Nine interesting facts about liars shared by scientists

Although you may think you are an honest person, statistically you are also a liar. Researchers believe that the average person lies at least once or twice a day. If you do not believe, ask yourself the following questions:

• have you ever given people a compliment that wasn't completely justified?
• have you told someone you were doing well when in reality you were tired and had a terrible week?
• you ever tell people you're busy so you don't talk to them for long periods of time or do anything with them?

If you answered yes to any of the these questions, then you are lying. These are just a few common scenarios that trigger the biggest lies.

“Normal” liars vs. “pathological” liars

Good news? Most people are honest. Recent studies show that the majority of lies are told by the same small group of people, known as “pathological” liars.

In the study “Dispersion in the Prevalence of Lying”, researchers created a statistical model that allows you to distinguish pathological liars from everyday or “normal” liars.

Here's how to spot a pathological liar:

• these are those who lie five or more times a day.
• they are usually young men with a fairly high professional status.
• most often they lie to their partners and children.
• they are more likely than ordinary people to believe that lying is acceptable in some circumstances.
• they are less likely to lie out of concern for others, and more likely to lie for their own interests, such as protecting secrets.
• pathological liars are five times more likely they tell white and serious lies than ordinary people.

The police have a detector for thieves

One would hope that police officers are more adept at detecting lies. Unfortunately, research has shown that most officers are no better at spotting lies than the average person. However, they excel in one aspect of lie detection: detecting dishonest people in public.

The reason police are able to detect criminals in public places is that because thieves are preparing to steal, they feel more stressed than the circumstances of being in public require. On the other hand, during police interrogations, even innocent people feel stressed because they are trying to prove their innocence. , detects lies, not a certain behavior in general.

The effect of familiarity on lie detection

Can you spot a lie better if you're familiar? Research says yes. In this study, a group of psychologists conducted four experiments that show that situational familiarity leads to more accurate judgments about truth and lies.

People who were unfamiliar could not tell the difference between lies and truths more than 50% While people who were familiar with the person and their situations were able to detect lies with 8-23% additional accuracy.

This is partly because when people are more familiar with the situations and/or the people they are talking to, they have more background information and context clues to refer to.

People prefer to lie for their teams

Research has shown that people are more likely to lie for incentives that benefit the entire team than for incentives that are only for themselves. For example, employees are more likely to lie to their boss about the progress of a project when doing so prevents the entire team from having problems, rather than just themselves.

Researchers suspect that the willingness to lie in a team environment is not altruistic. In a group setting, people tend to feel less guilty about lying because they are helping others. They are less afraid to lie because there is less chance of being caught and being punished.

Lies are more likely to be sent by email

Researchers have found that people are more likely to lie when they use email rather than pen and paper. It's weird! Both forms are text-based, yet people lie more, disclose less information, and feel more justified when using email than when writing messages with pen and paper.

According to the study, “the results were consistent regardless of whether the task assured participants that their lies would or would not be detected by their peers.”

Memories of Lies

For most people, lying about an event increased their confidence that the event in question did not happen when they were asked about it later.

However, between ten and sixteen percent of participants appeared to have changed their memories because of their lies because they reported that they believed their lies were indeed true. Researchers believe that in these cases, lies have the same power as imagination to alter memories.

Events described very vividly can cause the brain to label them as memories.

Lying in another language is more difficult

If you think it is difficult to lie in your native language, try lying in another language. Researchers have found that people respond more to stress when they lie in another language, because speaking another language is already more difficult and lying increases cognitive stress.

In one particular study, the results show that two main factors influence the physiological nature of a person when he lies in another language:

1. Arousal due to the emotions associated with lying.
2. Anxieties about the control of pronunciation.

Liars try to answer the question “why”

If you suspect that someone may be lying to you, but you are not sure, an easy way to to find out is to ask a person: “Why?”. It is much more difficult for people to lie about why they did something or why something happened than about basic facts. If someone tries to explain their intentions, this is a major red flag that the person is lying.