Maybe what you are telling is not a lie;

In our daily life, we may encounter such a situation: we are obviously very angry, but we still say "It's okay, I'm not angry"; sometimes we see our friends' children not being angry. You are beautiful, but you still say "What a beautiful little baby"; many people have the experience of pretending to be sad, and have even said "I love you" in a false and duplicitous way.

Sometimes, we don’t really praise others, so why do we tell these lies?

To understand lying, you must first understand deception.

Deception is an instinct evolved by living things in order to survive. For example, in ancient times, humans would use the environment to hide themselves when hunting, trying not to make any noise, and giving the prey the illusion that there was no danger. This is The earliest deception of mankind.

Later, people invented language, and this is the origin of lying. So, while deception might use tone of voice, facial expressions, or props, lying is using language to make up something that doesn't exist.

For example, Jerry Andrews, an American magician, has an important principle throughout his life: never lie when performing magic. Although like other magicians, he relies on deceptive techniques to perform magic, but when he performs, he only uses deception instead of telling lies. He even hints to the audience where the deception may be, which makes him The performance was very interesting, and the audience found it even more magical.

Crazy Crate

To understand the behavior of lying, you also need to understand its subjectivity.

The simple explanation is that if the speaker thinks he is telling the truth, then even if he is wrong, it does not mean he is lying; but if he knows that he is saying the wrong thing , but pretending that what he said is true is lying. So actors, talk show hosts, and novelists are not lying or cheating because there are rules that everyone knows.

For example, the famous actor Marlon Brando once filmed "Lying for a Living," a video about acting teaching. In this video, Brando taught young people Leonardo and Sean Penn taught him acting skills and said to them: "You have to learn to deceive the audience and make them believe what you are doing, and act like a lie." Indeed, the better the actor, the better. The more he deceives the audience, the more the audience will feel that it is not a performance and that the actor is that kind of person.

Stills from Marlon Brando's "The Godfather"

But lying does not necessarily mean saying the wrong thing or lying, but rather deception in intention. Maybe what you said is not a lie, or maybe you are lying.

For example, in the mid-19th century, an American museum held an exhibition about the circus. The exhibition was a hit, but it also brought trouble. Audiences will stay in front of each exhibit for a long time and do not want to leave, which makes the museum very crowded and makes the number of tickets sold every day extremely limited.

So the curator decided to find a way to solve this problem. He just changed the words on the exit sign, and the number of tickets sold increased significantly. This is because the word he replaced is a pun, which in English has the meaning of export and also implies some kind of strange creature. The naive audience thought there was a more exciting exhibition ahead, but they walked out of the museum because they were misled. Therefore, lying is a very special behavior. Sometimes we tell lies, but we are not lying; sometimes we tell the truth, but we are deceiving others.

Animals can benefit from deception. This is because through deception, animals can predict and control the behavior of other animals, and have a greater chance of survival. In other words, whoever is better at deceiving has a reproductive advantage.

For example, the cuckoo bird does not build a nest or incubate its eggs to nurse its chicks. During the reproductive season, it will lay its eggs in the nests of other birds. Once the baby cuckoo is born, it instinctively The chicks squeeze out of the nest and disguise themselves as themselves. This is how the cuckoo feeds its offspring through other birds.

There is also the mimic octopus off the coast of Bali, Indonesia, which is similar to the chameleon in the octopus. It can disguise itself as at least 15 different marine creatures, just to deceive prey or avoid natural enemies.

Mimic Octopus

After talking about the deception of animals, let’s talk about humans.

Human beings are relatively more complex than other species. The necessary conditions for our survival have changed from food in ancient times to money. Our threats have changed from large beasts to losing jobs. When the problems that need to be solved become When things get complicated, the most convenient and quickest way is to lie.

For example, in order to get a job, we will exaggerate our abilities or even lie on our resumes. As long as our lies are not exposed, it will be easier to get the results we want with just a few simple words.

For example, if an 8-year-old child accidentally breaks his sister's favorite music box, because he is afraid of being punished, he will say that it was the family cat who did it.

Children’s lies are usually self-serving and simple, just to get away with it quickly. Adults often lie to obtain immediate benefits immediately.

For another example, in 1998, a young German scientist named Sch?n joined Bell Labs, the oldest heavyweight laboratory in the world.

In three years, Schon published more than 100 papers in authoritative academic journals such as Science and Nature. You have to know that usually a scientist who publishes one or two important papers a year is considered very prolific. Therefore, Sch?n's achievements are amazing, and he is even called "Einstein II".

In 2002, Sch?n became popular again, but this time it was because of a scandal. Physics professors at Princeton and Cornell universities discovered that he had falsified data, which was simply academic fraud. This scientific prodigy became the most notorious falsifier in history.

Not only to others, people sometimes lie to themselves.

People will be affected by the environment and involuntarily deceive themselves. This view was proposed by Freud. He believed that some of our behaviors will be affected by special circumstances, making us unaware of what we are doing.

For example, two scientists in Sweden conducted a very interesting experiment. They asked a young female assistant to approach young men in the park with a questionnaire and ask them to fill it out.

In fact, the content of the questionnaire is not important. What is important is that after they filled it out, the female assistant left her phone number with them to facilitate a return visit. The result the researchers want to count is: how many people will call her afterwards and ask her out.

Afterwards, the researcher changed the location of the investigation. This time it was on a suspension bridge in a man-made canyon. It was the same female assistant who also invited young men passing by to participate in the investigation. The result was that 65% of the men on the suspension bridge called to ask for a female assistant, but only 30% of the men in the park made a call.

This is because when men meet a female assistant on the suspension bridge, because of the shaking of the suspension bridge, the men need to answer the female assistant's questions while maintaining a stable posture. Such an environment causes the brain to use extra enthusiasm, making their heart beat faster, sweating, and breathing faster. They subconsciously attribute these reactions to "the female assistant is too attractive." In fact, it was the difference in geographical location that caused them to misjudge the charm of the female assistant, and they themselves were not aware of this impact.

People lie because they seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, and they also deceive themselves due to the influence of the environment. After being injured, self-deception may also occur due to the body's self-protection. At this time, people will be driven by the subconscious mind to produce a stress protective response, find reasonable excuses for themselves, and gain relief.

We have all heard of Stockholm syndrome, which refers to a peculiar complex in which the victim develops feelings for the criminal and in turn helps the criminal.

Stockholm

In 1973, two gangsters robbed the largest bank in Stockholm. After a 130-hour standoff with the police, the gangsters gave up resistance and surrendered. However, a few months after the incident, the four bank employees who were kidnapped showed compassion for the kidnappers in court. They refused to accuse the kidnappers in court and even raised funds for their legal defense. They all expressed that they did not hate the gangsters and even expressed their gratitude that the kidnappers did not harm them. What is even more surprising is that one of the female employees fell in love with one of the kidnappers and became engaged to the kidnapper who was still serving his sentence.

In the situation just described, we lie for ourselves. But there are also times when we lie for the benefit of others.

For example, doctors will lie to patients, but their purpose is not to deceive, but to consider the patient and reduce the patient's mental burden, which is what we often call "white lies."

In the TV series "Emergency Doctor". A man believed he had a cat in his belly and complained that the cat was eating his intestines and was in great pain. Of course the doctor didn't believe him, but he couldn't eliminate his pain. So the doctor pretended to perform an operation on him and took out a white cat from his belly, and he recovered.

Emergency doctor stills

In fact, it is common for doctors to deceive patients in good faith. According to a survey by Oregon Health & Science University, about 35% to 45% of prescriptions prescribed by doctors are placebos. What is a placebo? That is, the small amount of active ingredients that doctors choose to use when formulating prescriptions. They can make the patient feel excited but do not directly affect the pain.

A 2003 survey of 800 clinics in Denmark found that half used placebos at least 10 times a year.

Evolutionary psychologist David Smith said: "In the world of liars, whoever has a lie detector will have an advantage." Identifying liars is not as easy as we think, and there are skills. The liar is even more difficult to expose.

There are two main schools of thought that tell us how to identify lies: one focuses on the liar's facial expressions; the other believes that clues are hidden in the liar's language.

First let’s talk about the theory of our emoticon school. No matter how good a liar is, it is impossible to achieve the same subtle facial expressions as when telling the truth.

An example we have cited countless times is that in 1967, psychologist Paul Ekman was commissioned by psychiatrists at a California hospital to assist the doctors in identifying whether a patient with suicidal tendencies had Lying behavior, this patient's name is Mary, she has committed suicide three times, the first two times were not too serious, but the third time was very dangerous, she was sent to the hospital in time to save her life.

After three weeks of observation in the hospital, she seemed happier, indicated that she would not commit suicide again, and proposed that she wanted to go home and spend the weekend with her family. After interviewing Mary, the doctor carefully weighed her current mental state and finally agreed to her request. However, soon after, Mary proved with actual actions that her real reason for leaving the hospital was to commit suicide at home.

Ekman checked the videotape of Mary before she left the hospital frame by frame, and finally found clues that she had deceived the doctor: When the doctor asked Mary what her future plans were, a look of disappointment flashed across her face. .

This expression betrayed her true inner thoughts. I am afraid that even she herself did not know that such an expression had ever appeared. Ekman believed that human expressions are difficult to disguise and almost impossible to conceal.

On the other hand, those who focus on language believe that lying requires the cooperation of cognitive, emotional and social skills. As long as the liars are burdened with thinking, they will definitely reveal flaws in their language. .

For example, the best way to expose lies is to get the liar to talk more, not less. Because lying takes effort. A liar must think of a convincing answer when questioned, avoiding self-contradiction and slips of the tongue. It can be quite difficult to control your body language while juggling so many tasks. When we increase the level of cognitive load on liars, we can cause them to lose control and show their weaknesses.

A professor at the University of Portsmouth conducted a famous "life drawing test". In the experiment, 31 police officers were assigned to participate in the same task, which was to go to an agent to contact and then come back to describe the scene of the contact. The agent made different demands on the police officers. Half of the police officers were asked to tell the truth. , the other half was asked to keep it secret, that is, to lie.

In the experimental results, the professor found that liars will refer to other places they have been to, enrich the picture with various details as much as possible, and deliberately reduce the description of the agents; while those who tell the truth will People tend to draw more pictures of the agent because in their minds, the agent is the center of the scene. This experiment tells us that people who tell the truth often don’t need so many details to prove themselves, but people who tell lies will deliberately fabricate a large number of details to make the lie appear more real.

In addition to judging whether someone is lying through their facial expressions and language loopholes, we can also use a method to observe whether they are consistent with their usual words and deeds. If the other person's behavior is abnormal, Often a clue to lying. For example, if your colleague shows you an item, she says she bought it, but in fact it was given by someone else. After a while, you can suddenly ask her, hey, who gave that item? She will tell the truth or hesitate because she is not ready to lie.

Many polygraph experts use this method. They will test the normal reactions of the research subjects in advance, record a series of parameters, and then ask a series of questions to observe whether there are obvious fluctuations in these parameters. as a basis for judgment.

Of course, understanding the behavior of lying and how to identify lies does not mean that we should always doubt others. In fact, when it comes to suspicion and trust, contrary to our inherent knowledge, people who always doubt others are more likely to be deceived than people who are willing to trust others.

Two psychologists at the University of Toronto conducted an experiment. They found a group of subjects. Before they participated in the experiment, they first made standardized judgments on them to know whether they were high trusters or low trusters. A trustworthy person. High trusters are people who tend to trust others, while low trusters are less likely to trust others.

Next, they found another group of students to conduct mock interviews, asking some of the students to tell the truth, while others had to lie on several key questions. Finally, they had subjects watch videotapes of the students and asked them to identify those who had lied during interviews.

The results show that people with high trust perform much better than those with low trust. Why is this? This is because people who tend to trust others appear to be easily deceived. This is because they often participate in a larger range of social interactions with higher risks. In such interactions, there will inevitably be places where they are deceived, but They will also develop their ability to judge other people's lies.

People who do not want to trust others are only willing to interact with a familiar small circle, which results in them having fewer opportunities to interact with others. Therefore, they lack the opportunity to understand other people's intentions and motives.