Why Do Human Beings LIE

A man in San Francisco ran his car into a telegraph pole. When the police questioned him, his description of the event was as follows: “The pole was approaching my car, when I attempted to swerve out of the way and it struck me.” Was he lying, technically no, he was just placing the blame upon the telegraph pole. That’s just distorting the facts, real lying however, requires, a whole new level of dedication and cognitive thinking. From a scientific point of view, being a good liar is tremendously difficult. So why do humans do it? Let’s find out.

When children are younger they believe they are constantly being watched by their parents, who they see as authority figures. So for this reason, they’re considerably more inclined to always tell the truth. But as we get older we start experimenting with not always telling the truth, this usually happens around the age of 2 or 3. Studies show the average 4-year-old will tell a lie once every 2 hours, but by the time they reach 6-years-old, that increases to a lie every 90 minutes.

Lying is quite a difficult skill that we’re not born with, we have to learn it. The more we lie the better we get at it and the frequently we will lie in the future. The ability to lie isn’t easy, it’s something that few species can do effectively. Scientists have found evidence of lying elsewhere in the animal kingdom, for example. Koko, the Gorilla who is able to understand sign language once ripped a steel sink out the wall and when her handlers confronted her about it, she signed “the cat did it” and pointed at Koko’s pet kitten. Animals lie to each other in nature to secure an advantage over their peers, whether it’s food, territory or a potential mate. But no species is as proficient at lying as us humans. But our brains don’t find it an easy task to accomplish.

In order to lie our brain must hold two conflicting pieces of information at once, those are the truth and a lie. Our brain then has to suppress the true bit of information, and then tell the lie without displaying any symptoms that one is lying, which isn’t easy. Some people are much better at this than others. The best liars are “Pathological liars”. Pathological liars are so good at lying because, unlike the average person, they don’t feel a single bit of remorse for telling a lie or even worrying about the consequences. They accomplish this by convincing themselves that their lie is actually the truth. When a pathological liar tells a lie, they believe in their mind that what they’re saying is the whole truth and nothing but. Which makes them so utterly convincing.

At the other end of the spectrum of extreme liars are “Compulsive liars”. These are people who lie at the first given opportunity, even when there’s no obvious gain or reason for doing so. Compulsive liars are much worse at lying than pathological liars, even though they do it on a regular basis. This kind of behaviour often stems from childhood abuse, when they grew up in an environment where lying was necessary for emotional wellbeing.

But how did the act of lying originate? Well like most human behaviour lying is a product of evolution. Thousands of years ago the individual who could tell the best lies and most effectively manipulate their peers into doing their bidding, would often get the biggest rewards, such as, a bigger portion of the food from hunting trip, or their pick of the women. And over thousands of years, through a combination of practice and evolution, humans got much better at lying.

But even in todays age there are a lot of advantages to being able to tell a successful lie. For example, we often tell white lies to keep a relationship running smoothly or keep our superiors happy, for example, when your boss asks you if you did that all important spread sheet they asked for an hour ago, you could tell the truth and say no, but to avoid a good rollicking, you instead say yes, then do it as fast as you physically can. But scientists say these small white lies we tell every day often aren’t as successful as we may believe.

In actuality research shows that most people can tell when a person is lying 54% of the time. But then there’s the more serious lies, such as denying a crime that you know you committed, or telling your significant other there’s no one else when really there is. Whilst these may be morally wrong, they can often result in reward for the person telling the lie, so it’s easy to see why lying is often the first place that most people go to in a sticky situation to get themselves out of it. In short we lie because it can bring us many benefits and give us an advantage over our peers, often without consequence.

However most people are in denial over the amount they actually lie. Because of the inherently secretive nature of lying, when asked most people won’t admit to lying often, but studies show that the average adult actually lies ten or more times a week. But don’t fear, there are ways you can tell for certain whether someone is lying to you.

Our body emits certain signals and symptoms when we lie, which we can’t control. Even the best liar in the world can’t avoid these telling signs of a lie such as a change in breathing. When a person lies they start to breath heavier, their shoulders will rise and their voice gets shallow. Also a person will stand very still when they lie, almost appearing frozen in place, this is because the body is preparing for possible confrontation, if their lie doesn’t go quite as planned. People will also change their head position quickly when they lie, jerking it about unnaturally, this will happen right before the person is expected to respond to a question.

The liar will also provide way too much information, believing that if they talk a lot and be completely open with you, you’re more likely to believe their story. So if someone is going on and on about the same point, they’re probably lying. Liars will also touch or cover their mouth whilst talking, it’s a subconscious way of their body closing off their mouth because there is information that they don’t want to slip out. As well as their mouths, liars may also cover the most vulnerable parts of their bodies whilst lying, such as their throat, chest, head or abdomen.

We often associate liars with not being able to maintain eye contact, but research has shown it’s actually quite the opposite. Whilst telling a lie people will usually stare directly into your eyes without blinking much, this is a subconscious attempt by the brain at trying to intimidate and control the person you are lying to. Oh and in case you were wondering, lie detectors don’t really work, at least not the way people believe they do. The word lie detector is a misnomer, because they don’t actually detect lies, lie detectors detect increases in anxiety levels. And since some people are able to stay calm whilst lying, lie detectors don’t work on everyone, and are generally unreliable. This is mainly why they’re not used by the police to question criminals. Because well-seasoned criminals are particularly good at staying calm under pressure, rendering a lie detector completely inaccurate. Oh and truth serums don’t work either, that’s purely a fictional idea portrayed in books and films. But in real life there’s no known substance that can reliably make someone tell the truth.