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex when normal people lie (the part of the brain controlling remorse and moral behaviour). But the study was the first to show that there was a structural difference in the brain of a pathological liar, to that of anyone else. The difference they discovered was that there is more of what is known as "white matter" - the brain's communication system - in the brain, and less "grey matter", which is the brain itself.One of the reasons that came forward for the difference in white and grey matter was that the more networking there was in the prefrontal cortex, the better the verbal skills of the person. Almost as if they have a natural advantage. Pathological liars have a surplus of white matter, the study found, and a deficit of gray matter, meaning that they have more tools to lie coupled with fewer moral restraints than normal people. The researchers stopped short of asserting that these structural differences account for all lying. The studies results were at the time envisaged to be used in the field of criminal justice.
Nowadays we even have a TV show all about lying, entitled ‘Lie to Me’. This new series from Rupert Murdoch's US Fox network premieres this week on Sky1, and stars British actor Tim Roth as Dr Cal Lightman, a scientist studying facial expressions and involuntary body language to discover if and why one is lying.
While parents would not disagree that children mislead them quite often, recent studies have shown that babies learn to deceive starting at a far younger age than anyone previously suspected. Behavioural experts discovered that infants begin their lying spree at six months. Apparently they start their training quite early, while still in diapers, in order to be prepared for the complex deceptions in later life. Until recently, psychologists had thought that the infant’s developing brains were not capable of the difficult art of lying, at least not before four years of age. However, studies which involved over 50 children and their parents and which were conducted by Dr Vasudevi Reddy of the University of Portsmouth's psychology department concluded that infants use tactics such as fake crying and pretend laughing in order to attract the attention of those around. At eight months babies try to hide forbidden activities by distracting their parents’ attention, while at two years of age they are even capable of bluffing in order to escape punishment.
Indeed, Darwin would be so proud – we adapt so well to this world we live in.
