What do fake news, Santa Claus, and WhatsApp-forwarded COVID-19 home remedies have in common? They all showcase the pervasiveness of lying in human society and human history. Although lies have become a common aspect of everyday communication, lying holds a negative connotation and is thought to be harmful to individuals, relationships, and society at large. Economists call lying irrational; neuroscientists say lying is more taxing than telling the truth, as it requires the use of many higher-order cognitive processes (inhibition, working memory, and other executive functions); and our day-to-day communication is filled with metaphors and sayings with negative connotations such as ‘trapped in a lie’ or ‘liar-liar pants on fire.’ This indicates that there is a clear discrepancy between thoughts and behavior when it comes to lying behavior, which needs to be explored further.
Although we are socialized from a young age to believe that honesty is the best policy, in reality, society often encourages and rewards deception. In fact, there is no society without lies. The key to this discrepancy is that all lies are not equal.
A study by DePaulo et al. back in 1996, found that in the course of normal daily activity, people lie in about 25% of their interactions with others. The difference in lying behavior exists in type, severity, frequency, and reason or motivation behind the lie. Mares and Turvey (2018) explain that lies manifest in one of four ways: complete deception, half-truths, exaggerations, and pertinent omissions (i.e., white lies), in order of decreasing severity. The reasons behind telling lies are quite simply, either that the person believes there is more to gain by telling a lie than from telling the truth, or that the person is unable to discern what the truth is, either temporarily or due to a mental condition.
Once a person decides to tell a lie, that lie can fall into two categories: antisocial lies, which are selfish by nature, or prosocial lies, which are constructed to benefit others. It is important to note that the line between the two is fine and quite intuitive and subjective. For example, Donald Trump can be thought of as an antisocial liar, whereas telling children about Santa Claus is a comparatively prosocial lie. Researchers from Finland simulated the effects of lying in a virtual human environment. When the population of 200 virtual individuals with differing levels of trust interacted, their trust rose or decreased depending on the interaction. The researchers included prosocial and antisocial liars into the population and found that antisocial liars fragmented the population and led to the isolation of people, whereas prosocial liars increased trust and created a unified and cohesive network of people.
The year 2020 has been tumultuous, to say the least, and has seen a clear increase in lying behavior. There are many possible reasons for this. First, this year has been clouded by COVID-19, which could have directly led to increased lying behavior. A study published in August 2020 revealed that a significant number of participants are dishonest about COVID-19 symptoms and precautionary measures. The pandemic could also have indirectly increased lying behavior by drastically changing ways of living. For example, many people have been forced to communicate via video calls and other virtual modes of communication and research has found that the medium of communication heavily impacts lying behavior, with face-to-face communication being a deterrent because of the anonymity being behind a screen provides. Hence, it would make sense that lying behavior has increased as face-to-face interaction has decreased. The pandemic has also indirectly brought with it increased social media access and use. Pair this with a year of extremely polarised politics and a pandemic, which means fake news is rampant.
If one word can be attributed to 2020, it would be uncertainty. When everything is chaotic and confusing, it is natural to search for some semblance of control or power. People begin to feel like they deserve to be free to do whatever they want and almost give themselves the license to lie. Lying is based on a risk-reward calculation and such behavior is seen as an innocuous way to attain power, compared to doing something harmful, according to a National Geographic article.
There has been so much talk about the negative influence of dishonesty this year, that a 2020 study found that there is significant evidence that people even lie to appear more honest! For example, when one gets a perfect score on a difficult test that most people perform poorly on, a significant number of people would deflate their score to make it more believable when telling other people. The researchers concluded by saying, "while our findings may seem ironic or counterintuitive, I think most people will recognize a time in their lives when they were motivated to tell a lie to appear honest."
It has been a roller coaster of a year. Give yourself the license to lie, as long as your motivation is prosocial in nature. Tell your child about Santa Claus, tell your coworker they gave a great presentation during your next zoom meeting, and tell yourself that you are doing great and that this year will come to an end. Which of these three things is a lie and which is the truth? Let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter as long as we are all working together and supporting each other to get through the year!
Riya Sirdeshmukh
