Have you ever encountered a truly exceptional liar? The kind who can look you in the eyes and say four plus four equals seven with the conviction of a priest? It becomes out that the gift of the fib is caused by a neurological abnormality. To put it simply, there are liar brains — and science is learning more and more about what it means to have a shaky relationship with the truth.I am a fantastically good liar – always for a good cause.
Surprise birthday gifts, complementing a friend’s beloved but ludicrous attire, and encouraging tiny children “not much further”? I’m your woman. Not so much lying about missing a deadline. That could be due to the anatomy of my brain. While I have an excellent memory (check for lying) and probably a lot of white matter (check two), I also appear to have a strong moral sense that gets in my way. And, certainly, morals and decision-making are related to brain-bits.
Of course, lying isn’t always a negative thing. After all, the concept of creating fanciful unrealities is the foundation of storytelling, which is a vital value in many communities. And lying to ourselves about our abilities, attractiveness, or worth may actually increase our self-esteem. Examinations of a particularly aggressive type of liar, on the other hand, have led to new insights about the lying brain and what it entails.
Let us investigate.Many qualities are required of a particularly skilled liar, but the key ones are an outstanding memory, a low moral sense, and a high level of empathy. (Yes, liars are frequently highly sympathetic individuals.) Don’t believe the old adage that liars never look you in the eyes. Experienced liars will have heard this one as well, and will most likely maintain eye contact with you. There are, however, more subtle “tells,” such as stiff body movement.
Micro-expressions, which last less than a fifth of a second, can also reveal a person’s guilt for wrongdoing — and we’re really excellent at picking them up subconsciously. So, if you suspect someone is lying, you’re probably correct. If you’re deliberately seeking for a lie, keep the following four suggestions in mind: Liars in the process of telling a lie talk less about themselves, are more negative than positive, explain circumstances extremely simply, and utilize complex and convoluted language construction.
However, no matter how good they are at lying, the body may betray the brain. The basis of polygraphs and lie detector tests is that they can detect human uneasiness when telling a lie; however, an intriguing new scientific lying test that may be more complex than the polygraph does not involve heart rate at all – it is based on the stomach. Even if you can manage your heart rate and physiological reactions, the electrical pulses in your stomach may betray you. No matter how well prolific liars control their body, something will always betray them.
Other Important Characteristics of Good Liars.Another characteristic of a liar? Having a solid “social center” in mind. People with Asperger’s Syndrome, for example, do not have a brain that processes empathy or social interaction in a “normal” way, and as a result, if they learn to lie at all, they are awful liars. After all, lying is basically about how we treat other people. So extraordinary liars are not anti-social losers; on the contrary, they will have a keen awareness of how others feel and think.
A new (and somewhat amusing) investigation on lying in children published in the Journal Of Experimental Child Psychology discovered something surprising, but utterly obvious when you think about it: children who are good liars also have remarkable memories. Scientists gave a group of six and seven-year-olds memory tests before putting them through a lying test: leaving them alone with a card with some information on it, turned face-down, and then asking them if they’d sneaked a glance.
The good liars could lie not just about whether or not they’d peeked, but also about how they knew what was on the card without peeking. (They must have come up with some wonderful stories.) And, surprise what, the brilliant liars had amazing memories, especially verbal recollections. This makes complete sense. Even the simplest of lies demands a strong memory to keep track of who has been told what, when, and how.
You’ll be annoyed if someone mentions the funeral you ostensibly “had” to attend and you go utterly blank. The fact that this occurs in children may indicate that nature trumps nurture in this case, although there is no definitive confirmation. What Makes Good Liars’ Brains Unique One behavior that can be tracked in the brain is lying. (One day, dating websites may need MRI scans in addition to adorable black-and-white selfies as a condition of admission.)
A 2005 study published in New Scientist indicated that pathological liars, or people who lie regularly and readily, have a significantly different brain structure than non-liars – and that this demonstrates the demands lying places on the brain. Pathological liars (recognized by standard psychopathic tests) have their brain scans compared to both non-liars and those with personality disorders but no pathological lying in their make-up. The liars had 22-26 percent more white matter and 14 percent less grey matter in their brains than the other two groups.
What does this mean? White matter connects brain regions, allowing information to be transmitted — and excellent liars need a lot of it to connect the many dots of intricate lying. What does this individual know? What have I previously told them? Who are they most likely to speak with? Is my behavior consistent? Meanwhile, grey matter is the brain’s actual neuronal mass, but it has also been connected to moral reasoning.
Reduced grey matter indicates a readiness to breach moral rules and stray from conventional views of good and wrong. So, good liars have a brain that is rich in information but deficient in morals. That sounds about right. However, there are a few issues. The first is that these aren’t your average liars; they’re profoundly disordered folks, which are actually rather rare.
Another issue is that we don’t know if lying brains are born with this ability or if it develops through time. Do we have decent lying brains from birth, or does our grey and white matter evolve and react in ways that may make us better liars? After all, minds are extremely malleable. It’s the age-old nature/nurture debate, and the New Science study ignores it.