The truth about lying: Lying is in our DNA
Honesty may be the best policy, but lying makes us human.
Everyone tells lies. From the “On my way!” text to the “Of course you look good in that dress, honey,” lies are a natural part of daily life.
“Recently, I lied about where I was so my friends wouldn’t get sad that I couldn’t hang out with them,” said Amy Fullerton, a senior. “I do it to protect people.”
As Fullerton suggests, there are different types of lying. Lies can be generally categorized into four areas: lying to protect yourself, lying to promote yourself, lying to impact others, and pathological lying.
In a study headed by Timothy R. Levine, published in the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, teenagers aged 13-17 years old lied the most frequently, with 59 percent telling between one and five lies and 15 percent telling more than five lies over a 24-hour period.
“The frontal lobe is responsible for decision-making and judgment. If this is not fully developed, it could result in someone lying more,” Michelle McKee, a Carlmont psychology teacher, said. “In addition, Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning suggests that teenagers are in the conventional stage, which says that moral decisions are made based on approval. If teenagers are seeking approval from family and/or peers, they may lie to get it.”
The experiments that Dan Ariely, a professor at Duke University, has devoted his time to have made him one of the leading experts on the subject of lying. He is fascinated by not the ubiquity of lying, but instead why people don’t lie more.
In one experiment he conducted, Ariely rigged a vending machine to give back the money that customers put in to buy candy. A big sign even read, “If there’s something wrong with this machine, please call this number” — Ariely’s cell phone number. Nobody called, but nobody took more than four bags of candy.
“At one hand, we all want to look at ourselves in the mirror and feel good about ourselves, so we don't want to cheat. On the other hand, we can cheat a little bit, and still feel good about ourselves,” Ariely said in a Ted Talk. “There's a level of cheating we can't go over, but we can still benefit from cheating at a low degree, as long as it doesn't change our impressions about ourselves.”
According to Ariely, most humans place limits on how much they lie in order to internalize honesty as a societal value. However, to lie in the first place is embedded within our ancestral moral code.
Just like walking and talking, learning to lying is a part of developmental growth; Children start lying between ages two and four when they are testing their independence. As they age, they become more sophisticated liars.
In a study by Kang Lee, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, kids would peak under a cloth as they would have to guess the toy. The three- and four-year-olds blurted out the correct answer. At age seven or eight, kids try to deliver a reasoned guess or intentionally say a wrong answer. At five or six, kids typically are in-between.
“So she puts her hand underneath the cloth, closes her eyes, and says, ‘Ah, I know it’s Barney,’” Lee said, in reference to a six year old girl. “I ask, ‘Why?’ She says, ‘Because it feels purple.’”
Researchers speculate that humans started lying shortly after we started speaking somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago.
Being able to manipulate others without the need for physical force was likely an advantage in the battle for mates and resources, acting similar to the evolution of deceiptive abilities in the animal kingdom like camouflage.
“Lying is so easy compared to other ways of gaining power,” Sissela Bok, a Harvard University ethicist, said. “It’s much easier to lie in order to get somebody’s money or wealth than to hit them over the head or rob a bank.”
However, writing only emerged 5,000 years ago. This means humans were primed to lie without there being a record. Every word they said disappeared, no trace whatsoever.
With a developing technology sphere, however, there is an online print. Society has entered a period in the human evolution in which people have evolved to communicate in a way where their words disappear, but now, everything is recorded.
In a Ted Talk about the future of lying, Jeff Hancock said, “Not only are you leaving a record for yourself on your machine, but you're leaving a record for the person that you were lying to, and you're also leaving them around for me to analyze with some computer algorithms.”
Everyone tells lies. From the “On my way!” text to the “Of course you look good in that dress, honey,” lies are a natural part of daily life.
“Recently, I lied about where I was so my friends wouldn’t get sad that I couldn’t hang out with them,” said Amy Fullerton, a senior. “I do it to protect people.”
As Fullerton suggests, there are different types of lying. Lies can be generally categorized into four areas: lying to protect yourself, lying to promote yourself, lying to impact others, and pathological lying.
In a study headed by Timothy R. Levine, published in the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, teenagers aged 13-17 years old lied the most frequently, with 59 percent telling between one and five lies and 15 percent telling more than five lies over a 24-hour period.
“The frontal lobe is responsible for decision-making and judgment. If this is not fully developed, it could result in someone lying more,” Michelle McKee, a Carlmont psychology teacher, said. “In addition, Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning suggests that teenagers are in the conventional stage, which says that moral decisions are made based on approval. If teenagers are seeking approval from family and/or peers, they may lie to get it.”
The experiments that Dan Ariely, a professor at Duke University, has devoted his time to have made him one of the leading experts on the subject of lying. He is fascinated by not the ubiquity of lying, but instead why people don’t lie more.
In one experiment he conducted, Ariely rigged a vending machine to give back the money that customers put in to buy candy. A big sign even read, “If there’s something wrong with this machine, please call this number” — Ariely’s cell phone number. Nobody called, but nobody took more than four bags of candy.
“At one hand, we all want to look at ourselves in the mirror and feel good about ourselves, so we don't want to cheat. On the other hand, we can cheat a little bit, and still feel good about ourselves,” Ariely said in a Ted Talk. “There's a level of cheating we can't go over, but we can still benefit from cheating at a low degree, as long as it doesn't change our impressions about ourselves.”
According to Ariely, most humans place limits on how much they lie in order to internalize honesty as a societal value. However, to lie in the first place is embedded within our ancestral moral code.
Just like walking and talking, learning to lying is a part of developmental growth; Children start lying between ages two and four when they are testing their independence. As they age, they become more sophisticated liars.
In a study by Kang Lee, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, kids would peak under a cloth as they would have to guess the toy. The three- and four-year-olds blurted out the correct answer. At age seven or eight, kids try to deliver a reasoned guess or intentionally say a wrong answer. At five or six, kids typically are in-between.
“So she puts her hand underneath the cloth, closes her eyes, and says, ‘Ah, I know it’s Barney,’” Lee said, in reference to a six year old girl. “I ask, ‘Why?’ She says, ‘Because it feels purple.’”
Researchers speculate that humans started lying shortly after we started speaking somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago.
Being able to manipulate others without the need for physical force was likely an advantage in the battle for mates and resources, acting similar to the evolution of deceiptive abilities in the animal kingdom like camouflage.
“Lying is so easy compared to other ways of gaining power,” Sissela Bok, a Harvard University ethicist, said. “It’s much easier to lie in order to get somebody’s money or wealth than to hit them over the head or rob a bank.”
However, writing only emerged 5,000 years ago. This means humans were primed to lie without there being a record. Every word they said disappeared, no trace whatsoever.
With a developing technology sphere, however, there is an online print. Society has entered a period in the human evolution in which people have evolved to communicate in a way where their words disappear, but now, everything is recorded.
In a Ted Talk about the future of lying, Jeff Hancock said, “Not only are you leaving a record for yourself on your machine, but you're leaving a record for the person that you were lying to, and you're also leaving them around for me to analyze with some computer algorithms.”