“Everybody lies,” the hero of one famous TV series argued, and he was absolutely right. People lie and deceive each other sometimes for profit, in some situations to get out of the water, and sometimes - just, as they say, for the sake of a word of mouth. One way or another, humanity is mired in a lie and, it seems, is not going to get out of it. Here are 10 surprising facts about lying you probably didn't know.
1. Are the eyes a mirror of the soul?
All over the world there is a widespread misconception that when a person speaks a lie or hides something, he does not look in the face of the interlocutor, and his eyes "run" at the same time.
As psychologists say, this is a myth. Experts studied video recordings of the experiment, during which some participants told the truth, while others lied, while both of them sometimes quickly looked from left to right and back, which created the effect of those same "shifting eyes." Liars did this no more often than "truthful" volunteers, so it is impossible to tell by the eyes whether a person is lying or not.
2. The lie detector is lying
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In some courts, the testimony of lie detectors is accepted as evidence, but the reliability of such information cannot be fully relied on. In fact, all lie detectors are based on identifying signs of anxiety and stress in a person, but many liars may not have them - this already suggests that such data cannot be considered objective.
Some researchers are trying to create a device that detects lies based on the readings of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, but there is still no evidence of the effectiveness of this method. Experiments are now continuing to create lie detectors that work on other principles.
In the course of some experiments, interesting data were obtained: it turns out that with the help of transcranial magnetic stimulation (exposure to the cerebral cortex using short magnetic pulses), you can make a person lie more often than usual.
3. People often lie to themselves
While scammers and liars almost always hurt those around them, it is likely that such people are deceiving themselves.
Research in 2011 shows, for example, that if people are tricked into getting answers to tests and thus artificially inflating their results, they tend to overestimate their abilities, even if they remember that the answers they received were dishonest. In other words, a person deceives himself as easily as he deceives others.
4. Lack of time provokes to lie
According to research by psychologists, more often than not, lies are not planned in advance: most people lie when they need to make a quick decision, and there is no time to think about the possible consequences of deception.
Psychologist Shaul Shalvi of the University of Amsterdam explains: “When people are forced to act quickly, they tend to get the most out of the situation, regardless of ethical and moral considerations. When a person can think carefully about his further actions and words, he is usually not inclined to lie."
5. Almost everyone tells a lie at least once a day
American scientists conducted a study in which they asked people to rate how often they lie, and the vast majority of participants admitted that they told a lie once or twice a day.
By the way, another experiment of researchers shows that, on average, 56% of Americans believe that they will get away with lying, among Protestants 55% were sure of this, and among Muslims this figure is slightly lower - only 47% of them believe that there will be no lie have any unpleasant consequences.
6. "Do you have a product, do we have …?"
At the dawn of its existence, humanity had hard times, and in order to survive, people were forced to invent various ways to unite and establish contacts with fellow tribesmen.
According to the authors of the study, the results of which were published by the Royal Society of London, one of the tools of this kind could well be a lie: "Tactical deception, or deliberate deception, allows a deceiver to establish cooperation, creating a distorted idea of the fraudster's actions and intentions." So, perhaps, if people did not deceive each other, they would never be able to agree.
7. Two-year-olds can deliberately lie
If you think that children are always crystal clear in their intentions and even deceive just because they do not realize their lies, we have to disappoint you: while studying child psychology, scientists have found out that a child learns to lie deliberately soon after he stops crawling on all fours …
Even two-year-olds can deliberately lead their parents (and not only) by the nose.
8. Deliberate deception makes a person smarter
In 2005, in the course of a psychological study, it was found that constantly lying people work better with their heads. Compulsive (that is, those who are aware of their lies) liars have an average of 22-26% more white matter in their brains and a more developed prefrontal cortex - the brain area responsible for cognition and intelligence.
One of the leaders of the study, Yaling Young, explains this fact in an interview with NPR: “In people who often and deliberately lie, the brain better connects various concepts and images that in reality may have nothing in common - for such connections in the human the brain is responsible for the white matter."
Some, for example, find it difficult to come up with "reasons" for being late for work, and hardened liars easily make up one story more believable than the other.
“The development of neural connections allows a person to quickly move from one story to another and generate many ideas, combining at first glance completely different things,” explains Young.
9. "Serum of Truth" does not prevent a person from lying
Sodium pentatol, a substance commonly referred to as "truth serum" in numerous books and films, cannot actually make people "open up."
This drug only removes psychic filters for a while, as a result of which a continuous stream of information flows from a person's mouth, some of which may turn out to be true, but the rest is still not worth believing.
10. Politicians started lying a long time ago
Politics was and remains a dirty business, in which it is impossible to stay afloat without mastering the art of saying whatever you want with an honest expression on your face, and this feature has manifested itself among those in power since time immemorial.
One of the brightest figures of this kind was the ancient Greek orator and commander Alcibiades, who is known for crossing the front line twice during the Peloponnesian War.
At first, he was on the side of Athens, in every possible way inciting and provoking a resumption of hostilities against Sparta, then, fearing an investigation of some of his actions, he fled to the Spartans, whom he only recently called enemies. He told the Spartan commanders some valuable information that almost led to the defeat of Athens, but when envious Spartans almost killed him, Alcibiades again became a loyal Athenian.