psychology lie essay

Deception detection

Researchers have developed new strategies to help police and other investigators catch liars in the act.

By Laura Zimmerman

March 2016, Vol 47, No. 3

Print version: page 46

Researchers have developed new strategies to help police and other investigators catch liars in the act.

Research has consistently shown that people's ability to detect lies is no more accurate than chance, or flipping a coin. This finding holds across all types of people — students, psychologists, judges, job interviewers and law enforcement personnel ( Personality and Social Psychology Review , 2006). Particularly when investigating crime, the need for accurate deception detection is critical for police officers who must get criminals off the streets without detaining innocent suspects.

Traditional police practices in deception detection stem from early theories on lying that assume liars will exhibit stress-based cues because they fear being caught and feel guilty about lying. This theory led researchers to search for reliable behavioral indicators of deception. They examined behaviors such as posture shifts, gaze aversion, and foot and hand movements, without much success.

"There really is no Pinocchio's nose," says Judee Burgoon, PhD, a professor of communication at the University of Arizona.

Given these early findings, today's researchers are exploring new methods of deception detection. Instead of looking at people for visual cues that they may be dissembling — such as a lack of eye contact or fidgeting — psychologists are now focused on developing proactive strategies that interviewers can use to elicit signs of deception, says Maria Hartwig, PhD, associate professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

"The view now is that the interaction between deceiver and observer is a strategic interplay," she says.

Such research has "enormous potential to revolutionize law enforcement, military and private sector investigations," says Christian Meissner, PhD, a professor of psychology at Iowa State University, who studies the psychological processes underlying investigative interviews.

Questions and cues

"Liars have a dilemma," says Ray Bull, PhD, a professor of criminal investigation at the University of Derby, in the United Kingdom. "They have to make up a story to account for the time of wrongdoing, but they can't be sure what evidence the interviewer has against them."

Both Bull and Hartwig conduct research on criminal investigative interview techniques that encourage interviewees to talk while interviewers slowly reveal evidence.

Their research consistently shows that being strategic about revealing evidence of criminal acts to suspects increases deception detection accuracy rates above chance levels ( Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling , 2011; Law and Human Behavior , 2006). For example, Hartwig and colleagues conducted a series of studies to show that withholding evidence until late in the interview leaves room for guilty suspects to blatantly lie, for instance by denying being in the area of the crime. When the interviewer reveals evidence showing the suspect was there — such as surveillance footage — the suspect has to scramble to make up another lie, or tell the truth. The suspect may admit to being in the area, but still deny the crime. If the interviewer then presents more evidence, such as matching fingerprints from the crime scene, the liar will find it increasingly difficult to keep up the deception ( Credibility Assessment: Scientific Research and Applications , 2014).

Aldert Vrij, PhD, a professor of applied social psychology at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, also focuses his research on using strategies to outsmart liars. "Liars are doing more than telling their stories — they need to make a convincing impression," he says. "If the interviewer makes the interview more difficult, it makes the already difficult task of lying even harder."

Another way to make lying more difficult is to increase interviewees' cognitive load by, for example, asking them to tell their stories in reverse order. Truth tellers can rely on their memories to tell their story backwards, often adding more details, but liars tend to struggle. Research shows that liars also often provide fewer details about time, location and things they heard. They also speak more slowly, with more hesitations and grammatical errors ( Law and Human Behavior , 2008).

Encouraging interviewees to say more during their interviews also helps to identify liars. "Truth tellers do not immediately say everything they need to say, so when the interviewer encourages them to say more, they give additional information," says Vrij. "Liars typically have a prepared story with little more to say. They might not have the imagination to come up with more or they may be reluctant to say more for fear they will get caught."

It's particularly useful to ask unexpected questions in interviews, Vrij has found. Because liars often prepare their stories, surprise questions can leave them floundering for a response or contradicting themselves ( Applied Cognitive Psychology , 2014).

Other avenues of research are examining how liars and nonliars talk. Burgoon studies sentence complexity, phrase redundancy, statement context and other factors that can distinguish truth tellers from liars ( Journal of Language and Social Psychology , 2006).

"If liars plan what they are going to say, they will have a larger quantity of words," she says. "But, if liars have to answer on the spot, they say less relative to truth tellers."

That's because trying to control what they say uses up cognitive resources. They may use more single-syllable words, repeat particular words or use words that convey uncertainty, such as "might" rather than "will," she says.

Examining word count and word choice works well for analysis of text, such as interview transcripts, 911 call transcripts, witness and suspect written statements, and in analysis of written evidence such as emails and social media posts. Research is still needed to understand how well investigators can pick up these cues in real time, says Burgoon.

Research is also examining the communication between co-conspirators by exploring how two or more people interact as they try to deceive interviewers ( Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society , 2012).

"In field situations, such as checkpoints and street corners, people conspire and collude to get away with crime and terrorist acts," says psychologist James Driskell, PhD, president of the Florida Maxima Corporation, a company that conducts research in behavioral and social science.

"If two people are lying, they have to concoct a story that is consistent with their co-conspirator so they don't arouse suspicion," says Driskell. "If an officer needs to engage them on the street, it would be useful to know what indicators to look for in their responses."

Compared with truth tellers, when liars tell their story together they tend to not interact with each other and they are less likely to elaborate on each other's responses, he says. "Truthful dyads are much more interactive as they reconstruct a shared event from memory," he says.

Culture and context

While recent lie-detection research has centered on verbal reports, there is still a role for behavioral cues in deception detection research, says David Matsumoto, PhD, professor of psychology at San Francisco State University and CEO of Humintell, a consulting company that trains people to read human emotions.

Behavioral cues might change depending on the types of questions asked and the interview circumstances, he says. "Researchers need to take into account different investigative contexts and circumstances that might elicit different behavioral responses."

One context Matsumoto has studied is culture. In recent research, he found culture-specific differences in tone of voice and vocal characteristics. For example, his research shows that Chinese participants tend to speak in higher pitched voices when lying compared to truth telling whereas Hispanics tend to speak in lower pitches when lying compared to truth telling ( International Journal of Psychology , 2015).

Leanne ten Brinke, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, also considers context in her research, but focuses on how people may unconsciously spot deception.

Ten Brinke conducted preliminary research to explore how indirect measures of deception compare to direct, or conscious, measures. In one study, research participants watched videos of truth tellers and liars and then classified words such as "dishonest" and "deceitful" versus "honest" and "genuine."

"The trick of the task is that images of the people in the videos were subliminally flashed while participants classified the words," ten Brinke explains. She found that participants were faster at classifying words associated with lying when flashed images of liars. The same was found for pairs of truthful words and images. In contrast, when making conscious judgments, participants were accurate only about half the time ( Psychological Science , 2014).

While the concept of unconscious deception detection is a relatively new direction in research, it highlights one more of the diverse areas psychologists are exploring. These expanding directions in research have resulted in novel investigations that might finally lead to accuracy rates above chance levels.

"A lot of research is flying in the face of law enforcement training and common beliefs," says Meissner. "As we conduct more research, we will learn more about deception detection. This research has enormous potential to revolutionize law enforcement, military and private sector investigations."

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The Truth about Lying

You can’t spot a liar just by looking, but psychologists are zeroing in on methods that might actually work.

Police thought that 17-year-old Marty Tankleff seemed too calm after finding his mother stabbed to death and his father mortally bludgeoned in the family’s sprawling Long Island home. Authorities didn’t believe his claims of innocence, and he spent 17 years in prison for the murders.

Yet in another case, detectives thought that 16-year-old Jeffrey Deskovic seemed too distraught and too eager to help detectives after his high school classmate was found strangled. He, too, was judged to be lying and served nearly 16 years for the crime.

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One man was not upset enough. The other was too upset. How can such opposite feelings both be telltale clues of hidden guilt?

They’re not, says psychologist Maria Hartwig, a deception researcher at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. The men, both later exonerated, were victims of a pervasive misconception: that you can spot a liar by the way they act. Across cultures, people believe that behaviors such as averted gaze, fidgeting and stuttering betray deceivers.

In fact, researchers have found little evidence to support this belief despite decades of searching. “One of the problems we face as scholars of lying is that everybody thinks they know how lying works,” says Hartwig, who coauthored a study of nonverbal cues to lying in the Annual Review of Psychology . Such overconfidence has led to serious miscarriages of justice, as Tankleff and Deskovic know all too well. “The mistakes of lie detection are costly to society and people victimized by misjudgments,” says Hartwig. “The stakes are really high.”

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Tough to tell

Psychologists have long known how hard it is to spot a liar. In 2003, psychologist Bella DePaulo, now affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her colleagues combed through the scientific literature, gathering 116 experiments that compared people’s behavior when lying and when telling the truth. The studies assessed 102 possible nonverbal cues, including averted gaze, blinking, talking louder (a nonverbal cue because it does not depend on the words used), shrugging, shifting posture and movements of the head, hands, arms or legs. None proved reliable indicators of a liar , though a few were weakly correlated, such as dilated pupils and a tiny increase — undetectable to the human ear — in the pitch of the voice.

Three years later, DePaulo and psychologist Charles Bond of Texas Christian University reviewed 206 studies involving 24,483 observers judging the veracity of 6,651 communications by 4,435 individuals. Neither law enforcement experts nor student volunteers were able to pick true from false statements better than 54 percent of the time — just slightly above chance. In individual experiments, accuracy ranged from 31 to 73 percent, with the smaller studies varying more widely. “The impact of luck is apparent in small studies,” Bond says. “In studies of sufficient size, luck evens out.”

This size effect suggests that the greater accuracy reported in some of the experiments may just boil down to chance , says psychologist and applied data analyst Timothy Luke at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. “If we haven’t found large effects by now,” he says, “it’s probably because they don’t exist .”

Police experts, however, have frequently made a different argument: that the experiments weren’t realistic enough. After all, they say, volunteers — mostly students — instructed to lie or tell the truth in psychology labs do not face the same consequences as criminal suspects in the interrogation room or on the witness stand. “The ‘guilty’ people had nothing at stake,” says Joseph Buckley, president of John E. Reid and Associates, which trains thousands of law enforcement officers each year in behavior-based lie detection. “It wasn’t real, consequential motivation.”

Samantha Mann , a psychologist at the University of Portsmouth, UK, thought that such police criticism had a point when she was drawn to deception research 20 years ago. To delve into the issue, she and colleague Aldert Vrij first went through hours of videotaped police interviews of a convicted serial killer and picked out three known truths and three known lies. Then Mann asked 65 English police officers to view the six statements and judge which were true, and which false. Since the interviews were in Dutch, the officers judged entirely on the basis of nonverbal cues.

The officers were correct 64 percent of the time — better than chance, but still not very accurate, she says. And the officers who did worst were those who said they relied on nonverbal stereotypes like “liars look away” or “liars fidget.” In fact, the killer maintained eye contact and did not fidget while deceiving. “This guy was clearly very nervous, no doubt,” Mann says, but he controlled his behavior to strategically counter the stereotypes.

In a later study, also by Mann and Vrij, 52 Dutch police officers did no better than chance at distinguishing true and false statements given by family members who’d murdered their relatives but denied it in anguished displays during televised press conferences used in the study. Notably, officers who performed the worst were those who felt that the emotional displays were genuine. But what did that signify? “If a husband killed his wife, he could be upset for all kinds of reasons, like remorse or getting caught,” says Mann. “Nonverbal behavior is so idiosyncratic. If you focus on the nonverbal behavior like emotions, you will trip up.”

Confirming these results on a large scale years later, Hartwig and Bond reviewed the literature for studies comparing people’s abilities to detect high- and low-stakes lies. They found no evidence that people were any better at detecting lies told by criminals or wrongly accused suspects in police investigations than those told by laboratory volunteers.

Something to hide

From serial killers to students fibbing in laboratory experiments, the lies in all these experiments were spoken. In a study published in 2019, Mann examined nonverbal deceit, such as when someone is trying to conceal illicit activity — a type of deception relevant to detecting bombers or smugglers . She recruited 52 university student volunteers and asked half of them to transport a laptop said to contain sensitive photographs on a ferry ride between two cities. The volunteers were told to try to blend into the crowd and not look “suspicious,” because people would be trying to identify them. The other half of the group were given a regular cell phone to transport, with no instructions to conceal what they were doing.

When Mann showed videos of the ferry rides to 104 other volunteers and asked them to pick out the “smugglers,” the spotters did no better than chance. In interviews afterward, the “smugglers” said they were nervous, but they consciously tried to act normal and control their nerves with tactics such as listening to music or using their phones.

Next, Mann raised the stakes. Half of a new group of 60 volunteers were given an envelope of Russian, Egyptian and Korean currency to conceal, while the other half didn’t “smuggle” anything. But this time, Mann sent two researchers onto the ferry to pace around and scrutinize the passengers, appearing to compare their faces to photos on a cell phone.

This time, 120 observers trying to pick out the “smugglers” on video guessed correctly just 39.2 percent of the time — well below chance. The reason, Mann says, is that the “smugglers” consciously made an effort to look normal, while the “innocent” control volunteers just acted naturally. Their surprise at the unexpected scrutiny looked to the observers like a sign of guilt.

The finding that deceivers can successfully hide nervousness fills in a missing piece in deception research , says psychologist Ronald Fisher of Florida International University, who trains FBI agents. “Not too many studies compare people’s internal emotions with what others notice,” he says. “The whole point is, liars do feel more nervous, but that’s an internal feeling as opposed to how they behave as observed by others.”

Studies like these have led researchers to largely abandon the hunt for nonverbal cues to deception. But are there other ways to spot a liar? Today, psychologists investigating deception are more likely to focus on verbal cues, and particularly on ways to magnify the differences between what liars and truth-tellers say.

For example, interviewers can strategically withhold evidence longer, allowing a suspect to speak more freely, which can lead liars into contradictions. In one experiment, Hartwig taught this technique to 41 police trainees, who then correctly identified liars about 85 percent of the time, as compared to 55 percent for another 41 recruits who had not yet received the training. “We are talking significant improvements in accuracy rates,” says Hartwig.

Another interviewing technique taps spatial memory by asking suspects and witnesses to sketch a scene related to a crime or alibi. Because this enhances recall, truth-tellers may report more detail. In a simulated spy mission study published by Mann and her colleagues last year, 122 participants met an “agent” in the school cafeteria, exchanged a code, then received a package. Afterward, participants instructed to tell the truth about what happened gave 76 percent more detail about experiences at the location during a sketching interview than those asked to cover up the code-package exchange . “When you sketch, you are reliving an event — so it aids memory,” says study coauthor Haneen Deeb, a psychologist at the University of Portsmouth.

The experiment was designed with input from UK police, who regularly use sketching interviews and work with psychology researchers as part of the nation’s switch to non-guilt-assumptive questioning, which officially replaced accusation-style interrogations in the 1980s and 1990s in that country after scandals involving wrongful conviction and abuse.

Slow to change

In the US, though, such science-based reforms have yet to make significant inroads among police and other security officials. The US Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration, for example, still uses nonverbal deception clues to screen airport passengers for questioning. The agency’s secretive behavioral screening checklist instructs agents to look for supposed liars’ tells such as averted gaze — considered a sign of respect in some cultures — and prolonged stare, rapid blinking, complaining, whistling, exaggerated yawning, covering the mouth while speaking and excessive fidgeting or personal grooming. All have been thoroughly debunked by researchers.

With agents relying on such vague, contradictory grounds for suspicion, it’s perhaps not surprising that passengers lodged 2,251 formal complaints between 2015 and 2018 claiming that they’d been profiled based on nationality, race, ethnicity or other reasons. Congressional scrutiny of TSA airport screening methods goes back to 2013, when the US Government Accountability Office — an arm of Congress that audits, evaluates and advises on government programs — reviewed the scientific evidence for behavioral detection and found it lacking, recommending that the TSA limit funding and curtail its use. In response, the TSA eliminated the use of stand-alone behavior detection officers and reduced the checklist from 94 to 36 indicators, but retained many scientifically unsupported elements like heavy sweating.

In response to renewed Congressional scrutiny, the TSA in 2019 promised to improve staff supervision to reduce profiling. Still, the agency continues to see the value of behavioral screening. As a Homeland Security official told congressional investigators, “common sense” behavioral indicators are worth including in a “rational and defensible security program” even if they do not meet academic standards of scientific evidence. In a statement to Knowable , TSA media relations manager R. Carter Langston said that “TSA believes behavioral detection provides a critical and effective layer of security within the nation’s transportation system.” The TSA points to two separate behavioral detection successes in the last 11 years that prevented three passengers from boarding airplanes with explosive or incendiary devices.

But, says Mann, without knowing how many would-be terrorists slipped through security undetected, the success of such a program cannot be measured. And, in fact, in 2015 the acting head of the TSA was reassigned after Homeland Security undercover agents in an internal investigation successfully smuggled fake explosive devices and real weapons through airport security 95 percent of the time.

In 2019, Mann, Hartwig and 49 other university researchers published a review evaluating the evidence for behavioral analysis screening, concluding that law enforcement professionals should abandon this “fundamentally misguided” pseudoscience, which may “harm the life and liberty of individuals.”

Hartwig, meanwhile, has teamed with national security expert Mark Fallon, a former special agent with the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service and former Homeland Security assistant director, to create a new training curriculum for investigators that is more firmly based in science. “Progress has been slow,” Fallon says. But he hopes that future reforms may save people from the sort of unjust convictions that marred the lives of Jeffrey Deskovic and Marty Tankleff.

For Tankleff, stereotypes about liars have proved tenacious. In his years-long campaign to win exoneration and recently to practice law, the reserved, bookish man had to learn to show more feeling “to create a new narrative” of wronged innocence, says Lonnie Soury, a crisis manager who coached him in the effort. It worked, and Tankleff finally won admittance to the New York bar in 2020. Why was showing emotion so critical? “People,” says Soury, “are very biased.”

Editor’s note: This article was updated on March 25, 2021, to correct the last name of a crisis manager quoted in the story. Their name is Lonnie Soury, not Lonnie Stouffer.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine , an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter .

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

What’s Good about Lying?

Do you teach children to lie?

I do. All the time. And you do, too! If you’re like most American parents, you point to presents under the Christmas tree and claim that a man named Santa Claus put them there. But your deliberate deceptions probably go beyond Santa, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny.

How many of us tell our kids (or students) that everything is fine when, in fact, everything is totally wrong, in order to preserve their sense of security? Have you been honest about everything having to do with, say, your love life, or what happens at work? Do you praise drawings they bring home from school that you actually think are terrible?

We don’t just lie to protect our kids from hard truths, either. We actually coach them to lie, as when we ask them to express delight at tube socks from Aunt Judy or Uncle Bob’s not-so-delicious beef stew.

These are what scientists call “prosocial lies”—falsehoods told for someone else’s benefit, as opposed to “antisocial lies” that are told strictly for your own personal gain.

Most research suggests that children develop the ability to lie at about age three. By age five, almost all children can (and will) lie to avoid punishment or chores—and a minority will sporadically tell prosocial lies. From ages seven to eleven, they begin to reliably lie to protect other people or to make them feel better—and they’ll start to consider prosocial lies to be justified . They’re not just telling white lies to please adults. The research to date suggests that they are motivated by strong feelings of empathy and compassion.

Why should that be the case? What is going on in children’s minds and bodies that allows this capacity to develop? What does this developmental arc reveal about human beings—and how we take care of each other? That’s what a recent wave of studies has started to uncover.

Taken together, this research points to one message: Sometimes, lying can reveal what’s best in people.

How we learn to lie

At first, the ability to lie reflects a developmental milestone: Young children are acquiring a “theory of mind,” which is psychology’s way of describing our ability to distinguish our own beliefs, intents, desires, and knowledge from what might be in the minds of other people. Antisocial lying appears earlier than prosocial lying in children because it’s much simpler, developmentally; it mainly requires an understanding that adults can’t read your mind.

More on Honesty

Explore gender differences in prosocial lying .

Learn about the life stages of trust .

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Are you living true to your values? Discover how to cultivate ethical courage .

Take our Relationship Trust quiz .

But prosocial lying needs more than just theory of mind. It requires the ability to identify suffering in another person ( empathy ) and the desire to alleviate that suffering ( compassion ). More than that, even, it involves anticipation that our words or actions might cause suffering in a hypothetical future. Thus, prosocial lying reflects the development of at least four distinct human capacities: theory of mind, empathy, compassion, and the combination of memory and imagination that allows us to foresee the consequences of our words.

How do we know that kids have all of these capacities? Could they just be lying to get out of the negative consequences of telling the truth? Or perhaps they’re simply lazy; is it easier to lie than be honest?

For a paper published in 2015 , Harvard psychologist Felix Warneken had adults show elementary-aged children two pictures they drew—one pretty good, one terrible. If the adults didn’t show any particular pride in the picture, the kids were truthful in saying whether it was good or bad. If the grown-up acted sad about being a bad artist, most of the kids would rush to reassure her that it wasn’t too awful. In other words, they told a white lie; the older they were, they more likely the kids were to say a bad drawing was good. There were no negative consequences for telling the truth to these bad artists; the kids just wanted these strangers to feel better about themselves.

In other words, says Warneken, it’s a feeling of empathic connection that drives children to tell white lies. In fact, children are trying to resolve two conflicting norms—honesty vs. kindness—and by about age seven, his studies suggest, they start consistently coming down on the side of kindness. This reflects increasingly sophisticated moral and emotional reasoning.

“When is it right to prioritize another person’s feelings over truth?” says Warneken. “Say, if someone cooks something for you, and it just doesn’t taste good. Well, if they’re applying for cooking school somewhere, the prosocial thing is to be honest, so that they can improve. But if they just cooked it on their own just for you, then perhaps it’s better to lie and say it tastes good.”

It’s a good sign, developmentally, when kids show the ability to make that kind of calculation. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence that we tend to see prosocial lies as the more moral choice. For example, people seem to behave more prosocially —more grateful, more generous, more compassionate—in the presence of images depicting eyes. While one would expect people to lie less under the eyes, in fact it appears to influence what kind of lie they tell: When Japanese researchers gave students an opportunity to make someone feel good with a lie, they were much more likely to do so with a pair of eyes looking down on them .

No eyes? They were more likely to tell the cold, hard truth!

How lies change as we grow

This moral self-consciousness appears to grow in tandem with the child’s self-control and cognitive ability.

Another study published last year in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology found that “children who told prosocial lies had higher performance on measures of working memory and inhibitory control.” This especially helped them to control “leakage”—a psychologist’s term for inconsistencies in a fake story.

To tell a prosocial lie, a child’s brain needs to juggle many balls—drop one, and the lie will be discovered. Some children are simply better truth-jugglers than others. Far from reflecting laziness, prosocial lying seems to entail a great deal more cognitive and emotional effort than truth-telling. In fact, one 2014 paper found tired adults are much less likely to engage in prosocial lying.

Studies by other researchers show that as kids grow older, the relationship between theory of mind and dishonesty starts to shift. Young children with high theory of mind will tell more antisocial lies than peers. This pattern flips as we age: Older children who have a stronger theory of mind start telling fewer antisocial lies—and more prosocial ones.

Kids also gradually become more likely to tell “blue lies” as they advance through adolescence: altruistic falsehoods, sometimes told at a cost to the liar, that are intended to protect a group, like family or classmates. (Think: lying about a crime committed by a sibling, or deceiving a teacher about someone else’s misbehavior.)

Though adults can (and do) teach children to tell polite lies—and in a lab context, kids can be primed by adults to tell them—Warneken says it’s more likely that successful prosocial lying is a byproduct of developing other capacities, like empathy and self-control. When kids acquire those skills, they gain the ability to start telling both white and blue lies.

But how do other people feel if these lies are found out?

The lies that bind

As they grow older, kids are also developing the ability to detect lies —and to distinguish selfish from selfless ones. The distinction comes down to intent, which studies show can be discerned through recognition of telltale signs in the face and voice of the liar.

In a study published last year, researchers used the Facial Action Coding System , developed by Paul Ekman , to map children’s faces as they told lies that served either themselves or others. The team, based at the University of Toronto and UC San Diego, found that the two different kinds of lies produced markedly different facial expressions.

“Prosocial lying reflects the development of at least four distinct human capacities: theory of mind, empathy, compassion, and the combination of memory and imagination that allows us to foresee the consequences of our words.”

Prosocial lies (which in this case involved delight in a disappointing gift) were betrayed by expressions that resembled joy—a “lip raise on the right side” that hinted at a barely concealed smile, and a blinking pattern associated with happiness. The faces of children lying to conceal a misdeed showed signs of contempt, mainly a slight lip pucker that stops short of being a smirk.

It’s almost certainly the case that we are subconsciously picking up on these signs (along with tells in the liar’s voice) when we catch someone in a lie. But research finds that the consequences of catching someone in a prosocial lie are often very different from those of an antisocial lie, or “black lie,” as they’re sometimes called. In fact, detecting a prosocial lie can increase trust and social bonds.

A series of four 2015 studies from the Wharton School had participants play economic games that involved different kinds of trust and deception. Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that black lies hurt trust. But if participants saw that the deception was altruistic in nature, trust between game-players actually increased. A complex mathematical 2014 study compared the impact of black and white lies on social networks. Again, black lies drove wedges into social networks. But white lies had precisely the opposite effect, tightening social bonds. Several studies have found that people are quick to forgive white lies, and even to appreciate them.

These differences show up in brain scans—and how different types of lies affect the brain can actually influence behavior down the road. A research team led by Neil Garrett at Princeton University assigned 80 people a financial task that allowed them to gain money at another person’s expense if they kept on lying.

“We found that people started with small lies, but slowly, over the course of the experiment, lied more and more,” they write . When they scanned the brains of participants, they found that activity lessened (mainly in the amygdala) with each new lie.

Not everyone lied or lied to their own advantage. One variation in the experiment allowed participants to lie so that another participant would gain more money—and the behavior and the brain scans of those people looked very different. Dishonesty for the benefit of others did not escalate in the same way selfish lies did; while people did lie for others, the lies did not get bigger or more frequent, as with black lies. And it did not trigger the same pattern of activity in the amygdala, which previous research has found lights up when we contemplate immoral acts. (Their methods are described more fully in the video below.)

In short, the brain’s resistance to deception remained steady after participants told prosocial lies—while self-serving lies seemed to decrease it, making black lies a slippery slope.

The upshot of all this research? Not all lies are the same, a fact we seem to recognize deep in our minds and bodies. We may indeed teach children to lie, both implicitly with our behavior and explicitly with our words; but some of those lies help to bind our families and friends together and to create feelings of trust. Other kinds of lies destroy those bonds.

This all might seem overly complex, more so than the simple prescription to not tell a lie. The trouble with do-not-lie prohibitions is that kids can plainly see lying is ubiquitous, and as they grow, they discover that not all lies have the same motivation or impact. How are we supposed to understand these nuances, and communicate them to our children?

In fact, the argument for prosocial lies is the same one against black lies: other people’s feelings matter—and empathy and kindness should be our guide.

About the Author

Jeremy Adam Smith

Uc berkeley.

Jeremy Adam Smith edits the GGSC's online magazine, Greater Good . He is also the author or coeditor of five books, including The Daddy Shift , Are We Born Racist? , and (most recently) The Gratitude Project: How the Science of Thankfulness Can Rewire Our Brains for Resilience, Optimism, and the Greater Good . Before joining the GGSC, Jeremy was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

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I’m Not Lying, I’m Telling a Future Truth. Really.

By Benedict Carey

May 6, 2008

Some tales are so tall that they trip over their own improbable feats, narrative cracks and melodrama. That one-on-one playground victory over Kobe Bryant back in the day; the 34 hours in labor without painkillers; the former girlfriend or boyfriend who spoke eight languages and was a secret agent besides.

Yes, uh-huh, really. Is it closing time yet?

Yet in milder doses, self-serving exaggeration can be nearly impossible to detect, experts say, and there are several explanations.

A series of recent studies, focusing on students who inflate their grade-point average, suggests that such exaggeration is very different psychologically from other forms of truth twisting. Touching up scenes or past performances induces none of the anxiety that lying or keeping secrets does, these studies find; and embroiderers often work to live up to the enhanced self-images they project. The findings imply that some kinds of deception are aimed more at the deceiver than at the audience, and they may help in distinguishing braggarts and posers from those who are expressing personal aspirations, however clumsily.

“It’s important to emphasize that the motives driving academic exaggeration seem to be personal and ‘intrapsychic’ rather than public or interpersonal,” said Richard H. Gramzow, a psychologist at the University of Southampton in England who has led much of the research. “Basically, exaggeration here reflects positive goals for the future, and we have found that those goals tend to be realized.”

Psychologists have studied deception from all sides and have found that it usually puts a psychological or physical strain on the person doing the dissembling. People with guilty knowledge of a detail from a crime scene, for example tend to show signs of stress, as measured by heart and skin sensors, under pointed questioning.

Trying to hold onto an inflammatory secret is mentally exhausting, studies have found, and the act of suppressing the information can cause thoughts of it to flood the consciousness. When telling outright lies, people tend to look and sound tenser than usual.

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Portrait of a serious woman with dark hair holding a white mask

Why we’re so bad at spotting lies – most of us only perform slightly better than chance

Professor of Psychology, Edge Hill University

Disclosure statement

Geoff Beattie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Edge Hill University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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You don’t have to be in the middle of an election campaign to be concerned about your ability to spot a lie. Psychology research suggests people lie at least once a day.

A 2006 review of 206 papers found that we are little better then chance at guessing whether something is a lie or not, 54% to be exact.

Some lies are told to make others feel better. I wouldn’t mind if someone wanted to tell me, “You’re such a brilliant psychologist.” Most lies however, are for the benefit of the person telling the lie.

We learn to lie young, typically between the ages of two and three . More successful lying in childhood takes a little longer and requires a more developed ability to understand others’ mental states.

You also need good working memory to be convincing, so that you can remember the lie. Brighter children seem to lie most often and most selfishly.

By adulthood we are, it seems, well practised.

There are no tell-tale signs of lying per se, but there may be indicators of negative emotion associated with telling a lie (anxiety, guilt, shame, sadness, fear of being caught) even when the liar is trying to conceal them .

These sometimes leak out in micro-expressions, brief facial expressions lasting a fraction of a second or squelched expressions where the liar covers the emotion with a mask, usually a fake smile.

You can tell a fake smile because it doesn’t involve the muscles around the eyes and leaves the face quickly. Genuine smiles fade more slowly .

But the thing about possible nonverbal indicators of deception is most of us would need to replay the behaviour in slow motion to spot them.

Person crosses fingers behind their back

Facing up to the truth

But what about avoiding eye contact, believed globally to be a deception cue. My mother always said that she could tell when I was lying because I couldn’t look her in the eye. She would move closer and ask what I’d been up to the night before.

Eye contact is not a useful indicator of deception. Eye contact is affected by our cognitive activity even when we’re telling the truth. For instance, by planning our speech or accessing memory.

Also, we all know that’s what people look out for. And liars know to control it. Good liars can maintain eye contact when lying by planning their lie in advance and building their lies on fragments of the truth and real situations.

Eye contact is also affected by interpersonal distance. It’s difficult to maintain eye contact when someone is sitting close-up and staring at you (like my mother). This is the intimacy equilibrium model .

Certain behaviours signal intimacy, like distance, eye contact and topic of conversation. If interpersonal distance changes, we balance this by unconsciously moderating the others. So when my mother moved in for the interrogation, I looked away and she got the evidence she was looking for.

This is a type of confirmation bias . It’s not just that you look for evidence to confirm your hypothesis, you unconsciously influence the very behaviour you’re looking for.

This doesn’t just apply to my mother. A 1978 study suggested that police officers in interrogations move closer to suspects they think are guilty. The suspect looks away, and … guilty as charged! Observers don’t notice the changed distance.

But confirmation bias isn’t just about seating arrangement. We make instant and unconscious judgements of trustworthiness in a face quickly in everyday life (about one-tenth of a second). Once we’ve decided that someone looks trustworthy, we may unconsciously search less for cues to deceit.

Lie detection is fraught with biases and good liars know how to exploit them. They know what we’re looking out for and that’s what they control. Good eye contact, masking smile, well-prepared speech with few hesitations. They can also convince themselves of the essential truth of the lie. Self-deceit reduces any emotional response.

For my new book Lies, Lying and Liars: A Psychological Analysis I studied many expert liars and how they use our intuition against us. For example, in judging a lie we need a baseline of behaviour to detect any deviations.

Expert liars aim to disrupt this. One of my informants (with something to hide) said that when he was stopped by the police he pretended to be really angry and a bit unstable to throw them off course.

And then there’s personality. There’s no point in searching for micro-expressions of guilt, shame, sadness, or fear, if that’s not how they feel inside. Some people enjoy lying. It’s exciting, they don’t care about the consequences. Any micro-expressions in these cases will be positive.

Not a bit of wonder expert liars feel emboldened.

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Eur J Psychol
v.13(4); 2017 Nov

The Effect of Telling Lies on Belief in the Truth

Danielle polage.

a Central Washington University, Ellensburg, WA, USA

The current study looks at the effect of telling lies, in contrast to simply planning lies, on participants’ belief in the truth. Participants planned and told a lie, planned to tell a lie but didn’t tell it, told an unplanned lie, or neither planned nor told a lie (control) about events that did not actually happen to them. Participants attempted to convince researchers that all of the stories told were true. Results show that telling a lie plays a more important role in inflating belief scores than simply preparing the script of a lie. Cognitive dissonance may lead to motivated forgetting of information that does not align with the lie. This research suggests that telling lies may lead to confusion as to the veracity of the lie leading to inflated belief scores.

Garry, Manning, Loftus, and Sherman (1996) showed that participants who initially reported that certain childhood events had not happened, but then imagined they had happened, increased their confidence in the false events. This now famous effect is commonly referred to as the ‘imagination inflation’ effect, because it has been shown that through imagining an event their belief in the event becomes more likely, or their belief in the event becomes inflated. Since then, other studies have shown that imagination is not the only way to increase belief in counter-factual events. Studies have demonstrated an inflation effect by exposing participants to the false information using a variety of paradigms such as paraphrasing ( Sharman, Garry, & Beuke, 2004 ) and explanations ( Sharman, Manning, & Garry, 2005 ). Studies have also shown that making up information, or what researchers call “confabulating” information, results in memory failure for the truth. In Chrobak and Zaragoza (2008) , participants were asked to describe entire fictitious events that they had never witnessed. Results show that over time, half of the participants developed false memories of these fictitious events. Pickel (2004) showed that participants who fabricated descriptions of a videotaped robbery suspect had trouble remembering the actual suspect and also confused their made up details with the truth. It appears that almost any task that increases the familiarity with and requires participants to mentally engage with the false information might lead to an inflation of belief effect. Many studies have looked at the effect on memory of creating false information; however, few studies have looked at the effect of intentional lying on memory for the truth. Polage (2012) demonstrated that deliberate lying can lead to “fabrication inflation” in which participants increase their likelihood ratings for self-created events after lying about them.

It is very likely that liars use their imagination to create false stories, but lying is more than just creating a false story. Dictionary.com defines a lie as “a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive” ( “Lie,” 2017 ). This definition involves two components: the first involves the veracity of the information and the second involves the deceptive intent of the speaker. Therefore, in order for a person to tell a lie, there must be evidence of both components of the definition. Liars must first construct false stories and then try to convince others that their stories are true. The current research examines whether the deliberate attempt to deceive plays a role in belief inflation or whether lying is simply another means of exposing participants to false information. To the author’s knowledge, there is no literature looking at the effect of telling, versus simply creating, a lie on likelihood to believe.

According to the Source or Reality Monitoring (RM) approach, source confusion occurs when people create perceptual and sensory details of false events that are similar to real memories ( Johnson & Raye, 1981 ). When participants answer questions about the false event, whether in writing or speaking, the memory for the false event becomes more detailed and more similar to true event memories increasing the likelihood that the person will believe it. The exposure will also increase familiarity and fluency with the memory which is also thought to increase belief in the false memory ( Garry & Wade, 2005 ). According to Vrij, Granhag, and Mann (2010) , good liars look to the listener to determine whether they feel they are being believed and try to tell simple, plausible, and realistic lies that would not contradict anything the observer might know. Implausible events are unlikely to be believed ( Pezdek, Finger, & Hodge, 1997 ), but memories of detailed, plausible events from one’s past might be confused with true events leading to an inflation effect.

If lying was simply another means of exposure to false information resulting in source confusion, then whether the lie was told would make no difference. But lies, unlike imagination, paraphrasing, guessing, and confabulating, must be communicated with the intention to deceive. So, what effect does the telling of a lie have on belief? Previous studies suggest contradictory outcomes. According to the Source Monitoring framework memories rich in detail might be considered true in the absence of memory for the cognitive operations used to create those memories. But, telling lies is effortful. Langleben et al. (2002) observed that the brain is more active during lie telling than it is while telling the truth. Zuckerman, DePaulo, and Rosenthal (1981) suggest that liars must maintain internal consistency (such as avoiding contradicting oneself) and external consistency (making sure the lies don’t contradict what others know to be true) and therefore lying requires more cognitive effort than telling the truth. One would expect this cognitively demanding task to be remembered, so even though the content of the memory might be remembered, so would the act of creating the lie. Any familiarity with the content of the lie could be correctly attributed to lying. Telling a lie without pre-planning would be especially cognitively demanding. Walczyk, Mahoney, Doverspike, and Griffith-Ross (2009) and Greene, O’Hair, Cody, and Yen (1985) point out that it takes less time to deliver a prepared lie than it does to tell the truth as the response is simply the delivery of a memorized script. DePaulo et al.’s (2003) meta-analysis reported that less time to plan a lie is related to greater cognitive effort. Regurgitating planned lies is less cognitively demanding than creating and telling lies on the spot. In terms of memory for cognitive processing, the increase in cognitive demand for the told lies should serve as a cue to distinguish between false and true memories and result in a decrease in belief in the lie. If memory for cognitive operations significantly impacts source monitoring, one would expect the told only group to show a lower inflation effect than told lies that were prepared first.

Although telling lies is cognitively demanding, several lines of research suggest that other aspects of telling a lie might increase source monitoring errors and lead to higher rates of fabrication inflation. Polage (2012) found that participants who reported feeling more uncomfortable about lying were more likely to believe their self-generated lies. It is possible that the negative affect involved in lying induces dissonance, which later becomes self-deception. Cognitive dissonance ( Festinger, 1957 ) arises when one’s beliefs and actions contradict each other. An easy way to avoid the discomfort of having lied, is to believe that the lie is the truth. Shu, Gino, and Bazerman (2011) demonstrated how cognitive dissonance can result in memory change. Their study found that participants who first read an honor code and later cheated were less likely to remember the components of the honor code than were those who didn’t cheat. They suggest their results are due to motivated forgetting of the rules in an attempt to preserve one’s moral self-image after behaving unethically. Kouchaki and Gino (2016) also found that after engaging in unethical behavior, participants’ memories for their past unethical actions were impaired. The authors believe that the psychological distress and discomfort of their misdeeds caused the memories to become less clear and vivid than memories of ethical actions. They also suggest that this “unethical amnesia” could lead people to repeat acts of dishonesty. Polage found that those who lied frequently were much more likely to believe their lies than those who lied less often. It is possible that people revise their memories to reduce cognitive dissonance. Participants who find themselves uncertain as to the true source of the lied-about information and who are also motivated to want to believe the lie, may lower their decision criterion required to accept the lie as true ( Hekkanen & McEvoy, 2002 ) and if successful this strategy may be repeated.

Another important difference between simply planning a lie and telling a lie is that until a lie is communicated to someone else, the liars are free to continually update and change their versions of their stories. A lie becomes a lie when it is shared. The goal of lying is to be believed. Good liars track the reactions of their audience and modify their stories and behavior to maintain the lie ( Buller & Burgoon, 1996 ; Vrij et al., 2010 ). Once shared, liars should “stick with” their lie in order to avoid detection. So, although both planning and telling lies could provide the content of the lie, sharing the lie provides the motivation to remember the lie exactly as it was told in order to avoid detection. Wade, Garry, Nash, and Harper (2010) showed that false memories are affected by an “anchoring effect” in that the first version of the false event is most influential in memory distortion. The version of the story they created first became “truth” to them. Similarly, the first version of the event told should anchor the memory; the liar must then remember the details of the told lies to maintain the falsehood. The lie that was shared is now public and the liar could be motivated to commit it to memory, believe it, and accept it as collective “truth”.

So although the source monitoring literature might suggest that awareness of cognitive operations while telling a lie might lead to less inflation, studies suggesting that discomfort, lax criterion, motivated forgetting, cognitive dissonance, and maintenance of consistency could lead to higher levels of source confusion when a lie is shared.

Finally, it is possible that the act of simply speaking the lie out loud while trying to convince the other person they are telling the truth might help liars remember the content of the lie. Hopkins and Edwards (1972) showed that memory for words that were pronounced was better than for words that were studied silently. Therefore, speaking some lies out loud versus simply thinking about others might make the unspoken lies less memorable than those that were spoken. Saying the information out loud can increase memory for that information which would suggest that the content of the spoken lies will be more memorable.

In summary, fabricating a lie likely uses many techniques such as imagination and counterfactual thinking that have been shown to result in inflated belief in the false event. Lying differs however, in that lies are told to another person with the intention of deceiving the listener. Both planning and telling lies will result in created content for the lie which could inflate belief in the created content. However, in terms of ability to source monitor, telling a lie is thought to be more effortful and the cognitive effort could be remembered, especially in the absence of pre-planning the lie when the cognitive effort is greatest. If the creation of the lie is remembered, then familiarity with the content of the lie can be attributed to self-generation of the lie and belief in the lie should decrease. However, if cognitive dissonance is induced, motivated forgetting of having lied could counteract memory for cognitive operations and increase the likelihood of the lie being accepted as true. Lying to another person cements the lie as public truth providing the liar motivation to remember the lie and want to believe it. In the absence of clear counter memories, the liar may be more likely to accept the lie as truth and inflate their belief in the lie. Told lies might be more simple and plausible which could further increase the likelihood of believing the lie. Finally, telling a lie also benefits from the effects of speaking information aloud which has been shown to improve memory for the content of the lie and could make the source judgment more difficult. It is therefore expected that both planning and telling a lie should provide the content of a lie, but that telling a lie could lead to stronger impairments in ability to source monitor due to discomfort, motivated forgetting, and lax criterion. Telling a prepared lie should result in all of the impairments of planning and telling the lies such as rehearsal of the lie, cognitive dissonance, motivated forgetting and belief in public record, but in addition should result in an even more difficult source monitoring decision than either planning or telling alone due to repetition of the memory and decreased memory for cognitive operations (due to the decreased effort needed to tell a pre-planned lie). It is therefore expected that planning and telling a lie will have an additive effect and should result in the highest inflation effect. The current study compares the effects of planning and telling lies on belief in the lie and anticipates main effects for both planning and telling a lie, with the highest fabrication occuring for lies that are both planned and told.

Participants

Fifty-two undergraduate students from Central Washington University participated in the first session of the study, four did not return for the second session, and data from three participants was discarded due to participants repeatedly not following the lying prompts. The resulting 45 participants were used in the final analyses.

Participants' experiences were measured using the Life Events Inventory (LEI; Garry et al., 1996 ). The full inventory contains 60 items that ask whether a particular event happened to the participant before the age of 10. The participant rated whether each event happened using a Likert-type scale anchored at 1 (definitely did not happen) to 8 (definitely did happen). The LEI was administered twice, approximately 2 weeks apart. The pretest consisted of 21 of the 60 items from the original. Pretest responses were used to get baseline ratings of four target items to be used in the study. The ideal score for each of the four target items was a score of 2 which indicated participants were quite confident the events in question had not happened, however, the placement of the score on the scale still allowed for movement in both directions and avoided a floor effect. After selecting items with an initial rating score of 2, scores of 3 were utilized, then 1 and, finally, as a last resort, an item with a score of 4 was chosen. After selecting the four events, they were randomly assigned to one of the four event conditions (Lie 1, Lie 2, Lie 3, or Lie 4 described later). The posttest scores were used in order to compute a change score from pre-test to posttest. The posttest consisted of 42 items (the original 21 items plus 21 new items that served as distractors).

Participants were also given the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES; Bernstein & Putnam, 1986 ) with the intent of using it as a covariate. The DES consists of 27 items that ask the participant to estimate how often an experience happens to them. For example, one question states, "Some people have the experience of driving a car and suddenly realizing that they don't remember what has happened during all or part of the trip." The participant is asked to estimate what percentage of the time this happens to them. Because its relationship to the dependent variables was not significant, it will not be discussed further in this paper.

The study was a within subjects repeated measures design with two independent variables. The first independent variable was whether the lie event was planned (or not) and the second independent variable was whether the lie event was told (or not). The dependent variable was the change in ratings score from LEI 1 to LEI2 taken two weeks later.

After receiving informed consent, participants were given the LEI to complete. After completing the LEI, participants were given instructions to read while the experimenter excused herself to use the bathroom. In reality, the researcher went into a neighboring room in order to score the LEI pretest and select which four life events would be used in the experiment. The experimenter randomly assigned the four events to be either prepared and told (Lie 1), not prepared but told (Lie 2), prepared but not told (Lie 3), or not prepared and not told (control).

The instructions provided to the participants included a cover story that explained that the study was designed in order to determine whether it was possible to tell whether someone is lying. They were told they would be asked about some events that may or may not have happened to them and that the interviewer would try to determine whether they were lying. The instructions further explained that the participants would be given items to describe to the interviewer and that they would be told whether to say that the event did or did not occur before the age of 10. So, whether the event happened or not, the participant was to follow the prompting of the interviewer. Participants were told that they should be as sincere as possible as the idea was to convince the interviewer that the event actually happened. If the event actually happened before the age of 10 and they were told to say that it happened, they were asked to include factual information. If the event did not occur before the age of 10 and they were told to say that it did happen, they were asked to tell a feasible story in order to convince the interviewer that the event actually happened.

When the experimenter finished scoring the LEI, she returned to the room and read the instructions with the participant to ensure they were understood. Then, she gave the participant an eight-item "events list" that the participant was asked to write stories about; this was the "prepared" manipulation. The events are listed in the Appendix in the order given to the participants. Note that the two lies come from the participants' LEI pretest scores and were randomly chosen from the four items that received a 2 (3, 1, or 4) score. The same six filler items were used for all participants and were not selected based on the ratings given on the first LEI; two “yes” responses which were likely to be true for most participants and four “no” responses, two of which were likely to be false and two of which were likely to be true for most participants. For each event on the list that participants would claim to be true, they were asked to answer eight follow-up questions: (1) What were you doing right before this event occurred? (2) Where were you? (3) Who were you with? (4) How old were you? (5) What time of day was it? (6) How did you feel about this event? (7) What happened right after the event? (8) Are there any other details important to this story? For the “no” responses, participants were asked to answer "How do you know that you never _______?". The “no” responses were not of interest to this study, but served as a counterbalance measure to avoid all “yes” responses. Participants were given as much time as they needed to complete this part of the experiment, and they generally finished in about 20-30 minutes. When they finished writing about the various events (i.e., "preparing" their lies), they summoned the experimenter from the adjoining room in order to do the next part of the study: the oral interview.

For the interview (the "told" manipulation), participants were asked to discuss a variety of events including Lie 1 (the same event they "prepared") and Lie 2 from the LEI pretest (which was not prepared but had to be created on the spot). For each event, participants were either asked to "Please tell me about the time that you __________" or to tell the interviewer "How do you know that you never _______?". The instructions were the same in the oral interview as for the written /prepared portion. They were directed to answer according to the interviewer’s prompt even if their response was not true. The same eight follow-up questions used in the writing session were used as prompts in the interview in the same order. The interview session also took about 20-30 minutes. After the interview was completed, they were reminded to return in two weeks for the second session.

At the second session, approximately 2 weeks later, participants were run singly or in small groups. They were asked to complete the LEI posttest which consisted of 42 events, repeating all 21 from the pretest in addition to 21 previously unpresented events from the original LEI. They were then provided with complete disclosure.

Results and Discussion

The LEI pretest scores were subtracted from posttest scores on the four target events. Therefore, there were four change scores per participant: Lie 1 (prepared and told), Lie 2 (not prepared but told), Lie 3 (prepared but not told), and control (neither prepared nor told). If participants increased in their belief in the lie, their change scores should be positive. The mean (standard deviation) change scores are presented in Table 1 (below).

Target Event	( )
prepared and told (Lie 1)	1.51 (2.21)
not prepared but told (Lie 2)	1.02 (2.39)
prepared and not told (Lie 3)	0.80 (2.08)
not prepared and not told (Lie 4: control)	0.44 (1.98)

Note . Shared subscripts indicate a significant difference at p < .008.

Telling a lie about an event ( M = 1.27) did increase the belief that the event did occur relative to not telling a lie ( M = 0.62; F (1, 44) = 5.05, p = .03, η 2 = .103). There was no main effect for preparation of the lie ( F (1, 44) = 1.66, p = .20, η 2 = .036). There was no significant interaction between preparing the event and lying about it ( F (1, 44) = 0.06, p = .81, η 2 = .001). Planned within subject t-test comparisons were conducted using a protected alpha level to test the hypothesis that planning combined with telling would increase inflation effects as compared to simply telling or planning alone. Results demonstrated that the planned and told group caused significantly higher inflation scores than the planned only group. There was no significant difference between planning or not planning told lies (See Table 1 ). The results demonstrate that telling a lie to another person in an effort to deceive, and not simply creating a lie, increases belief in the lied about event. Telling lies, whether planned or not, resulted in the highest change scores.

These results support previous results ( Polage, 2012 ) demonstrating that telling lies is yet another paradigm in the long list of methods used to inflate belief in false, self-generated information (imagining: Garry et al., 1996 ; paraphrasing: Sharman et al., 2004 ; explanations: Sharman et al., 2005 ; confabulating: Chrobak & Zaragoza, 2008 ; Pickel, 2004 ). It is likely that constructing a lie uses many similar processes as other inflation tasks which result in detailed memories and increased fluency with the memory; however, the current results suggest that it is the telling of the lie and not just the creation of the lie that drives fabrication inflation. As Vrij et al. (2010) suggests, good liars tell simple, plausible, and realistic lies which should be easier to believe than complicated, unrealistic lies. Attempting to be believable constrains realism that would not be present when simply imagining an event. So, although forming a lie may involve imagery, it may also differ from simple imagination in which there is no external pressure to be believable. Lying also cements the lie as public truth providing the liar motivation to remember the lie and want to believe it. In the absence of clear counter memories, the liar may be more likely to accept the lie as truth and inflate their belief in the lie.

But telling a lie is thought to be effortful ( Langleben et al., 2002 ; Zuckerman et al., 1981 ) which should result in the correct attribution of even a clear and realistic memory as having been fabricated. So why would the told lies show higher inflation than lies that weren’t told? It was expected that the unplanned told lies would have been most difficult to generate ( DePaulo et al., 2003 ; Greene et al., 1985 ; Walczyk et al., 2009 ) resulting in the strongest cues for cognitive operations; however, this assumed that participants would use great effort to create a lie without pre-planning. According to Leins, Fisher, and Ross (2013) , however, liars may not be working that much harder than truth tellers because one of the main strategies liars use is to recycle true stories. So, similar to telling a preplanned lie that is simply retrieved from memory and hence less cognitively demanding, recycling a true story would not be particularly cognitively demanding and would not result in a strong memory for cognitive operations. If the lie event was already stored in memory, there would be no additional cognitive resources devoted to creating unplanned lies. This could explain why there was no additional benefit of planning the lies in advance in comparison to telling them on the spot. The strategy used for creating the lie determines how cognitively demanding lie telling is and this variability could affect memory for cognitive operations across participants. Polage (2004) showed wide variability in belief in the lie, in that some decreased their belief in the lie and some came to fully believe in it. It was assumed that the source monitoring decision would benefit from the effort involved in telling a lie, however, some lies told might require extreme effort to create while others require less effort than remembering an old true memory. In fact, Memon et al. (2010) found an increase in cognitive operations when participants were telling the truth, so telling the truth can also be cognitively demanding, sometimes more so than lying. In addition, Verschuere, Spruyt, Meijer, and Otgaar (2011) found that lying was less demanding when liars lied more frequently, and that the lying response became more dominant with repeated use. So, lying may be easier for some participants than others. Polage (2012) found that those who lied more often were more likely to show fabrication inflation. As lying increases, the process of lying might get easier, using less cognitive resources to create lies. Also, proficient liars might simply have more preplanned lies available in memory. In the absence of memory for the cognitive demands of lying, the other aspects of telling lies that decrease source monitoring ability may have caused participants to increase their belief in the lies.

Polage (2012) found that those who felt more guilt lying, lied more often and were more likely to believe the lies. These results seem contradictory as you would expect those who feel more guilty lying to do so less often, however, results on cognitive dissonance, suggest that those who feel guilty about lying but do so often are likely to experience psychological discomfort or cognitive dissonance ( Festinger, 1957 ). Believing they didn’t lie is one strategy that can decrease cognitive dissonance and motivated forgetting of having lied or denying information that might go against their preferred reality is one way to bring their beliefs in line with their actions. Shu et al. (2011) and Kouchaki and Gino (2016) showed that cognitive dissonance can result in forgetting of unethical actions. It is possible that participants in this study were faced with whether to believe in an event they have already told someone else was true and of which they have detailed memory. Motivated forgetting could impair memories that contradicted having lied and they may find themselves less certain of the truth. Since motivated liars should maintain consistency and stick with the version of the story that was first made public ( Wade et al., 2010 ) they may increase their doubt in the truth. The change in belief for lies that were told was on average 1.27 points on an 8 point scale which suggests that fabrication inflation may cause a slow eroding of belief, which over time might continue to increase if the lie is maintained and reinforced by others.

Finally, one cannot discount that verbal lying has the memorial benefits of speaking out loud which has been shown to improve memory ( Hopkins & Edwards, 1972 ). It is also possible that the liars were maintaining the lie, but that no memory change actually occurred. When studying deception this is always a concern as we don’t know if participants are believing the lie, trying to dupe the researcher, or even responding to perceived demand characteristics. These are possibilities that cannot be overlooked.

In summary, the current results showed that telling a lie, in contrast to simply planning a lie, resulted in fabrication inflation and led liars to increase their belief in lies told with the intention of deceiving. Based on previous literature, I suggest that the simple, plausible event details that seem familiar and true might increase in belief in the lie. Although one might remember the cognitive effort used to create the memory and reject it as false, it is also possible that proficient liars or those who use recycled versions of the truth might not remember creating a lie. It is also possible that the desire to reduce cognitive dissonance by using lax criterion and motivated forgetting of information that contradicts public “truth”, combined with the negative affect of lying can reduce the liar’s ability or desire to effectively source monitor.

As this is the first study that directly compares telling versus planning a lie, it raises many questions that need to be addressed in future research. The results support the idea that telling a lie results in fabrication inflation but it does not answer the question of why the effect occurs. For example, are participants motivated to remember the content of the lie in order to remain consistent? If motivation to believe affects memory for the truth, one would expect the lies told to be similar over time. Do participants change their “told” lies to be more realistic and hence more believable than their planned only lies (to others and potentially to themselves)? Future research should examine the level of detail provided in the lie stories to determine whether liars do attempt to “keep it simple” as Vrij et al. (2010) suggests and whether the level of detail has an effect on memory. The interview sessions in the current study were not video-recorded and were therefore not able to be analyzed for content. Future research might attempt to examine the consistency of the stories and rate them on Criteria Based Content Analysis (CBCA; Steller & Koehnken, 1989 ) elements. It is possible that stories that score higher on CBCA may result in more memory distortion.

The effects of lying on belief have been relatively unexplored and the current study suggests that the intentionally deceptive component of lying, not just the creation of the lie, affects belief in the lie. These results suggest that belief change may occur as a result of a deliberate lie and that liars become less confident in the truth after lying. Given that the average person lies at least once a day ( Serota & Levine, 2015 ), the effects of lying on false beliefs have repercussions that affect everyone and continued research into related variables and their effects should be conducted. Although the lies told in this study were low stakes lies, it is possible that the factors associated with lying that might increase source monitoring errors such as discomfort and motivated forgetting would be even stronger in high stakes lies such as those involving perjury and coerced false confessions. This research therefore has applications both to everyday experiences and psychology and law topics.

Acknowledgments

The author has no support to report.

Dr. Danielle Polage is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Central Washington University. She specializes in memory research, particularly false memories, lying, and other psychology and law issues.

Appendix: Questions and Participant Instructions That Were Used During the Written and Oral Interviews

Event	Participant instructions
Event	Did this really happen to you?
Did you fall off your bicycle?	Yes
Did you shake hands with the president?	No
( - used in written and oral interviews)	Yes
Did you get a hook stuck in your hand while fishing?	No
Did you build a fort?	No
(not prepared but - oral)/ ( but not told- written)	Yes
Did you swallow chewing gum?	Yes
Did you break a favorite toy?	No
( - neither prepared nor told)	---

Note. The participants were asked to follow the instructions whether the event had or had not actually happened to them. Lies 1-4 were based on their responses to the LEI 1. The other events were filler questions given to all participants.

Funding: This research was partially supported by the Office of the Dean, College of the Sciences, Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington.

Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

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10 Things to Know About the Psychology of Lying

Lying occurs when someone makes a statement that is false but they want someone to believe it to be true. It is in our human nature to lie when a situation seems fit. Some lies are relatively innocent, some are life changing, some are easier to believe than others. We have all likely spoken a lie. This is precisely what makes the psychology of lying such a fascinating topic… While there are many different motives behind speaking a lie, lies are typically created for one of two reasons. Someone creating a lie may believe that they will receive personal gains and satisfaction from a lie. If they told the truth, they may not see any benefits. Another reason that someone may lie is because they simply cannot speak the truth. This may be temporary or because of something far more serious. People of all ages, all genders, and all backgrounds may lie for a long list of reasons, but regardless, lying is always a psychological act. Here are 10 things to know about the psychology of lying.

Lying is a form of communication.

Perhaps the first intriguing point to make when discussing the psychology of lying is seeing that lying is a form of communication. We communicate verbally, through writing, through the mouths and ears of others, and so on. Lying, while being a more complicated form of communication, is communication none the less. Lying involves two parties communicating. On one end is the deceiver (the liar) and on the other end is the deceived. The deceiver is attempting to communicate information to the other party that is not true. The communication takes place when both parties are involved, regardless of why the lie is being told in the first place.

People may lie for personal benefits.

An antisocial lie is when someone lies for personal gain. Regardless of the magnitude of the lie, the intention is to reap the benefits that come from not telling the truth. In this situation, someone may be weighing the pros and cons of telling the truth or straying away from it. Ultimately, telling a lie may bring them the outcome that they think will benefit them personally. This can include avoiding punishment, receiving some type of reward, gaining adoration from others, having power or control over another party, and more. An antisocial lie is typically rooted in selfishness.

People may lie for emotional reasons.

Understanding the psychology of lying means seeing that some people may lie because of emotional reasons. A prosocial lie is when a party lies because they think it will benefit others. Same as an antisocial lie, the intensity of the lie doesn’t matter. The intention of giving false information to another party is the same regardless. Emotional lies like these can be told for a number of reasons. These can include:

not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings
avoiding physical or mental harm
not having enough confidence to speak the truth
getting out of an uncomfortable or unsafe situation
creating a privacy boundary
avoiding an embarrassing situation

Some people may view lying differently depending on their environment.

Deep down, we all know and understand that lying is wrong. However, some of us see lying as a bigger deal than others. This can be a result of the environments we find ourselves in, especially when it comes to the work force. For example, there are some careers where lying is normal. A care sales-person or a real estate agent, for example, may lie about the value of a car or a home to see how much money they can make on the sale. This would personally benefit them for a number of reasons. Sales commission would likely being the leading factor here. In careers like this, lying is just a day to day activity. It’s what they do.

When do we learn to lie?

We can’t discuss the psychology of lying without discussing childhood. Children learn to tell lies from a relatively young age. As children start to understand that their parents and guardians do not know exactly what is going on in their heads, their minds wander. This realizaiton may lead to children testing the boundaries. They are starting to figure out what they can get away with. While this begins around three or so years old, children typically start telling real lies between the ages of 4 and 6. This may be because their communication skills are stronger.

Pathological lying is a mental disorder.

A pathological liar is someone who compulsively lies. It is a chronic behavior that is diagnosable mental condition. Someone who struggles with this doesn’t just tell white lies every once in awhile. Unlike antisocial or prosocial lies, these lies actually don’t seem to have any benefit to the deceiver. They habitually lie and for seemingly no reason at all. Their lies are typically a grandiose tale that paints them as a main character – either the victim or the hero. The intensity of the lies and the details they can paint can make it seem as though they actually believe the lies themselves. Someone suffering from being a pathological liar may find themselves to be lonely and isolated. It may be hard to keep a pathological liar in your life as they can be very difficult to be around.

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Being gullible can make us more likely to fall for a lie..

When it comes to lying, gullibility is the perfect fuel to the fire. Gullibility is someone’s tendency to easily believe something to be true when it is actually false. Someone who is gullible may be easily manipulated. They believe false claims without seeking further evidence. There may be an allure to being gullible to an extent. In an innocent way, being gullible lets us be hopeful and see the best in a situation. In a more dangerous way, being gullible can lead to someone believe a harmful lie and ultimately getting into a tricky situation.

Lies carry different weights.

Lying happens. It’s a part of human communication and experimentation. However, lies carry different weights. Some are more intense than others. Some are cruel, selfish, and harmful. Some lies can ruin relationships, get someone into illegal trouble, cause pain and harm, get someone fired, and so on. And then there are white lies! White lies are small fibs that don’t carry a lot of weight. They are typically told without any sort of malicious intent. They may be told to shield someone else’s feelings or to slip away from possible trouble.

There are signs of someone lying.

While lying is a psychological activity that people do, it has physical signs. Knowing if someone is lying and reading the signs may be complicated. The signs may vary depending on the person communicating, the intention, and the intensity of the lie. However, there are some basic signs to look when attempting to detect a lie. These may include…

Moving head positions quickly
Changes in breathing
Standing still, almost frozen
Nervous communication (repeating words and phrases)
Oversharing, rambling
Hiding their face, covering their mouth, looking away
Standing or sitting nervously (hiding hands, crossings legs, slouching)
Staring with wide eyes

Sometimes clients even lie to their therapists.

Sometimes people in therapy lie to their therapists. But why would they do this? A therapist is meant to help someone talk through things, get through a hard time, work on healing and coping mechanisms, etc. While therapy sessions will likely only be beneficial if the person seeking treatment is being truthful, unfortunately they do not always do this. Sometimes people lie because they are ashamed of their behavior. They may lie about the truth of their actions and thoughts. They may paint themselves to be the person they wish they were. This is likely the biggest thing any therapist would want to work through.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Lie — The Main Reasons Why People Lie

The Main Reasons Why People Lie

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Why Do People Lie Essay | The Science Behind Lies and Deception

November 8, 2021 by Prasanna

Why Do People Lie Essay: A lie can be defined as an act of dishonesty or misrepresentation in which a person who makes a statement to another person conceals, misrepresents, or distorts the truth with the goal of creating false belief in that other person. The things that are being lied about may or may not be true, but are generally things that are private or personal. The act of lying has been around ever since the evolution of human language and speech.

The consequences of lying to someone can depend on the circumstances. For example, if a person lies in order to avoid being hurt, they may have a different set of consequences than if they lied to obtain money from somebody else. There are a few theories that explain why we lie and how we can create agreements that make people more honest. We will look at these theories and discuss the impacts of each in this essay.

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Reasons People Lie – 6 Major Influencing Factors

People lie for many reasons. Some of the most common are to protect themselves, their image, or to be polite. In a survey, researchers found that the top motivation for lying is to avoid hurting the other person’s feelings. This is because people want to appear likable and trustworthy. They want to avoid being judged because (most) people are insecure about themselves.

Other reasons that make people lie are as follows:

To avoid punishment: People may lie as they might be afraid of the consequences of the truth. Alternatively, they may also lie in order to make themselves look better in the eyes of others. An example of this is a child not revealing the marks of their exam to their parents.
People will often lie in order to get a reward: There are so many different studies that show how people might lie for materialistic rewards such as money, but the same thing goes for social rewards. People might go out of their way to please others or create a better image of themselves.
People lie to protect another person from being punished: People are often willing to lie to protect their friends and other loved ones. This is because they believe that the truth will result in them being punished, which can be an unpleasant experience for those involved.
People lie to win the admiration of others: Humans are social animals. We crave admiration from others because it makes us feel better about ourselves. Our brains have evolved to want to be liked, so we will often do things that will give other people a more positive opinion of us, even if it means lying.
People lie to get out of an awkward social situation: It turns out that people do this more often than they think. In a survey from the University of Massachusetts, it was found that 74% of participants admitted to telling a lie in order to escape from an uncomfortable situation.
People lie to avoid embarrassment: It is an unfortunate truth, but it’s hard to hide the truth when you’re confronted with it. For example, people will often lie when they are asked if they have read the book they are supposed to review.

What is the Psychology Behind Lying?

Lying is something that most people do at some point in their lives. We all know that lying is wrong, but the psychology behind it is a complex topic. According to research, there are five reasons why somebody might lie: to avoid punishment, to avoid hurt feelings, for self-esteem enhancement, for personal gain, and out of habit. Interestingly, the psychology behind lying is not black and white, but revolves around a “grey” area. Another aspect of lies is that it has a snowball effect – that is, the more you lie, the more excuses you have to make up. And the more you make up, the bigger your lies become. Even a little white lie can eventually snowball into many lies, making it harder to keep a track of the lies. However, there are some ethical aspects to lying. For instance, a child who is home alone might lie to a stranger that his parents are at home and are sleeping. This might dissuade the stranger to continue interacting with the child.

Spotting A Liar – A Technique to Detect a Liar

Most of us have stereotypical views about a liar’s behaviour – such as stuttering, avoiding eye contact and fidgeting. However, these signs are not reliable and can also mislead people. So how does one identify a liar? The answer is – it is not quite easy to spot a liar, and it becomes especially difficult if the person in question is a chronic liar. However, there are a few ways to identify if someone is lying. Moreover, you will have to pay attention and also have a keen eye to spot a liar as the tell-tale signs of lying are very subtle and easy to miss.

Start by asking neutral questions to establish a baseline: Start by asking neutral questions. These questions could pertain to the weather, plans for the day or anything else that would elicit a normal and calm reply. Then, when the individual replies to your questions, watch their reactions, tone of voice, pitch, eye movement and other details. This forms the baseline. If needed, ask more neutral questions to form a clear and solid baseline.
Move on to questions where lies are to be expected: Once a baseline has been established, start asking questions where the individual is expected to lie. Watch their responses, observe any changes – such as a change in facial expressions, voice pitch, eye movement, body language and more. Hence, having a strong baseline is important .
Observe the body language and facial expressions: Though the person may lie, the human body can’t. The body’s response to stress manifests itself in the form of tell-tale physical signs. However, it may be too subtle to observe and easy to miss if you do not have a keen eye. Other times, a liar may exhibit a nervous tick such as fidgeting, acting restless or tapping their fingers.
Listen to tone and cadence: When a person is lying, their tone of voice and pitch changes, though it might be very subtle. Research has shown that their pitch increases when actively telling a lie. Moreover, they may also start speaking slowly or rapidly when telling a lie. Having a strong baseline observation can help make these changes more apparent.
Observe when they stop talking about themselves: Individuals who are lying might use fewer “me” and “I” in their sentences. This is because they might want to psychologically distance themselves from the lie that they fabricated.

Please note, this technique might not apply to everyone, because each individual may react differently when lying.

Confessing the Truth

Getting someone to tell the truth can be a difficult task. It requires patience and an understanding of human psychology. Below are the most effective techniques for getting someone to tell the truth:

Ask an open ended question, rather than a yes or no question: Open ended questions are also known as ‘complex’ or ‘elaborated’ questions. They’re easy to answer, but they require thought, and can even cause someone to reveal more about themselves than they intended.
Pause and wait for a response: When you’re talking with someone who is lying, it’s important to know if their response is truthful. Adding a pause and waiting for a response can help you spot the truth in someone’s story.
Use what you know about the person to make them feel comfortable: The best way to make someone feel comfortable is through small talk. Ask them about their day, work or hobbies. Doing so can help build rapport and the person might be less inclined to fabricate lies with you.
Keep your tone of voice even and neutral: One of the most important things to do is to avoid using any type of emotion in your voice. For instance, if you sound disappointed, angry, or sad, the liar will pick up on that and may get defensive and start lying more.
Offer empathy: Lying is often a way to avoid conflict and maintain relationships. Occasionally, people lie because they feel they are not appreciated or respected. It can be challenging to offer empathy when someone lies in order to avoid conflict.
Show how telling the truth will be beneficial: It can be seen as a sign of maturity and honesty. If people believe that they are telling the truth, it could make them seem more trustworthy and less suspicious. Telling the truth also helps to maintain a healthy relationship with that person or with friends and family. Honesty is always the best policy!

Conclusion on Why Do People Lie Essay

Some people lie because they are afraid of the consequences. For example, being caught by parents for misdeeds, or being punished for not doing chores. The most common reason why people lie is to avoid hurting others’ feelings. Regardless, a lie, in most cases, can be detrimental to the liar as they will have to fabricate more lies in order to cover their initial lie. Hence, it is always better to tell the truth.

FAQ’s on Why People Lie

Question 1. What is a lie?

Answer: A lie is defined as an intentional act to mislead or deceive another. A liar is someone who says something that they know to be untrue.

Question 2. What is a white lie? How is it harmful?

Answer: “White lies” are simply lies told with the intent to spare someone’s feelings. However, these lies can be harmful because they can steer someone in the wrong direction or into a plan that is not well thought out.

Question 3. What are the reasons that make people lie?

Answer: The reasons for lying may vary, but the consequences are the same. Oftentimes, people lie to avoid something negative. Lying creates a false sense of security and happiness. It can seem like a great option in the moment, but being dishonest can have catastrophic outcomes in the future.

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The Truth About Lying

Deception is rampant—and sometimes we tell the biggest lies to those we love most..

By Allison Kornet published May 1, 1997 - last reviewed on June 9, 2016

If, as the cliché has it, the 1980s was the decade of greed, then the quintessential sin of the 1990s might just have been lying. After all, think of the accusations of deceit leveled at politicians like Bob Packwood, Marion Barry, Dan Rostenkowski, Newt Gingrich, and Bill Clinton.

And consider the top-level Texaco executives who initially denied making racist comments at board meetings; the young monk who falsely accused Cardinal Bernardin of molestation; Susan Smith, the white woman who killed her young boys and blamed a black man for it; and Joe Klein, the Newsweek columnist who adamantly swore for months that he had nothing to do with his anonymously-published novel Primary Colors . Even Hollywood noticed our apparent deception obsession: witness films like Quiz Show, True Lies, The Crucible, Secrets & Lies, and Liar, Liar .

Leonard Saxe, Ph.D., a polygraph expert and professor of psychology at Brandeis University, says, "Lying has long been a part of everyday life. We couldn't get through the day without being deceptive." Yet until recently lying was almost entirely ignored by psychologists, leaving serious discussion of the topic in the hands of ethicists and theologians. Freud wrote next to nothing about deception; even the 1500-page Encyclopedia of Psychology , published in 1984, mentions lies only in a brief entry on detecting them. But as psychologists delve deeper into the details of deception, they're finding that lying is a surprisingly common and complex phenomenon.

For starters, the work by Bella DePaulo, Ph.D., a psychologist at the University of Virginia, confirms Nietzche's assertion that the lie is a condition of life. In a 1996 study, DePaulo and her colleagues had 147 people between the ages of 18 and 71 keep a diary of all the falsehoods they told over the course of a week. Most people, she found, lie once or twice a day—almost as often as they snack from the refrigerator or brush their teeth. Both men and women lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting 10 or more minutes; over the course of a week they deceive about 30 percent of those with whom they interact one-on-one. Furthermore, some types of relationships, such as those between parents and teens, are virtual magnets for deception: "College students lie to their mothers in one out of two conversations," reports DePaulo. (Incidentally, when researchers refer to lying, they don't include the mindless pleasantries or polite equivocations we offer each other in passing, such as "I'm fine, thanks" or "No trouble at all." An "official" lie actually misleads, deliberately conveying a false impression. So complimenting a friend's awful haircut or telling a creditor that the check is in the mail both qualify.)

Saxe points out that most of us receive conflicting messages about lying. Although we're socialized from the time we can speak to believe that it's always better to tell the truth, in reality society often encourages and even rewards deception. Show up late for an early morning meeting at work and it's best not to admit that you overslept. "You're punished far more than you would be if you lie and say you were stuck in traffic," Saxe notes. Moreover, lying is integral to many occupations. Think how often we see lawyers constructing far-fetched theories on behalf of their clients or reporters misrepresenting themselves in order to gain access to good stories.

Of Course I Love You

Dishonesty also pervades our romantic relationships , as you might expect from the titles of books like 101 Lies Men Tell Women (Harper Collins), by Missouri psychologist Dory Hollander, Ph.D. (Hollander's nomination for the #1 spot: "I'll call you.") Eighty-five percent of the couples interviewed in a 1990 study of college students reported that one or both partners had lied about past relationships or recent indiscretions. And DePaulo finds that dating couples lie to each other in about a third of their interactions—perhaps even more often than they deceive other people.

Fortunately, marriage seems to offer some protection against deception: Spouses lie to each other in "only" about 10 percent of their major conversations. The bad news? That 10 percent just refers to the typically minor lies of everyday life. DePaulo recently began looking at the less frequent "big" lies that involve deep betrayals of trust, and she's finding that the vast majority of them occur between people in intimate relationships. "You save your really big lies," she says, "for the person that you're closest to."

Sweet Little Lies

Though some lies produce interpersonal friction, others may actually serve as a kind of harmless social lubricant. "They make it easier for people to get along," says DePaulo, noting that in the diary study one in every four of the participants' lies were told solely for the benefit of another person. In fact, "fake positive" lies—those in which people pretend to like someone or something more than they actually do ("Your muffins are the best ever")—are about 10 to 20 times more common than "false negative" lies in which people pretend to like someone or something less ("That two-faced rat will never get my vote").

Certain cultures may place special importance on these "kind" lies. A survey of residents at 31 senior citizen centers in Los Angeles recently revealed that only about half of elderly Korean Americans believe that patients diagnosed with life-threatening metastatic cancer should be told the truth about their condition. In contrast, nearly 90 percent of Americans of European or African descent felt that the terminally ill should be confronted with the truth.

Not surprisingly, research also confirms that the closer we are to someone, the more likely it is that the lies we tell them will be altruistic ones. This is particularly true of women: Although the sexes lie with equal frequency, women are especially likely to stretch the truth in order to protect someone else's feelings, DePaulo reports. Men, on the other hand, are more prone to lying about themselves—the typical conversation between two guys contains about eight times as many self-oriented lies as it does falsehoods about other people.

Men and women may also differ in their ability to deceive their friends. In a University of Virginia study, psychologists asked pairs of same-sex friends to try to detect lies told by the other person. Six months later the researchers repeated the experiment with the same participants. While women had become slightly better at detecting their friend's lies over time, men didn't show any improvement—evidence, perhaps, that women are particularly good at learning to read their friends more accurately as a relationship deepens.

Saxe believes that anyone under enough pressure, or given enough incentive, will lie. But in a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , DePaulo and Deborah A. Kashy, Ph.D., of Texas A&M University, report that frequent liars tend to be manipulative and Machiavellian , not to mention overly concerned with the impression they make on others. Still, DePaulo warns that liars "don't always fit the stereotype of caring only about themselves. Further research reveals that extroverted , sociable people are slightly more likely to lie, and that some personality and physical traits—notably self-confidence and physical attractiveness —have been linked to an individual's skill at lying when under pressure.

On the other hand, the people least likely to lie are those who score high on psychological scales of responsibility and those with meaningful same- sex friendships. In his book Lies! Lies!! Lies!!! The Psychology of Deceit (American Psychiatric Press, Inc.), psychiatrist Charles Ford, M.D., adds depressed people to that list. He suggests that individuals in the throes of depression seldom deceive others—or are deceived themselves—because they seem to perceive and describe reality with greater accuracy than others. Several studies show that depressed people delude themselves far less than their nondepressed peers about the amount of control they have over situations, and also about the effect they have on other people. Researchers such as UCLA psychologist Shelley Taylor, Ph.D., have even cited such findings as evidence that a certain amount of self-delusion—basically, lying to yourself—is essential to good mental health. (Many playwrights, including Arthur Miller and Eugene O'Neill, seem to share the same view about truth-telling. In Death of a Salesman and The Iceman Cometh , for example, lies are life sustaining: The heroes become tragic figures when their lies are stripped away.)

Detecting Lies

Anyone who has played cards with a poker-faced opponent can appreciate how difficult it is to detect a liar. Surprisingly, technology doesn't help very much. Few experts display much confidence in the deception-detecting abilities of the polygraph, or lie detector. Geoffrey C. Bunn, Ph.D., a psychologist and polygraph historian at Canada's York University, goes so far as to describe the lie detector as "an entertainment device" rather than a scientific instrument. Created around 1921 during one of the first collaborations between scientists and police, the device was quickly popularized by enthusiastic newspaper headlines and by the element of drama it bestowed in movies and novels.

But mass appeal doesn't confer legitimacy. The problem with the polygraph, say experts like Bunn, is that it detects fear , not lying; the physiological responses that it measures—most often heart rate, skin conductivity, and rate of respiration—don't necessarily accompany dishonesty.

"The premise of a lie detector is that a smoke alarm goes off in the brain when we lie because we're doing something wrong," explains Saxe. "But sometimes we're completely comfortable with our lies." Thus a criminal's lie can easily go undetected if he has no fear of telling it. Similarly, a true statement by an innocent individual could be misinterpreted if the person is sufficiently afraid of the examination circumstances. According to Saxe, the best-controlled research suggests that lie detectors err at a rate anywhere from 25 to 75 percent. Perhaps this is why most state and federal courts won't allow polygraph "evidence."

Some studies suggest that lies can be detected by means other than a polygraph—by tracking speech hesitations or changes in vocal pitch, for example, or by identifying various nervous adaptive habits like scratching, blinking, or fidgeting . But most psychologists agree that lie detection is destined to be imperfect. Still, researchers continue to investigate new ways of picking up lies. While studying how language patterns are associated with improvements in physical health, James W. Pennebaker, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University, also began to explore whether a person's choice of words was a sign of deception. Examining data gathered from a text analysis program, Pennebaker and SMU colleague Diane Berry, Ph.D., determined that there are certain language patterns that predict when someone is being less than honest. For example, liars tend to use fewer first person words like I or my in both speech and writing. They are also less apt to use emotional words, such as hurt or angry, cognitive words, like understand or realize, and so-called exclusive words, such as but or without, that distinguish between what is and isn't in a category.

While the picture of lying that has emerged in recent years is far more favorable than that suggested by its biblical "thou shalt not" status, most liars remain at least somewhat conflicted about their behavior. In DePaulo's studies, participants described conversations in which they lied as less intimate and pleasant than truthful encounters, suggesting that people are not entirely at ease with their deceptions. That may explain why falsehoods are more likely to be told over the telephone, which provides more anonymity than a face-to-face conversation. In most cases, however, any mental distress that results from telling an everyday lie quickly dissipates. Those who took part in the diary study said they would tell about 75 percent of their lies again if given a second chance—a position no doubt bolstered by their generally high success rate. Only about a fifth of their falsehoods were discovered during the one-week study period.

Certainly anyone who insists on condemning all lies should ponder what would happen if we could reliably tell when our family, friends, colleagues, and government leaders were deceiving us. It's tempting to think that the world would become a better place when purged of the deceptions that seem to interfere with our attempts at genuine communication or intimacy. On the other hand, perhaps our social lives would collapse under the weight of relentless honesty, with unveiled truths destroying our ability to connect with others. The ubiquity of lying is clearly a problem, but would we want to will away all of our lies? Let's be honest.

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At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that could derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face triggers with less reactivity and get on with our lives.

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COMMENTS

The Psychology and Impact of Lying and Self-Deception
"The essence of lying is in deception, not in words; a lie may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a syllable, by a glance of the eyes, attaching a peculiar significance to a ...
Lying and Psychology
Clearly, there is a great variety of lies. And although research shows that most people have a quite intuitive understanding of what they consider a lie and what not (Peterson 1995), finding a common definition of lying is not easy.One of the more recent attempts to such a definition is the one of Vrij (2008).He defines lying as "a successful or unsuccessful deliberate attempt, without ...
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Two basic types of lying: white and strategic. In general, there are two types of lies. A 'white lie" is one we make to maintain our social status. We lie to preserve an image of ourselves ...
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Some evidence for unconscious lie detection. Psychological Science OnlineFirst, published on March 21, 2014 as doi: 10.1177/0956797614524421. Vrij A., & Granhag, P. A. (2014). Eliciting information and detecting lies in intelligence interviewing: An overview of recent research. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28, 936-944. Published online 18 ...
The phenomenology of lying in young adults and relationships with
Those who lied daily ("Daily Liars") were compared to those who lied less frequently ("Non-Daily Liars"). 18.1% of the sample reported lying every day. Daily Liars showed worse grade point averages, quality of life, and self-esteem. Daily Lying was associated with negative functional impact on school, social, and family/home domains.
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Leveraging the "-ish" of Truth. How we come to believe and justify lies is elucidated in complex research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social ...
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33.1 Introduction. In the field of social psychology (the study of social interactions, including how people's thoughts and feelings and actions are influenced by others), scholars were slow to approach the study of lying. The first meta-analytic review article did not appear until 1981 ( Zuckerman, DePaulo, and Rosenthal 1981 ).
The Truth about Lying
Police experts, however, have frequently made a different argument: that the experiments weren't realistic enough. After all, they say, volunteers — mostly students — instructed to lie or tell the truth in psychology labs do not face the same consequences as criminal suspects in the interrogation room or on the witness stand.
What's Good about Lying?
A complex mathematical 2014 study compared the impact of black and white lies on social networks. Again, black lies drove wedges into social networks. But white lies had precisely the opposite effect, tightening social bonds. Several studies have found that people are quick to forgive white lies, and even to appreciate them.
The Psychology Of Lies: [Essay Example], 1125 words
The Psychology of Lies. People, on average, lie two to three times for every 10 minutes of conversation (Smith). In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Christoher Boone has a difficult time with lies. From sarcastic comments to a complex web of lies, Christopher struggles to make sense of them.
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"Specifically, people are especially more tense when lying, compared to telling the truth, when they are highly motivated to get away with their lies and when they are lying about a ...
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The antisocial lie is selfish and is constructed to further a personal agenda at some cost to others. Only the deceiver is intended to benefit from such lies, despite knowledge of the harm that may be caused. ... Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10 (2006), pp. 214-234. CrossRef View in Scopus Google Scholar. Bryant, 2008. E. Bryant.
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Psychology research suggests people lie at least once a day. A 2006 review of 206 papers found that we are little better then chance at guessing whether something is a lie or not, 54% to be exact.
Is It Always Wrong to Lie?
Consensus is exactly what the philosopher Sissela Bok advocated for in her seminal book, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. First, it should be noted that Dr. Bok is very much opposed ...
The Effect of Telling Lies on Belief in the Truth
Results show that telling a lie plays a more important role in inflating belief scores than simply preparing the script of a lie. Cognitive dissonance may lead to motivated forgetting of information that does not align with the lie. This research suggests that telling lies may lead to confusion as to the veracity of the lie leading to inflated ...
Essay on Psychological Lying: Why People Lie
Essay on Psychological Lying: Why People Lie. The psychology of lying is an interesting one because everyone at some point engages in lying. The audiences in of this works are the students and the teaching fraternity. The purpose of this work is to explore compelling reasons that make people lie. Unlike other phenomenon, lying is a relatively ...
(PDF) Psychology of Lying
communicating with others. It haslongbeenapartofeverydaylif. single day without telling lie s. aware of all t he lies we tell. finding out the truth about. us. a. difference in lying only. lies.
10 Things To Know About The Psychology Of Lying
An antisocial lie is typically rooted in selfishness. People may lie for emotional reasons. Understanding the psychology of lying means seeing that some people may lie because of emotional reasons. A prosocial lie is when a party lies because they think it will benefit others. Same as an antisocial lie, the intensity of the lie doesn't matter.
The Psychology of Lying: Motivations and Consequences Free Essay Example
Telling a lie is a very strange habit because it is not needed to teach or learn but everyone knows it automatically. This essay will explain the reasons of why people lie, which are self-protection, making people feel better and family's education. Self- protection is the major factor of telling lie. According to researchers, up to ninety ...
The Main Reasons Why People Lie: [Essay Example], 576 words
This discussion establishes that the main reasons for lying include to avoid tension, to manipulate others into developing ideas and thoughts that would inflate their egos, to avoid conflict by covering up bad behavior, due to the fear of disappointing others, and to take advantage of other people. This essay was reviewed by. Dr. Oliver Johnson.
The Truth in the Newest Theory on Lying
Lying is a common feature of everyday life, leading researchers to propose that "everybody lies." Cognitive psychology proposes that liars use four steps to produce their falsehoods. A new study ...
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Reasons People Lie - 6 Major Influencing Factors. People lie for many reasons. Some of the most common are to protect themselves, their image, or to be polite. In a survey, researchers found that the top motivation for lying is to avoid hurting the other person's feelings. This is because people want to appear likable and trustworthy.
On (Cognitive) Bias in School Psychology
In this essay, I explore how cognitive bias, rather than racial or ethnic bias, may inhibit the ability of school psychologists to advance social justice through research and practice. I begin with the argument that tests advance the cause of social justice because they define problems (i.e., disparities among groups) in objective, measurable ...
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Of those who admitted they did lie, most said they'd told very few lies. Participants reported 1,646 lies in total, but half of them came from just 5.3% of the participants.
Lies and Deceptions
Lying and deceiving involve two very different biopsychological processes. Lying sends a false message in communication; deceiving exploits cognitive loopholes in the victim. Deceptive tricks are ...
Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness + Find a Therapist
Why do people lie and how can we detect their lies? In this article, you will learn about the psychological motives and consequences of lying, the types of lies people tell, and the ways to spot a ...