Why Do We Lie?
Hey smart people, Joe here.
So there's this famous experiment on lying.
A behavioral economist named Dan Ariely gave groups of people a set of math problems.
You're supposed to find the 2 numbers that add up to 10.
Pretty much everyone can solve these, if they're given enough time.
But in the experiment you're only given 5 minutes to do a whole bunch of ‘em.
And, you'd get a dollar for each one you got right.
When the 5 minutes are up, you'd stop and count how many questions you got correct.
Then put your paper in a shredder.
Tell the tester how many you got right, and collect your money.
Except the papers weren't really shredded.
So researchers could tell who lied.
Around 7 in 10 people cheat in this scenario.
On average people said they solved 6 problems, but they only actually solved 4.
What's interesting is people didn't lie as big as they could lie.
They made a calculated lie.
Big enough to get some extra moolah, but not big enough to raise suspicion, they thought.
These were normal people, just like you and me.
Just about everyone is willing to tell a little lie like this in return for a reward.
If you think we can separate people into those who lie and those who don't, or you think
that lying is abnormal and unacceptable, well that's incorrect.
Everyone lies
Like you're on the internet.
You know people lie all the time.
But take an honest look at yourself.
Have you lied today?
Ever say “I know, we should totally catch up!”
“Oh yeah, script's almost done, got like 2 more lines”
"Oh weird, must have gone to my spam folder" "I love flossing!
Every day!"
What's your dating profile say?
Drive a little faster than the speed limit?
Last time someone asked you how you're doing …did you tell them the whole truth?
"Oh great!"
And these are just little lies.
The world is full of larger lies, and more sinister liars.
Lies that can do real harm.
Most of us consider ourselves pretty good, generally truthful people.
So why do we do this?
I mean, if we're supposed to be the most intelligent species on Earth, the most socially
complex organism that we know of in the universe, why are we just incapable of telling the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Well, lucky for you, I have all the answers!
Ok, that's a lie.
But you're gonna learn a lot.
This is why we lie.
[MUSIC]
Lie, deception, cheat, falsehood, untruth, mislead, falsity, fiction, concoction, fib,
fabrication, hoax, forgery, exaggeration, malarkey, hogwash, baloney, misrepresentation,
fake.
[BLEEP]
So what is a lie?
Definitions are a good place to start.
It's “someone acting to create a false belief in their victim.”
Even if that victim is themselves.
Yeah, you can lie to yourself, and we all do.
Which is pretty wild… that means one part of our brain is actually keeping information
from another part of our brain on a regular basis… yikes.
There are a lot of different kinds of lies: We can say something that isn't true.
But we can also lie by avoiding the truth Or exaggerating the truth, the total other
direction Or even casting doubt on truth itself
Lies can be actions that we take Or actions that we don't take
These are all lies.
Everyone does this.
Everyone lies.
And it's not our fault.
At least, sort of.
If you've been watching this channel for a while, maybe you've heard this quote before:
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.
And that's absolutely true.
Everything that we are, everything that we do, we evolved to be this way.
And in general, traits—even psychological traits like lying—stick around for a reason.
And that's kind of a dark thought to consider: that lying is actually useful.
So useful that not only did nature keep it around, it made us really good at it.
So how often do people lie?
Studies on college students show they lie in a quarter of conversations with a best
friend; half the time with acquaintances; and almost 80% of chats with strangers.
Lied to romantic partners in a third of conversations.
They even lied to their moms in half their calls home.
Sorry mom.
Lying and deception is not limited to humans, of course.
Living things exchange all kinds of signals with each other.
Sounds, colors and patterns; movements and behaviors; chemicals and molecules.
And they can deceive with all of them.
Viruses are lying to your immune system—molecular deception.
Parasites that control the minds of their hosts so the parasites can survive and reproduce.
Flowers that look like female bees, to trick males into “pollinating” them.
Camouflage?
That's just lying with your body.
Or the beetle that covers itself in the chemical odor of a baby ant larvae, so the ants carry
it off to the nursery, where it eats their real babies, while the ants take care of the
murdering fake baby.
All lies!
These are just a handful.
Lying is everywhere in nature.
But no other animal is capable of such a broad range of lies and deceptions as we are.
Because we can verbalize… ”verbal lies”… whoa.
We can speak our deception.
The average human adult can speak something like 10,000 words, and many of us can speak
far more loquaciously.
That was kind of a humblebrag.
Which might be another form of lying!
These words can be combined in countless ways to exaggerate facts, omit them, or invent
new ones.
No one knows when our species first developed the capacity to lie, but scientists think
our lying skills exploded when we developed spoken language.
And thanks to language, unlike most other lying animals, we direct most of our lies
at our own species, at each other.
How do we rationalize this, how do we make excuses for all this lying?
Think about this for a second: What do we want out of the everyday interactions we have
with other people?
Maybe to just be pleasant, maybe we want our opinion heard, or to give some impression
of ourselves, or maybe we want to make others feel good, strengthen our friendships, influence
people, push them to do something we want them to do, increase our status and power
by wanting people to believe we have the answers to things…
Can we cut that last one?
We all have motivations like these.
And we can act on these motivations truthfully, or deceptively.
Most of the lies we tell are everyday white lies.
And these generally fall into 5 categories:
Lies about our feelings and opinions.
"I love that shirt!
It's your color."
Their plans or whereabouts; “I already donated at work.
A lot.
Our knowledge, achievements, or even our failings; “I'm a constitutional law expert on Twitter”
Explaining our actions or behaviors; "Sorry I am late, car trouble!
The rotator splint or something"
Or personal facts or possessions; "I don't have any change, I don't even like
money"
These aren't Earth-shattering things, but they are super common.
How do we rationalize lying about stuff like this, so frequently?
When people lie, they often justify it (consciously or unconsciously) by feeling that they are
protecting the target of the lie and also protecting themselves.
Thinking that both they and the target would feel worse if truth had been told rather than
lie.
In this way, lying is a form of prosocial behavior.
“Self-centered lies” are lies told to protect the liar psychologically—like saving
the liar from embarrassment, or disapproval, or conflict—or they're told for the liar's
personal gain.
"What kinda watch is that?"
"It's a Rolex.
You can't look at it"
“Other-oriented lies” are kinda the opposite.
They're also told for psychological protection, but to protect the target of the lie, not
the liar.
Trying to spare other people from embarrassment, disapproval, conflict, or from getting their
feelings hurt.
"Aww your baby is so cute!"
Maybe unsurprisingly, people are more likely tell self-serving lies than lies that serve
others.
And people are more likely to tell self-serving lies to strangers or acquaintances, and they
tell more protective “other-oriented” lies to close friends and family.
But from the liar's point of view, both of these are kind-hearted, altruistic actions.
Like, in your head, you're being nice by lying.
Most lying isn't to manipulate and exploit people.
No.
Most common lies are to boost self-esteem, or to protect people's feelings, or to get
people to like us more.
According to psychologists, being honest all the time isn't always the best idea for
strengthening social bonds.
Which is… a lot to unpack.
Bring that up in your next therapy session and let me know how it goes.
People do tell more serious lies, of course.
Lies that have the potential to seriously harm relationships, or that cover up fundamental
parts of their identity, or that put others in danger.
And whereas people are less likely to tell those small self-serving lies to people they
are closest to, they are more likely to tell large serious lies to people they are closest
to.
Which is messed up.
But that's because those little lies you'd tell to strangers or acquaintances to save
embarrassment or conflict, sharing those truths with people we're closest to actually strengthens
those relationships.
You might tell a casual work friend that you don't mind they they stole your best knock
knock joke, and then go tell your partner that actually you do care.
Who's there?
Hurt feelings.
And you and your partner strengthen your bond over that.
So psychologically, it's to our advantage not to lie about little stuff to people we
value.
BUT… because we value the people we're closest to, because those relationships mean
so much to us, it actually makes it more likely that we'll tell them riskier or more serious
lies, because there's a lot more to lose.
It's easy to think of lying as absolutely wrong and worth condemning when we view it
as a moral issue all on its own.
But it isn't an issue that exists all on its own.
Like, we care about honesty, but we also care about love, and happiness, and not doing things
that are painful or uncomfortable.
We have to weigh all of these goals at the same time, and complete honesty doesn't
always win over those other concerns.
Maybe acknowledging that we care about other people's feelings, or that we are loyal
to people who depend on us, or that people's intentions are sometimes more important than
their actual actions
"Aw that is a really great picture!
I'm gonna hang that up in my office, I totally know what it is"
I mean... maybe acknowledging those things can be the moral high ground sometimes?
It's great when love and honesty coincide, but they don't always, because relationships
are complicated!
And being constantly uncomfortable in that moment between the two sides, I think maybe
keeps us working hard to make our relationships better.
Besides these prosocial behaviors, there's another big way that people rationalize lying…
and they don't do any of this consciously by the way… they look for hints that lying
is socially acceptable in that moment.
Ok, so you remember that experiment with the math problems and the money.
They did it again.
Except this time someone stands up after like 30 seconds and loudly declares “I solved
all of them” . Obviously lying.
If you think that super-liar is not like you, if they look different, if they dress different,
they aren't in your “in group”?
It'll actually make you act more honest.
You don't want to be like them.
But if a person like you, for whatever reason or identifier, if a person in your “in group”
lies and gets away with it?
It increases the chance that you will lie too.
Because that person sends a signal: Lying is socially acceptable.
The key to making a lie work, even if you're lying to yourself—which, again, we do a
lot—is the person you're lying to can't spot the lie.
Luckily for liars (which all of us are), we are really bad at spotting lies.
Even professionals—interrogators, lawyers, Among Us Twitch streamers.
Lousy at lie-spotting.
And that's because we have a bias to believe that what other people tell us is generally
true.
Our default assumption is that we aren't being lied to.
Even though we obviously get lied to ALL the time!
Why do we err on the side of assuming something's true?
At this point it's useful to take a look at human history.
Like all the way back.
The human brain took the form it has today about 150,000 years ago or so.
We live a very different life than those ancestors, but we're using essentially the same hardware,
and most of the same software as stone age humans.
Human brains did not evolve to be the greatest tool in the universe for the pursuit of truth,
they only did what they had to do to survive.
And surviving a hundred thousand years ago involved very different choices.
Imagine you hear a predator sound in the grass.
Even if it's the wind 99 times out of 100, there's a big potential punishment for assuming
it's not a predator: You could die.
But there's a low punishment, and high reward! for assuming it is actually a predator.
You might be wrong, but you're alive because your default assumption was that what you
think you heard was true.
The humans who didn't assume that got eaten, and our stone age mind is the one that survived,
warts and all!
But we are carrying that stone age mind through a very different world today.
And some people aren't sure that old-school mind is cut out for the job.
I am probably not the only one wondering if lying is getting worse lately.
I mean, we're on the internet right now, remember?
Researchers did that math problem/money experiment one more time.
You do your math problems, timer goes off, shred your paper, report your answers.
Only this time, first you get tokens.
Then you take those tokens somewhere else over there to get actual money.
This bit of distance, separation between the actual lie and the person you are cheating
and getting the reward from, it made people cheat twice as much.
And this is kind of scary.
We're more distant from each other these days than ever before.
It's easier to lie when you don't have to do it to someone's face.
So is it just gonna get worse, until no one tells the truth, ever?
I actually don't think so, because luckily getting lied to really sucks!
Primate researcher Frans de Waal once trained monkeys so if they traded a token, they'd
get some cucumber.
But if one monkey witnessed another monkey getting a free cucumber, the first monkey
would throw food, and I dunno, probably throw poop too.
The monkey that got lied to refused to cooperate until fairness was restored.
So other animals agree, getting lied to or cheated sucks.
And this is probably why social animals have to keep lying and cheating kind of under control.
Because if you lie and deceive too often, or too obviously, the rest of your species
won't cooperate with you, and you have less chance of surviving and passing on your genes.
But even if nature keeps lying from totally taking over, it isn't going anywhere.
Seems pretty hopeless, eh?
I mean, I'm a scientist, I'm in the truth business, and I want my business to succeed!
Are we just doomed to lie, and be lied to?
Maybe not.
Scientists did that experiment one more time, with the math problems, timer, shredder, money…
but before they started, they made the test subjects just promise not to cheat.
And those people lied less.
Just by saying they weren't going to lie.
Because instead of letting your unconscious mind drive your behavior, and all the lying
and cheating that leads to, your conscious mind weighs in, and that's enough to get
you to lie less often.
Maybe that's all morals are.
Using our conscious mind, this amazingly powerful tool capable of imagining, capable of putting
us into the footsteps and minds of others and experiencing the world from their perspective,
using this tool to control our actions instead of that silent, unseen, unconscious controller,
the one that is willing to lie so much.
I kind of love that we can succeed in that, by doing that thing that only our species
can do: by telling ourselves a story: “I will strive for truth, and try to be honest
and maybe we can all lie less.”
I hope that's true, anyway.
Stay curious
