There’s no such thing as ‘what a person doesn’t know doesn’t hurt them’. Make no mistake, lying is a grave sin.
When you undermine somebody’s sense of reality, you are undermining the whole basis on which they make life decisions and you’re potentially ruining that person’s ability to relate to people in a trusting and open way.
In the legal field, victims and offenders frequently lie to avoid talking about serious incidents, such as past experiences of sexual abuse or criminal involvement. Although these individuals may initially lie about an experienced event, oftentimes these same people eventually abandon their lies and are forthcoming with what truly happened. To date, it is unclear whether such lying affects later statements about one’s memory for the experienced event. The impetus of the present review is to compile the current state of knowledge on the effects of lying on memory. Based on existing literature, we will describe how deceptive strategies (e.g., false denials) regarding what is remembered may affect memory in consequential ways, such as forgetting of details, falsely remembering features that were not present, or a combination of both. It will be argued that the current literature suggests that mnemonic outcome is contingent on the type of lie and we will propose a theoretical framework outlining which forms of lying likely result in certain memory outcomes. Potential avenues of future research also will be discussed. Continue reading “When lying changes memory for the truth”
Lying is ubiquitous and has acquired many names. In ‘natural experiments’, both pathological lying and truthfulness implicate prefrontal cortices. Recently, the advent of functional neuroimaging has allowed investigators to study deception in the non-pathological state. Prefrontal cortices are again implicated, although the regions identified vary across experiments. Forensic application of such technology (to the detection of deceit) requires the solution of tractable technical problems. Whether we ‘should’ detect deception remains an ethical problem: one for societies to resolve. However, such a procedure would only appear to be ethical when subjects volunteer to participate, as might occur during the investigation of alleged miscarriages of justice. We demonstrate how this might be approached. Continue reading “Looking for truth and finding lies”
The theory proposed, ADCAT, is the first cognitive account of high-stakes lying.
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ADCAT underscores the pervasive roles of cognitive load and theory of mind.
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ADCAT details mathematically how decisions to lie are made.
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The roles of motivation, emotion, and social cognition are central to the theory.
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ADCAT has implications for lie detection. Continue reading “Activation-decision-construction-action theory ADCAT”
Both psychopaths and natural liars have the extraordinary ability to inhibit facial signals that portray their true feelings. My research has made clear why such an experienced natural liar or psychopath rarely makes mistakes when lying. However, the key word here is “rarely” — there are some clues to deceit that simply cannot be prevented because the person showing them isn’t aware they even occurred! These expressions, called micro expressions, often go undetected by the observer simply because these fleeting expressions are difficult to catch without some form of training.
When a client comes to you and wants help, you’re going to assume that they’re telling you the truth. They want to heal from whatever pain they’re going through, and that’s why they’re coming to therapy. The problem is that when you realize that a client is not truthful, it’s difficult to help them because you don’t know what their actual problems are. What do you do as a therapist when you recognize that your client is lying?
Pathological liars aren’t deliberately deceiving others
Not all lying is malicious. It certainly can be, and there are people who have personality disorders who compulsive lie so that they can manipulate others; however, some people lie to survive, and not to hurt their loved ones. People that struggle with pathological lying have usually learned to do this from a young age. They’ve seen evidence that telling the truth didn’t get them what they wanted, and they likely used lies as a survival mechanism. Maybe as a child, the person was severely abused. They learned to lie to appease their abusers. Their lying serves a purpose, and it’s your job to solve the mystery; what is your client gaining by lying to you and their loved ones? Continue reading “What to Do When Your Client is a Pathological Liar”
Pathological lying, also known as mythomania and pseudologia fantastica, is the chronic behavior of compulsive or habitual lying.
Unlike telling the occasional white lie to avoid hurting someone’s feelings or getting in trouble, a pathological liar seems to lie for no apparent reason. This can make it frustrating or hard to know what to do if you believe you’ve met one.
Though pathological lying has been recognized for more than a century, there’s not yet a clear universal definition of the condition.
Some pathological lying may result from a mental condition, such as antisocial personality disorder (sometimes called sociopathy), while others appear to have no medical reason for the behavior
Dr Setoh Peipei, the study’s first author, said:
“Parenting by lying can seem to save time especially when the real reasons behind why parents want children to do something is complicated to explain.
When parents tell children that ‘honesty is the best policy’, but display dishonesty by lying, such behaviour can send conflicting messages to their children.
Parents’ dishonesty may eventually erode trust and promote dishonesty in children.”
The study included 379 young adults, who were asked how much they were lied to as children by their parents.
Typical lies included:
The results showed that people lied to as children were more likely to lie back to their parents.
People who were lied to more also experienced more guilt and shame as well as being more selfish and manipulative.
Dr Peipei said:
“Our research suggests that parenting by lying is a practice that has negative consequences for children when they grow up.
Parents should be aware of these potential downstream implications and consider alternatives to lying, such as acknowledging children’s feelings, giving information so children know what to expect, offering choices and problem-solving together, to elicit good behaviour from children.”
Those lied to more as children were at greater risk of aggression and rule-breaking. Continue reading “Liars Are Raised By Parents Who Do This”
The truth of any proposition has nothing to do with its credibility and vice versa.
—Parker’s law of political statements (Bloch, 1979, p. 84)
Our interest in this article is with the cognitive processes that influence ratings of probable truth. Ideally, a statement should not be accepted as true without factual evidence in support of its claims. However, people often rely on memories for
that evidence. It is sensible to base truth ratings on whether expressed facts corroborate or contradict remembered facts. But memory is imperfect, and it is sensible to trust some remembered facts more than others. We propose that there
are two independent bases on which remembered facts are given credence when people rate truth. One basis is recollection: A statement will be accepted as true if it corroborates remembered facts that are associated with a known, credible
source, and it will be rejected as false if the facts are associated with a discredited source. The other basis is familiarity: A statement will seem true if it expresses facts that feel familiar.
We propose, furthermore, that these two bases differ in the extent to which their influence is controlled rather than automatic. Recollection of source is a controlled use of memory, and its influence on rated truth is intentional. In contrast, increased familiarity is an automatic consequence of exposure, and its influence on rated truth is unintentional.
Our thesis is that source recollection and statement familiarity are independent influences on rated truth, because recollecting and using source information requires intent, whereas the feeling of familiarity that occurs while processing messages occurs unintentionally. An opposing view is that the two influences are not independent: Judgments depend on familiarity only when other bases for judgments are not
available. In the following section, we review the empirical support for the idea that the effect of repetition on rated truth is based on familiarity. Then, we examine evidence that familiarity and recollection are independent bases for judgments of fame and that source recollection is an intentional process. Finally, we return to rated truth and develop an approach by which we can dissociate the intentional influence
of source recollection from the unintentional influence of statement familiarity. Continue reading “Dissociation of Processes in Belief: Source Recollection, Statement Familiarity, and the Illusion of Truth”
Five experiments explored how source reliability influences people’s tendency to rate statements as more credible when they were encountered earlier (the truth effect). Undergraduates read statements from one reliable source and one unreliable source. Statements read multiple times were perceived as more valid and were more often correctly identified on a general knowledge test than statements read once or not at all. This occurred at varying retention intervals whether the statements originated from a reliable or unreliable source, when people had little memory for the statements themselves or their source, and when the discrediting information about the sources came either before or after reading the facts. While repetition aided recognition and source accuracy, both were unaffected by the reliability of the source. Consistent with the source monitoring framework, familiarity may create an illusion of truth for statements when people lack source-specifying cues, especially cues regarding the reliability of the source.
► We examine how people rate statements as more true after earlier exposure, despite not remembering reading them. ► Repetition influenced both perceived truthfulness and general knowledge, even when statements were not remembered. ► This truth effect occurs regardless of whether statements originated from a reliable or unreliable source. ► Familiarity creates an illusion of truth for information encountered earlier.
Continue reading “Reading is believing: The truth effect and source credibility”
