Mark Twain said “a truth is not hard to kill, and a lie well told is immortal.”
Public lying is so common in our world that we take it for granted in advertising, in entertainment, and, sadly, in politics. There is even a website dedicated to the science of lying, called “deceptology.”
Human communication researchers have been studying the prevalence of deception. One leading study found that the average person lies once or twice a day, either exaggerations or outright deceptions. Some lying fulfills important interpersonal functions, like smoothing over difficulties or protecting fragile egos. Some have more malicious motivations. [i] Other studies show that nearly a quarter of all lies are told by the top 1% of liars and nearly half of all lies are told by the top 5% of the most prolific liars.[ii]
Human communication researchers have been studying the prevalence of deception. One leading study found that the average person lies once or twice a day, either exaggerations or outright deceptions. Some lying fulfills important interpersonal functions, like smoothing over difficulties or protecting fragile egos. Some have more malicious motivations. [i] Other studies show that nearly a quarter of all lies are told by the top 1% of liars and nearly half of all lies are told by the top 5% of the most prolific liars.[ii]
William Hazlitt (1778-1830), a British writer, once asserted that ‘‘life is the art of being deceived.’’ Deception is a part of all life, human and animal. Animals use camouflage to avoid being eaten. According to an article about neuroscience, “Some researchers have gone so far as to postulate that human brains are innately primed to deceive, since deception is recorded in all societies, extending back to the earliest written record, and it occurs early in life in a predictable manner.”[iii]
With so much lying going on, why is it so easy to get people to believe lies? Some students of the phenomenon think that it first has to do with self-deception. We deceive ourselves better to deceive others, they say. [iv] Other studies indicate that there is something they call the “truth bias” at work. “Simply put, people tend to believe more than they disbelieve, and this is one of the most stable and important findings in deception research. …[D]eception research has not fully come to grips with the implications of truth-bias.”[v] In layman’s terms, people are gullible. Nigerian internet-scam grifters make their living by manipulating this feature of the human psyche.
Even more troubling than our inherent willingness to believe just about any lie we are told is recent work in computational and cognitive neuroscience that supports another explanation of why some lies work so well. Lying often works because we are prisoners of our preexisting belief systems. Scientists have found that if you believe in something strongly and it's really important to you as a person (your worldview), you will cling to it--no matter what.
Another troubling aspect of how lies affect us is that: “Despite best efforts to correct misinformation it can't be completely eliminated."[vi] As Andy Clark explained in his online article, research shows that our perceptions are essentially a kind of “controlled hallucination” and that the structure of our expectations (both conscious and non-conscious) ….[determine] much of what we see, hear and feel.” In other words, our beliefs and expectations about what things are or should be will often trump the obvious truth staring us in the face. You can prove how this works on yourself by viewing the so called "hollow face illusion" which appears on many sites on the web.
Another troubling aspect of how lies affect us is that: “Despite best efforts to correct misinformation it can't be completely eliminated."[vi] As Andy Clark explained in his online article, research shows that our perceptions are essentially a kind of “controlled hallucination” and that the structure of our expectations (both conscious and non-conscious) ….[determine] much of what we see, hear and feel.” In other words, our beliefs and expectations about what things are or should be will often trump the obvious truth staring us in the face. You can prove how this works on yourself by viewing the so called "hollow face illusion" which appears on many sites on the web.
[i] The Real Truth about Lying. Reports on the psychology of lying. Study by psychologist and lying expert Bella DePaulo; Benefits of lying; Prevalence of lying among community members and students. By Peter Doskoch, published on September 01, 1996. This study reports that one tenth of lies are exaggerations, on average, and 60 percent were outright deceptions. The rest were subtle lies.
[ii] Serota, K. B., Levine, T. R., and Boster, F. J. (2010). The prevalence of lying in America: Three studies of reported deception. Human Communication Research, 36, 1-24.
[iii] Giorgio Ganis and Julian P. Keenan, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Deception , Psychology Press, 2009.
[iv] Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools, the Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life (2011).
[v] Gilbert, D. T. (1991). How mental systems believe. American Psychologist, 46, 107-119. For more fascinating research on lying and gullibility see the University of Michigan studies listed here.
[vi] Assistant Professor Ullrich Ecker and colleagues from The University of Western Australia have outlined their findings in a recent article published in Psychonomic Bulletin and Review . (2011)
[iii] Giorgio Ganis and Julian P. Keenan, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Deception , Psychology Press, 2009.
[iv] Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools, the Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life (2011).
[v] Gilbert, D. T. (1991). How mental systems believe. American Psychologist, 46, 107-119. For more fascinating research on lying and gullibility see the University of Michigan studies listed here.
[vi] Assistant Professor Ullrich Ecker and colleagues from The University of Western Australia have outlined their findings in a recent article published in Psychonomic Bulletin and Review . (2011)
1 comment:
great quotes from good people thats not a lie
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