Deception and lying

TYPE OF PSYCHOLOGY: Developmental psychology

Although universal and ubiquitous in human social interaction, deception and lying can become problematic and need to be treated as a psychological condition either when the patient is unable to differentiate between the truth and lying or when the behavior becomes pervasive.

Introduction

Deception is an attempt to convince another person that false information is true. Also referred to as subterfuge or beguilement, deception always involves manipulation and is concerned with ideas such as concealment, propaganda, and distraction. Often it can be hard to differentiate deception from the unintentional dissemination of false information because people are often easily self-deceived. Dissimulation is a form of deception involving concealment such as camouflage, which is visual concealment and often used by the military, and disguise, in which a person pretends to be somebody else. Simulation is a form of deception involving mimicry, which is often . Fabrication involves objects that are not what they appear to be. One psychological study found that 90 percent of Americans admitted to being deceitful. Police officers go to great lengths to discover the truth and often, although it is not 100 percent accurate, turn to polygraph to determine if a suspect is lying by recording physiological responses to pertinent questions.

A lie, whether oral or written, is simply an untruthful statement. Typically, the person who tells the lie intends the other person to believe the false information is true. Lies are usually meant to preserve a secret, maintain a reputation, protect another’s feelings, or avoid punishment. Although other forms of deception, such as disguises or forgeries, are not considered to be lies, the objective nevertheless remains the same. Lies can be categorized as bold-faced lies, white lies, fabrications, perjury, bluffing, misleading statements, exaggerations, or dissembling.

Studies in social psychology and developmental psychology point out that in human development, the capacity for lying is universal. Indeed, Machiavellian intelligence, defined as a common milestone in human development, occurs around the age of four. At this point, children begin to lie convincingly enough for adults to believe them. Before this, children have not developed the cognitive ability to grasp the concept that others do not see the world as they do and their attempts at lying are too outlandish to be believed. Although children may successfully lie, at this developmental stage, they have not yet developed the moral framework necessary to understand the consequences of lying and generally lie to avoid punishment.

The oath that requires witnesses in courtrooms to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” recognizes that people do indeed lie. It is only after they become mature and exposed to various forms of lying that children come to understand the concepts of deception and lying. Lying among children varies greatly, but by early adulthood, it becomes understood that in many manifestations, lying is a normal part of social interchange and is not problematic. However, psychiatrists and psychologists warn that deception and lying can become habitual or compulsive.

Deception in Psychology

Deception and lying can be symptoms of psychiatric conditions. Pseudologia fantastica is the term used by psychiatrists to define habitual or compulsive lying. Mythomania is a condition characterized by an excessive or abnormal propensity for exaggeration. Patients experiencing cannot differentiate between the truth and lies, but pathological liars recognize that they are giving out false information. Pathological lying, which has an internal root cause, is persistent, and pathological liars generally create stories that contain elements of truth and present the teller in a positive light. It remains uncertain whether pathological liars have control over the lies they tell. Psychiatrists and psychologists point out that in the case of pathological lying, it is not the nature of the lies that is problematic but rather the mental state associated with the behavior, and that patients who communicate false information in a delusional state are not lying because they are not deliberately misleading.

Although deception and lying can be treated as psychiatric disorders, at times psychiatrists and psychologists practice deception and lying themselves, often in experimental settings. For instance, deception was used in the famous 1963 experiment by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram to determine the willingness of people to obey an authority figure. Participants were told they were participating in an experiment on learning and memory. They were commanded to administer increasingly forceful electrical shocks when other subjects answered questions incorrectly. However, the other subjects were not actually being hurt.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, psychologists and psychiatrists advised the military on how to use psychological deception or warfare in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Psychological warfare is defined as using propaganda and other psychological techniques for the purpose of influencing the behavior of hostile foreign groups to achieve national objectives. Some of the psychological methods employed in interrogation techniques received a certain level of criticism from members of the public. Also, the deceptive use of misinformation and disinformation, particularly surrounding elections in the US, became an area of concern in the early twenty-first century, so much so that the American Psychological Association launched a series of initiatives to combat its harmful effects.

Bibliography

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