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What is different about the minds and personalities of compulsive liars? And how can we catch one in the act? No, your nose doesn’t grow. The secret is to… occupy their brain with various tasks — or ask them to tell you their story in a foreign language.
Let’s be honest for a second: we all tell lies every now and then, whether it’s lying about why we’re late or telling a loved one they look fabulous in that expensive new outfit when we actually think otherwise.
Studies conducted in the 1990s revealed that, for most of us, this equates to about one or two lies a dayon average.
Nope, these lies are normally harmless and most of the time we do our best to tell the truth.
On the other hand, there are some people who take lying to a completely different level.
In a study conducted in 2021 and published in Communication Monographsa team of North American researchers asked hundreds of students to record their lies for 91 days consecutive.
Of the 116,366 lies told, a disproportionate number came out of the lips of a minority of prolific liarsnote to .
Another, published in 2009 in Human Communication Researchconcluded that 5% of people are responsible for half of all lies counted. These are the people who lie repeatedly and whose lies are sometimes absolutely gigantic.
Some prolific liars manage to use their deception to their advantage, at least for a while. If and when they are discovered for the enormous lies they told, may end up becoming famous because of that.
Just look at the example of Elizabeth Holmesfor defrauding millions of investors after lying to them about the health technology his company, Theranos, was developing.
Or even Lance Armstrongthe disgraced cyclist, stripped of his seven Tour de France victories, which he confessed to improving performance after years of denial.
Other prolific liars may not attract as much attention for themselves, but stand out for their willingness and ability to deceive regularly. And maybe you even know someone in your life.
There is two main aspects in why a minority of people are willing and able to lie so often.
One aspect has to do with the fact that they mental abilities to deceive. The other aspect has to do with the morality and the type of personality traits that make it easier to deal with, and justify, being chronically dishonest.
Among the prolific liars, there is also a smaller group, the so-called “pathological liars” with a condition sometimes known as pseudologia fantastica or “cry“.
These individuals tend not to lie with such a strategic objective and, indeed, their lives are generally turned into misery by their compulsion to lie. Unlike many prolific liars, they may feel remorse, but from an early age they cannot stop lying over and over again.
Another important contrast with most prolific liars is that pathological liars may not have cognitive control. Whereas an effective prolific liar uses his or her mental capacity to suppress the truth and maintain a lie, the pathological liar just can’t stop of compulsively spreading fictions.
Fluid intelligence
“Telling a convincing lie requires cognitive effort,” says Molly MacMillanresearcher at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, author of studies on the mental demands of lying.
Honesty is relatively low effortexplains. Lying, by contrast, involves suppressing the truth, inventing a fabrication, and then keeping track of it.
One published in 2008 in Cereb Cortex showed that all this mental activity leads to a greater neural activation in areas responsible for cognitive control, compared to telling the truth.
It is for this reason that lying is much more difficult if we are overwhelmed with another mental task at the same time.
“Studies reveal that people have more likely to be honest when they talk in a second language, when they are tired or when they are busy with another task or activity,” says MacMillan.
In fact, one of the approaches to detecting lies is based on the idea of increasing the “cognitive load” — for example, asking a criminal suspect to tell your story backwardsso that it becomes more difficult for you to keep a lie.
Os mental challenges involved in lying provide the first clues about what is different about prolific liars – especially those who can get away with their lies. They need the mental aptitude to deal with it.
One published in 2023 on Journal of Intelligence tested the lying ability of 400 participants and found that the most skillful liars in a given conversation tended to score higher on “fluid intelligence“.
This ability reflects the ability to reason and solve problems under pressure — in contrast to “crystallized intelligence“, which has more to do with knowledge.
Another, published in 2017 in Cognitionanalyzed the relationship between lying and counterfactual thinking — which occurs when we ask ourselves how things could have gone differentlyfor example pondering “What if…?” or “If only…?”
Some people are more prone to this type of thinking than others, and although is not the same as deliberate deceptionboth involve the invention of other realities.
The study showed that counterfactual thinkers are more likely to lie to protect your reputation in a couple of hypothetical scenarios: to hide the reason why they didn’t go to a party or to cover up their involvement in a car accident.
This shows once again that people’s propensity to lie is, at least in part, associated with the fact that they have the mental abilities or the habits necessary to deceive.
What makes a good lie?
In 2019, a team led by Brianna Verigin from Maastricht University in the Netherlands interviewed around 200 people about their lying abilities and asked them What strategies did they use to lie effectively?.
The results weren’t very ambitious, but they give an idea of how many prolific liars get away with their lies for so long.
The most cited strategy was to keep the lies clear and simple. This is a shrewd approach, given what is known about the cognitive demands of lying. The simpler a liethe easier it will be to keep details consistent and avoid getting caught.
The following most cited strategies were keep the lies plausible and avoid giving specific details. Finally, the strategy of inserting the lie in a true story.
To get an idea of how this last strategy might work in real life, imagine the suspect of a crimewho wonders where he was at the time of a robbery.
Instead of inventing a fictitious alibi from scratch, the skilled liar can use the memory of a specific real episode of your life at a similar time of the day and week. A good liar could provide the necessary details from real memory, rather than having to invent fictitious information on the spot.
Of course, no matter how good a liar you are, no lie is infallible. Because, as our parents said, lies have short legs.
