In a perfect world, you’d be able to believe everyone. But it’s not a perfect world, so you need some help. Professionals in certain fields, such as law enforcement, become trained in spotting liars, but every other person who deal with people in a social context needs to be kept abreast of lie detection to. Although this article is not about lie detection, knowing how the brain is involved in lying process will make you detect inconsistencies in people’s utterances and even yours too (Whitbourne, 2014). According to Rick Thomas (2018), “the difference between truth-telling and lying is easy to discern. If the sky is blue, you say the sky is blue. Only a fool would try to convince you that the sky is brown, pink, or made of sorbet.” So, lying is an intentional deviation from the truth. Most times, it isn’t as obvious as the one quoted above but whether subtle or pronounced, lying is socially bad.
Herbert (2011) in his article on “The Burden of Lying” notes that lying is more demanding that telling the truth. Imagine for a few minutes that you’re guilty of a murder, and a detective is cross-examining you. To start, you need to invent a story, and you also have to monitor that tale constantly, so it is plausible and consistent with the known facts. That task takes a lot of mental effort that innocent truth tellers do not have to spend. You also need to actively remember the details of the story you’ve fabricated so that you don’t contradict yourself at any point. Remembering a fiction is much more demanding than remembering something that actually occurred. Because you’re worried about your credibility, you’re most likely trying to control your demeanor, and “looking honest” also saps mental energy. And you’re not just monitoring yourself; you’re also scanning the detective’s face for signs that he might be seeing through your lie. That’s not all. Like an actor, you have the mental demands of staying in character. And finally, you have to suppress the truth so that you don’t let some damning fact slip out—another drain on your mind’s limited supply of fuel. In short, the truth is automatic and effortless, and lying is the opposite of that. It is intentional, deliberate and exhausting (Herbert, 2011). From the foregoing and relying on the picture painted above, it is logical to conclude that lying is mentally demanding. Any conscious activity, like lying, involves the active participation of the brain and the person involved in the falsehood.
Law enforcement officers and anyone that cares for the truth can always exploit the differing mental experiences of liars and truth tellers.
One intriguing strategy is to demand that suspects tell their stories in reverse. Narrating backward increases cognitive load because it runs counter to the natural forward sequencing of events. Because liars already have depleted cognitive resources, they should find this unfamiliar mental exercise more taxing than truth tellers do—which should increase the likelihood that they will somehow betray themselves. And in fact, that is just what happens in the lab: Vrij ran an experiment in which half the liars and truth tellers were instructed to recall their stories in reverse order. When observers later looked at videotapes of the complete interviews, they correctly spotted only 42 percent of the lies people told when recounting their stories without fabrication—below average, which means they were hard to spot—but a remarkable 60 percent when the liars were compromised by the reverse storytelling (Herbert, 2011).
Another tactic for increasing liars’ cognitive burden is to insist that suspects maintain eye contact with their questioner. When people have to concentrate on telling their story accurately—which liars must, more than truth tellers—they typically look away to some motionless point, rather than directly at the conversation partner. Keeping eye contact is distracting, and it makes narration more difficult. Vrij also tested this strategy in the lab, and again observers spotted lies more easily when the liars were required to look the interrogator in the eye (Herbert, 2011). The fact is that liars will either totally avoid eye contact or overly maintain eye contact instead of doing it naturally.
Borreli (2016) states that lying affects the human brain in a way that it desensitizes the amygdala to dishonesty which increases the chances of being a pathological liar. That is, once you start lying, you open up the tap of your cognitive ability to tell bigger lies. Borreli puts it thus: “Although some fibs are smaller than others, constantly lying can take a toll on our brain health, and even make us more susceptible to pathological lying.” When we lie for personal gain, our amygdala produces a negative feeling that limits the extent to which we are prepared to lie. However, as we continue to lie, this response fades, which may lead to a “slippery slope” where small acts of dishonesty can evolve into more significant lies. In other words, lies breed lies as the brain gets desensitized to dishonesty (Borreli, 2016). Amygdala is the part of the brain that controls emotion. Consistent lying deactivates that portion of the brain and that is why people don’t feel guilty again after lying because they have become used to it. Their conscience has been consciously suppressed and this makes lying looks very normal to them.
Sharot and her team conducted a research to affirm the above postulation. The team recruited participants and paired them to work with another person they didn’t know. The participants were put into a brain-imaging scanner where they were shown images of a glass jar with pennies and asked to tell their partners — who had a blurry image, and were helping the researchers — about the amount of money in the jar. At the end, both participants would get paid, but sometime the participants would get more money if they lied. For example, they could lie to help themselves, help their partners, help both etc.
The brain scans would help researchers see which brain regions used more oxygen — an indicator of brain activity. A following pattern emerged: as the participants continued to lie, the amygdala reacted less. The participants became more dishonest more quickly when it would benefit just them and not their partner. The participants kept lying to help themselves even if lying didn’t lead to more money every single time. This suggests people kept lying not because it seemed sensible, but because they’ve become desensitized to it (Borreli, 2016).
References
Borreli, L (2016). How Lying Affects the Human Brain: Telling Lies Desensitizes Amygdala to Dishonesty; Increases Chances of Being a Pathological Liar. Retrieved from https://www.medicaldaily.com/how-lying-affects-human-brain-telling-lies-desensitizes-amygdala-dishonesty-402310
Herbert, W (2011). The Burden of Lying. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-burden-of-lying/
Thomas, R (2018). Why it is Easier to Lie than to Tell the Truth. Retrieved from https://rickthomas.net/why-it-is-easier-to-lie-than-to-tell-the-truth/
Images are from: https://www.freepik.com/, https://www.pexels.com/ (C) 2022, Alan Elangovan, All Copy Rights Reserved.