Psychology Facts

▼ Lies / Deception ▼

Sorry this is a long one!!!

》60% of people lie at least once in ten-minute conversations, according to a study published in the Journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology

》Our brains adapt to lying, and this can actually cause us to lie more as time goes on. According to "The Slippery Slope of Dishonesty" published in Nature Neuroscience, lies can grow over time. Lying is like a plant, the more you feed it, the larger it grows.

》Research shows that Americans lie 11 times a week on average. That's a little over one lie per day.

》People suck at telling when someone else is lying. Studies show that people can tell when someone is lying about as accurately as they can call a coin toss—about 52% of the time.

》While we suck at trying to figure out lies on a conscious level, studies show that if we're not consciously focusing on detecting lies, parts of our brain work on a subconscious level to detect deception.

》The commonly held belief that people fidget or look away when they lie... isn't true. We've been lied to about lying.

》While shifty eyes aren't a sign that you're being lied to, pupil response is. When we're lying our pupils dilate.

》Aphasics—people who have had the left cerebral hemisphere of their brain damaged—are better at detecting lies than people without that damage. Because they cannot understand sentences, they have to rely on nonverbal cues, and thus are better at spotting lies.

》People who have high emotional intelligence are more likely to fall for emotional lies. A study published in Legal and Criminological Psychology tested people with high emotional intelligence, and found the ability to perceive and express emotion lowered their ability to detect when they were being lied to.

》study done in 2016 shows that police officers are no better at telling when someone is lying than the rest of us. They're susceptible to the same stereotypes about lies—like that averting your gaze and fidgeting means someone is lying—as the rest of us.

》Overall, liars' stories tend to have less cohesion than someone telling the truth. They're more likely to correct themselves mid-story than truth tellers. So next time someone goes, "I met them on Tuesday, no wait—Monday!" you might have a liar on your hands.

》Liars are also unlikely to describe what was said in a conversation. For example, "She told me that she was going to get me fired," isn't something a liar is likely to say.

》People who listen to liars, rather than watch them, are better at detecting the lies. This is because they describe liars as sounding "more nervous." Voices tend to reach a higher pitch when people are lying.

》The time it takes a liar to start speaking can help you catch them in the act. Liars take longer to start answering questions—unless they've been given time to prepare, then they jump right into their story.

》Liars tend to avoid first-person pronouns. They do to this to provide them distance from their lies, and to avoid taking responsibility.

》Liars are more likely to use negative words like worthless, loser, sad. University of Texas at Austin psychology professor Dr. James Pennebaker says this is because liars have higher anxiety, and often feel guilty over their lies.

》People who lie often lie to themselves too! A study done at Harvard Business School allowed students to cheat on a math test. Down at the bottom of the sheet they had the answers, then they were asked to take a second test without an answer key at the bottom. The cheaters truly believed they had gotten a good score on the first test (the one with the answer key) because of their own math skill. This led them to overestimate their ability to do well on the second test

》Some kids start lying as early as the age of two. So parents, be suspicious of your kids early, because studies also show that parents can't consistently detect when young kids are lying to them.

》Unsurprisingly, we lie the most when we're teenagers—between the ages of 13-17. The ages we lie the least? When we're six through eight years old.

》Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) struggle with executive function, and have trouble with lying. Silver linings abound!

》According to some research, lying is a sign of intelligence in children. Studies show that the earlier kids start lying to you, the smarter they are. Toddlers who lie have a higher verbal IQ—up to ten points higher—than those that don't. Other studies show that kids who lie have better executive functioning skills, ie. the skills that allow us to focus on a task. So at least if your kid is lying to you, there's a silver lining.

》Men and women both tell the same amount of lies, though what they lie about tends to differ. Women tend to lie to make other people feel better, whereas men tend to lie to make themselves look better