Researchers have tried to figure out the mechanism of human lies. It turned out that the latter is a kind of addictive "drug".
The results of the research of psychologists from the UK and the USA are presented to us by the journal Nature Neuroscience, and a brief overview was provided by The Guardian. Scientists have tried to find out exactly how a person turns into a liar. The researchers developed a special game in which 80 volunteers took part. People were divided into pairs: each of them had an “accomplice” of the organizers. A can with coins was shown on the monitor, and the volunteers had to answer the question about how much money was in it. At the same time, the “accomplice” knew in advance the number of coins and made a decision on their issuance, and his earnings were determined by the difference between his own assessment and the one given by the partner.
This somewhat convoluted scheme has allowed scientists to come to interesting conclusions. It turned out that the longer the game lasted, the more often the "accomplices" deceived their companions, wanting to get more. At the same time, scientists using magnetic resonance imaging traced the changes that took place in the brains of liars. It turned out that when a person first told a lie, he could observe an increased activity of the amygdala. But after several dozen rounds, this activity began to decline.
The tonsils, being part of the limbic system, play a critical role in the formation of negative and positive emotions.
In other words, the human brain was adapting to a constant lie and the latter no longer caused any discomfort. The main conclusion of the experiment can be formulated as follows: even a small lie, provided that benefits are obtained, leads to addiction and a person begins to lie "in a big way" and on an ongoing basis. According to scientists, something similar is observed in the case of addiction to increased risk or violence.
Ilya Vedmedenko