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Subscribe to RSSYou can get better at lying with more practice, a recent study suggests.
Researchers found that with a little training, people can learn to tell a lie more automatically and efficiently. It gets easier for folks to repeat the lies and becomes harder for them to differentiate deception from telling the truth.
The idea that lying becomes easier with more practice comes on the heels of news from the sports world of two high-profile athletes publicly admitting their tall tales. It's something cyclist Lance Armstrong and Notre Dame football player Manti Te'o may have both discovered while repeating their own lies about not using performance enhancing drugs or the "death" of Te'o's fake online girlfriend even after learning he was the victim of a hoax.
In this small study, published in the journal Frontiers in Cognitive Science, scientists looked at whether lying can be trained to become more automatic and a less demanding task for the brain. The research involved 48 college students from China who were assigned to either an instruction group, a training group, or a control group.
After all groups completed a task for the first time, the instruction group was told to speed up their deceptive responses and make fewer errors during their second attempt. The training group was also told to speed up their deceptive responses and make fewer errors, but they also received more practice and were given more time to prepare their lies. The control group simply repeated the task for a second time.
Researchers noticed that the reaction time needed to tell lies was reduced in both the training and instruction groups. But the results also revealed that only the training group, who had the most practice telling lies, no longer took more time to be dishonest compared with telling the truth.
"We were surprised to find that lying is more malleable than previously thought," said study author Xiaoqing Hu, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
Simply asking the participants to speed up and make fewer errors when telling a lie enabled the participants to do so, he explained. "In other words, a strong motivation makes people a better liar."
Exactly how does lying become easier and more automatic with practice?
As Hu explained it, lying is usually accompanied by conflicting thoughts because people are mostly honest and genuine during social interactions.
But what he believed happened during his study is that as participants repeatedly practiced retrieving a dishonest response from their minds, the original conflicts and barriers to lying were reduced, and people became better at stretching the truth.
Previous research had claimed that lying is more cognitively demanding than being honest and lying cannot be made easier. The thinking was that constructing lies and keeping them straight in someone's head required more mental work, so people typically took a little longer to give false responses compared with giving honest answers, and they made more mistakes when fibbing.
Yet Hu's study results indicate that this may not necessarily be the case. He said that lying can be more multifaceted, and repeating a lie makes it more fluent or easier.
"People can also become good at deceiving themselves, which is similar to a repeated lie," Hu pointed out.
Although Hu admits he did not follow the Armstrong or Te'o news closely, his research findings seem to suggest that once you repeat lies often enough -- and especially when you have a good reason to do so, such as to maintain a positive self-image or to avoid punishment -- you may no longer feel that you are lying.
"Once people feel their lying is justified, they may no longer experience the moral or mental conflict," Hu said.
Related:
Could you go 10 weeks without lying?
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Ask our government.
Or any politician.
You got that right
They practice day and night. I bet they can't even tell the truth anymore even if they wanted to.
Or perhaps the POTUS?
Or ask Lying Ryan, who ran a marathon race under 2 hours.
Tea sucks,
Watch who you call a liar, because you are one.
Ryan made a mistake, and claimed a sub 3, not sub 2. He corrected himself over a race he had run more than 20 years previously. The world record is 2+.
It probably does affect politicians more than most other professions with sales being a close second.
Giving several stump speeches a day written by the campaign team over a several month campaign season has to be tough on separating personal versus party policy, message, image, etc...
The Republican Party has been using this training course for decades..... Romney was not one of their better students but Paul Ryan got straight A's.
The structural template for today's Republican Party, revealed.
Making Mexico pay for any and all damages and or expenses incurred by the United States or
any of its institutions or citizens by Mexican national who entered the United States illegally or
remained in the United States after their visas expired or
caused a person, such as a child to be in the United States unlawfully, or
gave birth to a child while inside the United Stated in order to defraud, or
encouraged a person to enter the United States unlawfully, or
used a non-profit organization, charity, or religion, to aid and/or abet a person who is in the United States unlawfully.
Any such expenses would be more than offeset by the saving enjoyed by many (no dobt including you). For example, your house costs less, much of your food is less expensive - whether you buy it at the grocery store or dine out; services, such as painting and landscaping are also more affordable, thanks to those people you despise.
Agreed. Ask any Republican or preacher.
Who paid for this study - don't lie now! Could have used the GOP for their case study.
Yes, just look at Obama!
The Empty Suit has perfected this......"But at this point what difference does it make?"
That's funny. Reference Romney and then use a Hillary quote.
Cops are allowed to lie all the time and they are VERY VERY good at it
My Ex girlfriend the biggest liar i have ever met, no the biggest pathological liar in the world, she also comes from a very family orient family..hehe..
I'm the world's best liar. I lie at least 45 times a day. More than twice as many times as anyone else.
I have a theory. A person who lies NEVER lies only once.
A judge will instruct a jury that if a person is proven to have lied under oath, then they can disregard the entire testimony.
"Just remember. It's not a lie ... if you believe it.” - George Costanza
It took "experts" to figure this out? Some folks are born liars, others practice.
There is too much grant money out there. They could also know through such studies that if you practice truthfullness it gets easier to be honest too ! Last year an article announced a perfessor got a grant to study why dogs bark. I like science generally. But common sense disguised as science in order to bilk grant money from a gubmint up to is a$$ in money trouble is bogus - or maybe I could get a grant to study that !
I lie all the time. Everything I say is a lie.
Except now.
Lies!... no wait... head explodes... i hope you are happy now.
Honey, do still love me after all these years? OF COURSE! Honey, isnt that discusting all these older men running around with these young girls on their arm? IT OUTRAGOUS I SAY. Honey , if you could do it all over again would you still marry me............YES!
i ask my boyfriend to lie to me several times a week and i wouldn't hold it against him lol lies about how beautiful i am are what's keeping the fire burning!
and it took a study to find this out ??,, I'd rather fall into the grand canyon than the money pit that pays for this kind of @!$%#,,,,
Are you reading this Mr. President? Just keep practicing.
Yes, just like his predecessor, Bush Jr and Cheney, and Rumsfeld, and Rove, and Libby AND ROMNEY. Republicraps have a designated PR company that write their lies up in small easily spread "packets" of "information" given to Faux News first to spread over the airwaves, then the "politician of the day" runs with it on the 6 o'clock "news". These lier's cannot remember what their real name is from all the lies they tell. It is no wonder people believe "some black president" will actually physically come to their house and take their guns from them. That is how ignorant some in our society are. I am waiting for Obama to come for my guns, I am going to make him some cow patty mushroom jello and some Mary Jane brownies while we sit down and discuss how tired he is from visiting so many idiot red neck ignorant gun worshipers and taking their guns. He will just tell me he hasn't the time for all that bull pucky, he is trying to run this country. Bush Jr spent 977 days on vacation, 32% of his presidency WAS SPENT ON VACATION! How many vacation days did YOU get in 8 years? Now we know some lie better than others, BUT SOME OF US KNOW WHEN A LIE IS A LIE, REPUBLICRAP FOLLOWERS DO NOT KNOW THIS ART, they should learn, FAST
There's always one of you libtards here ready to bring up Bush and Fox News. Bush was probably the most honest president we've had in modern times, and Fox is definitely more honest than lib-central here, or any of the other lib-media "news" sites. Keep up the lies, though, someday you'll get better at it. Stoopid libtard sheep.
Chew on these catlover:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/john-farrell/2010/12/22/university-study-fox-viewers-more-misinformed
http://mediamatters.org/video/2012/11/25/jane-hall-on-reliable-sources-fox-news-viewers/191505
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/the-most-biased-name-in-news/
Hey catlover589 you forgot to add the /s/ sarcasm tag. I know you forgot it because I really don't believe anyone is that
ignorantgullible.Boy everybody's got that right. Lawyers and politicians (mostly interchangeable) are masters of deception.
I worked in high end computers for 35 years and the very first thing I was taught when dealing with customers was to lie with authority.
Yeah this works for Wall Street and why they have all the money. On the Consumer side we have this documented study that the fear of math makes people feel physical pain and obviously they don't feel this up there. Time to tune in to a little math ...only thing we can fight back with.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2012/10/algo-duping-plos-one-journal.html
Remember to teach your children how to lie at the earliest age possible so they are "naturals" at it by the time they get into school.
Cry about lying politicians yet you all keep voting them in every year....Doh!
(keep playing the game and the game will continue)
The problem with lies, no matter how convincingly delivered, is that you create a paradox that cannot be resolved. My ex-wife is a chronic, habitual liar, but I found it easy to catch her by using simple logic. In thime, the truth always comes out. Sometimes you have to wait awhile. Just ask Lance Armstrong.
Lance was calculating his losses versus his potential earnings if he can get it turned around. He may be somewhat of an idiot with a big ego, but I think in the end - its just a game being played.
don't forget this, the more gullible your audience, the easier it seems to lie as well.
I'm sorry to say that almost everything in this culture is based on us lying to each other. It starts when we are young and we are then trained by television ads and finally by political "heros" that we adopt.
Telling the truth is left up to 4-6 year olds. After that, most americans are pros .... Most american news are a joke in the world since everything is dumbed down and eventually described as a lie.
We went to war in Iraq to save those people .... saudi arabia is our friend ..... enghazi wasn't a premeditated attack that we missed ...... israel really wants peace ........ the check is in the mail and most of you guys know the last one
They must have studied King Hussein and his minions. I could have told them the same thing for half the money they spent on this study.
And if you'd really listened to Palyin', Robme, Lyin' Ryan, Dumbya, and Faux... ya could'a done it for FREE!
Tell a lie often enough... I'm reminded of the debate when Romney used information he got from Fox News. HaHaHaHaHaHa
I'm going to borrow this quote somebody used above "Just remember. It's not a lie ... if you believe it.” - George Costanza This is how people beat lie detectors. Convince yourself that you're (in some way) answering truthfully and it registers as truth. The article suggests that it becomes easier with practice. My question is does it become more convincing with practice?
Everybody lies-Gregory House
And he said so twice on every episode. Trust me. You don't even have to check.
How long did this study take? Did this study take the same amount of time it took most Americans to see the lies Willard Romney told? Did someone get a government grant to do this study? If so it's not what I want my money spent on. Why where Chinese students used in the study, don't they know how to lie as good as American's? Another thing, why are we talking about people and lies now? We've just been through 4 years of nothing but lies.
The very reason I didn't vote for Obama both times, EVERYTHING that comes out of his mouth is a lie. He never told the truth during his first campaign, nor anytime since. Now we all know that politicians lie, but as an older person, I've never seen one who seems so comfortable with it as Obama.
The real sad thing are all of his minions that have bought into the lies, and then defend them! They don't want to be bothered with the facts, they just love their idol (Obama) to say anything and they'll believe it. We have become a society where lying is acceptable and tolerated because the ends justifies the means. Absolutely sickening.
The article was about lying but folks really like politics. One thing about the internet. There is a lot of truth spewn. In the real world, folks lie as much as possible.