New Study Identifies Key Characteristics of Expert Liars
Verigin et al found that self-reported good liars (i) may be responsible for a disproportionate amount of lies in daily life, (ii) tend to tell inconsequential lies, mostly to colleagues and friends, and generally via face-to-face interactions, and (iii) highly rely on verbal strategies of deception, most commonly reporting to embed their lies into truthful information, and to keep the statement clear, simple and plausible. Image credit: Ryan McGuire.
“We found a significant link between expertise at lying and gender. Men were more than twice as likely to consider themselves expert liars who got away with it,” said Dr. Brianna Verigin, a researcher at the University of Portsmouth and the University of Maastricht.
The study involved 194 participants (97 females, 95 males, 2 preferred not to say), with an average age of 39.
They were asked a series of questions including how good they were at deceiving others, how many lies they’d told in the past 24 hours, the type of lies they’d told, who to, and whether they’d done so face-to-face or via other means.
“Time after time, studies have shown we are not as good at detecting lies as we think we are. At best, most of us have a 50:50 chance of getting it right when someone is pulling the wool over our eyes,” Dr. Verigin said.
“We wanted to focus on those who are good at lying and try to understand how they do it and to whom.”
The scientists found one of the key strategies of liars is to tell plausible lies that stay close to the truth, and to not give away much information. And the better someone thinks they are at lying, the more lies they’ll tell.
The most commonly used strategy among all those who admitted to lying, whether experts or poor liars, was to leave out certain information.
But expert liars added to that an ability to weave a believable story embellished with truth, making the lies harder to spot.
In contrast, those who thought they weren’t good at lying resorted, when they did lie, to being vague.
Overall, of the 194 participants, the most common types of deception, in descending order, were ‘white lies,’ exaggerations, hiding information, burying lies in a torrent of truth and making up things.
Most people chose to lie face-to-face, then via text message, a phone call, email, and last, via social media.
Most expert liars lie most often to family, friends or colleagues. Employers and authority figures were least likely to be lied to.
The study showed no link between level of education and lying ability.
“More research needs to be done, particularly on better understanding good liars’ expertise at embedding lies within truthful information, and at using facts that were impossible to check,” Dr. Verigin said.
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B.L. Verigin et al. 2019. Lie prevalence, lie characteristics and strategies of self-reported good liars. PLoS ONE 14 (12): e0225566; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.02255
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