How to Tell When Someone Is Lying

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Guess what, Mango?

What's that will?

So I came across this study, and you know I love a good study, Mango, But this was from researchers at the University of Wisconsin Lacrosse, and you know I love University of Wisconsin Lacrosse. And this is a pretty weird one. So here's what they did. They asked six hundred and thirty two people to document every single lie they told over the course of three months.

That is incredible.

So what they find out, well, among other things, they discovered that the number one reason people lied was to avoid others. Oh, I mean that kind of makes sense to me, Yeah, it does. And the second most common reason people lied was for jokes or pranks, which also makes.

Sense, like the time you told me the CEO of Vegemite was a huge fan of the show and wanted to send us a lifetime supply of vegemite.

That is, that's a good example of a lie, yep.

But from what you're describing, these are fairly like harmless lies, right, So is a lesson that lying isn't necessarily so bad.

I do like that that's your conclusion. I mean, the lesson isn't quite that simple. Like, It's a highly complex form of social interaction that can serve many different purposes, and so lies can range from lighthearted and funny to of course malicious to downright dangerous, depending on the intention behind them and the cultural context too. So people have been trying to understand lying for thousands of years, and it definitely merits more research or at least a podcast episode, I'd say.

So, will I do have something to confess?

Okay, I'm nervous.

I read that University of Wisconsin the study last week, and I just pretended I didn't know about it, so this show would sound better.

Oh man, well, you know what I actually was lying too, because I knew that you had read the University of Wisconsin study and I pretended that I didn't. So it's just like this to an interesting start. But actually it's the perfect way to kick off an episode about lying. There is a whole lot to talk about, and I guarantee from this point forward we will be one hundred percent truthful.

So let's dive in.

Hey there, podcast listeners, welcome to part time genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always, I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh hot ticketter and over there in the booth waving a red hot poker, that's our pal and producer Dylan fig and he's actually waving it pretty aggressively. I'm not really sure what he's doing, but it looks a little bit dangerous. If I'm being honest, I.

Am glad that he's wearing oven mits at least, But believe it or not, I think I know what he's trying to demonstrate it. So, okay. Back in the Middle eight lying was considered a terrible sin, and people, specifically Christian people, believe that the only way to know if someone was lying was by testing them with a trial by ordeal. So, in other words, the accused was put through a physical challenge, and, according to the logic at the time, if they were honest, God would prevent them

Yikes. All right, well, thank you Dylan for that terrifying visual. It is not common that we see Dylan looking terrifying as one of the nicest humans on the planet. But good job there, Dylan. All right, So Mengo, it sounds like people took lying very seriously back then.

They definitely did so. Other trials by ordeal included walking over burning coals and being forced to swallow poison. And if you're thinking, wow, that seems kind of extreme, this actually all traces back to Saint Augustine. He wrote a famous treatise on lying called Online and Augustine argued that lying is like a disease. It supposedly like destroys your

What a weird way to like test if somebody's lying.

Yeah, these early lie detectors were very, very ineffective, but I guess it shows that concern about lying is practically universal. Wait, so can I tell you how excited I am to have Nord VPN sponsoring our little show part time genius. You know when I get excited, I make lists, and I'm going to tell you why NORD is so great in listical form. First off, VPNs make the Internet a safer,

It kind of feels like they would not be very good mercenaries if they're doing all that stuff.

I know. But this gets to something really interesting, which is that throughout history people have believed that observing someone's nonverbal behaviors, like their cues of things like fidgeting or rubbing their nose, that's an easy way to tell if they're lying. So you don't really need the hot pokers or the vials of poison, I guess.

And that's basically the idea behind lie detectors looking for those sorts of clues.

Right, yeah, So modern light detectors or polygraphs were invented in the early nineteen hundreds, but some of the technology they use was developed in the eighteen hundreds, and all they really do is measure changes in certain vital signs, including things like blood pressure, breathing, perspiration. And although they're still used by law enforcement and government agencies, they're widely

Well you think about it, like the fear of being arrested, or stressed from being interrogated.

Right. In fact, the ACLU has opposed the use of polygraph machines for decades, saying they don't work and they're a violation of people's privacy rights. And remember, the machine itself doesn't offer any conclusions. It just kind of records this data for people. But this is the part I didn't realize. It's that a human polygraph examiner actually has to interpret that data to decide what it means, Like is that a normal spike in sweating because the room

Mean, like crazy bias. It does feel like it's just so weird that in the twenty first century we're still using what seems like the same light detection concepts ancient people, that we just exchanged the dry rice for some sort of fancy machine. I guess, yeah, pretty much. All right, Well, you know, regardless of what goes on physically, telling a lot does require a whole bunch of complicated brain activity. Like first you have to come up with the lie

That is so funny, like it feels like lying comes so naturally at this point and you need to write, but like it sounds exhausting when you put it that way. So does this mean like there's a specific area of the brain that controls our ability to lie?

You know, Actually it's the opposite of this, because there's this heavy cognitive load. Lying involves multiple areas of the brain really working together. So these are areas responsible for critical stuff like self awareness and social cognition. And one thing that really fast sates me is the fact that lyne can actually change our memories. That's because memories aren't set in stone, and so the way we remember something can be distorted over time, and if a lie is

It also explains a lot about history and also like collective memories.

Right, it really does.

Yeah.

I mean you might be wondering how and when do we develop the ability to lie? And it turns out there's a whole body of research about little kids and lying, and we're going to chat more about all of that right after a quick break.

Okay, Well, so I know you've done a ton of research about kids' brains and how they developed the ability to lie. But first I have to ask, like, did you tell lies when you were a kid or you know, can you remember what your kids first lies were? You know?

I I know that I did. I don't remember a whole lot of things specifically, but I remember that my lies that I would tell were usually just like ridiculous stories like coming in from playing outside or something and then just making up some absurd story that probably deep down I felt like my parents knew that I was lying, but I'd still go for it anyway. But how about you?

Uh? Yeah, I remember like being four and telling my mom that I went to see Superman at the movie theater and like pretending to fly around like it, but I'd actually seen Return of the Jedi, And when she found out, she was upset not be excited. See Superman just because she thought this like innocent kid could never lie to her, you know.

Ah, yeah, that's a heartbreaking moment for mom.

Ruby actually had an amazing first lie that I remember. Like Ruby was also about four at this time, and Henriett had a birthday party at his school and so Ruby was like, oh, yeah, we had hake at my school too. I was like, oh, was there a birthday party? And we was like no, no, no birthday party. And I said, oh yeah, then then why was that cake? And we was like, uh the classroom anniversary. It was like a classroom niverse and like can I can I

Like the text.

And so I said, you know, oh so, uh so did you sing the traditional classroom anniversary song? And we was like yeah, and I said, oh would you sing it? And Ruby, without like skipping a be goes, it's a classroom manniversary. It's a classroom manniversary. We do it in the big building.

Oh yeah, I heard that one. That's that is a classic. That's pretty amazing. Ruby.

So anyway, I think it's time to get to the science. So let's let's get to it.

I don't know, I feel like it's time for more songs, so let's do more of that, all right. Well, the general consensus is that kids start lying when they're about two or three years old, and usually they do it when they've done something that they know they shouldn't do, but you know, their brains aren't sophisticated enough to take that extra step of thinking, like will the person I'm

So at what age does this start to change?

Usually around four they start to take the listener's perspective into account, and there's something psychologists called the theory of mind, which is the ability to reason about other people's mental states and then act accordingly. So the kid realizes that you can see the paint and you'll be wondering how that paint got there, and so they might say something like, you know, my brother did it, which is a nice try, of course, but maybe the brothers been upstairs all day.

So they're close to getting this lie right, but there's still some holes in the story.

Yeah, usually there are. It actually just is this side note reminds me of our good friend Adam that talked about a high school experience when he was sitting next to a girl that he had a crush on and he sneezed into his hands. She looks over at him. He clearly has snot all in his hands, and he just looks at her and he says, it wasn't me.

Do you remember this story, Yes, it's pretty great.

I just thought that was such a great response. Anyway, So things really start to change around seven or eight, and that's when they can account for a wider range of facts and contexts like in the lie. So maybe they say, you know, my brother did it, and you say, but he's in his room, And then a slightly older kid has the capacity to react with something like he came down for a snack and he was playing with the paint, but then he went back upstairs, you know, just taking it to another level.

Really, it is wild to think of little kids like almost like new versions of AI, Like they just keep getting told better at lying.

Yeah, yeah, it's a good way to think about it like that. That training over time, and it's even more whild to realize that this is something parents have known about for a long time. Actually, Charles Darwin wrote about toddler liars after doing some observational research to his own kids. This was, of course, back in the eighteen forties. So what happened is one day he caught his two and a half year old son coming out of the dining room with something very obviously wrapped up in a pinafore.

Pickle, the old pickle and a pinafore.

Bit yeah, you know, the whole bit there. But the point is there's ample evidence that very young children have the executive functions needed for lying. More complicated skills like memory and inhibition control. They develop a little bit later, and that makes their lies more elaborate and believable. And what researchers have found is that kids with strong cognitive abilities actually make better liars. So in a weird way, lying as a sign of reaching important developmental milestones.

I like the idea of grade school is giving out stickers for lying. You know, so the only thing cuter than a toddler telling whoppers is an animal who's trying to trick you.

So were you suggesting that animals also lie?

It kind of depends on what you mean by lie. So usually when we say someone is lying, we mean they're knowingly making a false statement with the intent to deceive. Right, So, animals can't talk, obviously, so they don't make statements the way we do. But if you expand this definition to include behaviors, then you know animals do engage in deceptive behavior all the time. So if you think about possums

Wow. I mean that definitely sounds like the bird equivalent of making a fault statement with the intent to deceive, don't you think?

Yeah? So Weirdly, it's the last part that people actually disagree about whether or not there's intent. So clearly, the drongo knows that if it makes the alarm call, the mere cat will run, and the possum knows that if it lies really still, its predator may walk away. But some scientists actually call this functional deception, not intentional deception, and they argue that the intent depends on something you

So I guess, in other words, the drongo isn't thinking if I yell, the dumb meer cat will believe there's an eagle. It just thinks when I yell, the mere cat runs.

Yeah, pretty much. But there have been some stuff that suggest animals, particularly great apes, may have a theory of mind, and in one experiment, researchers gave an ape eye trackers so they could tell where it was looking. And then, and I swear I'm not making this up, an assistant in an ape costume ran into the cage area puts an object under one of the two boxes on the floor. A researcher pretends to watch this happen and then leaves

Oh man, I've got to see this. It's such a fascinating idea. And I also love the idea that like a guy with several PhDs having to run around and then a costume pretending to be an ape. So this is definitely something I'm going to watch all right, So to switch gears here, Mango, I want to tell you about lying and culture clashes. So you mentioned earlier that lying means knowingly making a false statement with the intention

You know, this is a great quote by Montaigne that Mary actually pointed me too, and it goes, quote the reverse of truth has one hundred thousand forms, And it sounds like that, right, Like there's so many ways lie in just like one way to simply tell the truth. But can you give me some examples of what you're thinking about here?

Yeah, for sure. But by the way, Mary, great quo. That's pretty awesome. All right. So, according to research, highly individualistic cultures like the United States, they see lies very differently than more collective as cultures like many in Asia. So, for example, an American business manager might consider it dishonest to withhold negative feedback from an employee, even if it's harsh.

Yeah, and I guess in both scenarios, people are they're trying to do the right thing, and there's no right, there's no actually intent to deceive.

There No, that's exactly right. I mean this extends to speech patterns too, So most Native English speakers in the United States consider clear direct language to be a sign of honesty, and we're a little more suspicious of verbal meandering or someone using a lot of euphemisms. But that's just how some cultures communicate. Meanwhile, they might interpret our bluntness as bad manners. And you know, of course, then

Yeah, well this is a podcast, so so you all can't see my eyes, but I'm going to use the straightforward American approach to honest communication. Right now, it is time for an ad break so we can make money and keep the show going. That's how honest I'm being. But we'll be back soon.

Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're learning the truth about lies. All right, so, Mango, what have you got for us next?

So far, we've mostly been talking about lies at a personal level, but lying isn't just about how we relate to one another. It can also have legal consequences, including what we call fraud. So under US law, fraud can be a civil or a criminal matter, depending on the situation, and in civil cases is defined as a misrepresentation of fact, either intentional or negligent, and that causes injury or harm

That is wild, all right. So when you say technology is driving all this, what exactly mean by that?

So some of it's the obvious stuff, like we do our banking online, we give out our email addresses, like candy. We share personal information on social media and a lot of us aren't great about checking privacy settings or changing our passwords, so fraudsters have plenty of material to work with, and they also have more points of entry to our lives and our finance is now, but the World Economic Forum reports that the biggest problem right now is generative AI.

So, I mean, this is obviously just terrifying, and I'm wondering, though, before I throw my phone out the window, is there anything I can do about this?

So, from a tech standpoint, there's been a lot of interest in digital identity wallets like that would combine biometrics, ID documents, personal information to create a secure log in that you can use multiple places. Proponents say it's like being asked to show your physical driver's license, so much safer than easily hacked password. But civil liberties groups the one that this could mean sacrificing privacy.

I thought you were just going to say something like change your passwords. I was kind of hoping that was where you were going with it.

I mean, you could do that too, You should do that, actually, But the FBI has another tip that is so low tech, it's kind of brilliant, and it's just create a secret passphrase with your family and close friends. So if you ever get a call that sounds like me asking you to wire ten thousand dollars, you can ask for the phrase to confirm it's me.

Woh, okay, that's a good idea, all right. With all of this raises another question, and that's what makes someone lie or commit fraud, Like, we all know it's wrong, so why does it keep happening? So Dan Arielli is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke, and he's done a lot of research about this kind of thing. So he pointed out that our entire legal system operates on the theory of cost benefit analysis, Like if you

That's clever. So what happened when people use the machine.

Well, they'd put their money in and the machine would dispense multiple snacks and return all of their cash, and not a single person called to report the malfunction, although Arielli noted that nobody took more than four bags of

I mean, that's pretty fascinating. Although obviously there's a big difference between taking candy and committing identity theft.

Yeah, of course, but understanding the ways criminals make sense of what they're doing could help stop fraud before it even starts. So, for example, a Reli found that people would behave more honestly if they spend time reflecting on their personal morals or their ethics. So he tested this by asking one group of people to list ten books they read in high school and another group to recall

That is incredible. So well, we're almost at the end of the episode, tell me the truth. Did you prepare anything for the fact? Off?

I sure did, Mango, Let's get to it.

If there's one man whose name has become synonymous with dishonesty, it is Charles Ponzi, and we've all heard his name, but I thought we'd get into these stories. So Ponzi was born in northern Italy in eighteen eighty two, and apparently his family had at one time been pretty well off, but by the time he came along, they had lost their fortune. He tried going to university in Rome, but dropped out and decided to take his chances in America Now.

That's huge.

It all came crashing down that August when Boston Post Reporters launched an investigation that ended in eighty six counts of mail fraud and a lengthy prison sentence.

All right, well, speaking of elaborate and profitable lies, the FTC reports that in twenty twenty two, almost seventy thousand people were the victims of romance scammers. Now, this is a type of fraud that often begins on dating apps. This is where someone lies about who they are, usually in order to get you to send them money. And it's an extra malicious form of cat fishing. Now, one of the trickiest things for a catfisher to explain is

I mean, I think what's funny about that is it's going to make online dating so hard for actual oil rig workers.

Like every sure I didn't think about that. I feel so bad for the rig workers just trying to get dates.

Anyway, I was curious where the word lie comes from, and it turns out the term white lie is older than I expected. The first known use occurred on April tenth, fifteen sixty seven, when an English landowner named Ralph Adderley wrote a letter to a friend describing his brother in law by saying, quote, I do assure you he is unsuspected of any untruth or other notable crime except a white lie, which is taken for a small fault in these parts.

And it's definitely sort of a compliment I think. But all right, well, for our final fact, here's the story of a lie that was anything but harmless because it almost threw off decades of archaeological research. So it was back in nineteen twelve you have this amateur fossil hunter named Charles Dawson. He wrote to the British paleontologist Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, and he was claiming he'd unearthed parts of a human skull in Piltdown. This was a village

That's so weird, you know. I'd heard of Tilton men, but I'd never realized that they'd figured out that Dawson was behind it. And I guess he did end up getting some recognition, but none the way he wanted. Yeah, you know, if I'm being honest, which I am obviously, I think he deserved Today's trophy for explaining how kids become such expert liars. I think that bit of the story was my favorit today.

Thank you. It is fun, too fun to think about.

Well that does it for this episode. If you like our show, remember to rate and review us on the Apple Store. Actually, I cannot help. But look at our reviews and we've been sitting at seventeen ninety nine, seven and ninety nine reviews, just hovering there for the last few weeks and it hasn't gone up to eighteen hundred and so someone out there help us out, help my