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Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity
- exhilaration 6y agoDear parents: never let your kids lie, at any age. It might be cute when they're 3 or 4 or 5, but if you don't gently tell them that "we don't tell lies, we always tell the truth" it will become a habit they will carry into adulthood.
- wrkronmiller 6y agoDo you have any experience/data to back that up? While, on its face, it seems like a good idea to discourage lying, presenting children with such a binary approach to deception might leave them underprepared for the "bullshit" (marketing, propaganda, etc...) they will encounter in the real world. EDIT: I'm not a parent and don't want to offer parenting advice. My point is simply that saying "we never lie" seems overly-reductive, versus something more nuanced like "lying is bad." I would worry about creating the expectation that most people don't lie, or even that good people never lie (e.g. white lies).
- funkaster 6y agowhy? I have no data either, but I’mnot seeing how you’re connecting the two. One is about personal values (saying the truth) the other one you’re concerned about is how to question the outside world. Two completely different things IMO (and things I’m currently trying to teach my 4yo kid)
- vanattab 6y ago... he said don't teach your kids to lie not don't teach your kids to recognize a lie.
- whatshisface 6y agoAbout 13% of people would agree that a binary approach to deception is excessively restrictive. ;)
- _qulr 6y agoThe bigger problem is the parents. Let's start with Santa Claus. Blatant lie. Parents teach kids that lying is ok from a very young age. Abolish Christmas, and then get back to me.
- mcv 6y agoYou can celebrate Christmas without Santa Claus.
- rexpop 6y agoIn one sense, yes. In another, no. There's more than one Christmas.
- nightski 6y agoSanta Claus isn't really a lie though. Our perspective of the concept just changes and matures as we get older.
- stuartq 6y agoSanta Claus is an old man with a beard that uses magical reindeer to deliver presents to every child on Christmas Eve. Definitely a lie. Saying he's not is another lie, even if you're lying to yourself.
- heisenzombie 6y agoAre all myths, parables and stories lies? Is every metaphor a lie? (All the world is not a stage! It's a terrestrial planet!). If the category "Lies" is identical to the category "Not Literally True", then it seems to be fairly useless.
- kingkawn 6y agoChristmas is a primary method of indoctrinating people into scientific rationalism. The childhood imagination is fully engaged by this effort, unlike any other, to create the illusion of Santa Claus. As a kid it is a sort of bliss. Then as a sign of the transition to adulthood the growing child comes to realize there is no Santa. No time for mourning though, the growing youth is immediately brought into the fold and encouraged to help maintain the illusion for the younger children. The work is complete, the nature of fantasy and reality is established.
- ashtonkem 6y agoLying is actually a pretty well known psychological milestone, since deception requires that you hold two concepts in your head at once. Trying to stop that completely is a fool’s errand. Do you have any evidence to back up the assertion that lying too much at 4/5 is how one becomes a pathological liar?
- exhilaration 6y agoJust reports from other parents who regret not stopping it early on. Their children would make fantastic stories about who was to blame for their mistakes, the parents would laugh and let it go, but the behavior didn't stop and only got worse. I kept that in mind when my kids reached those ages and did the same.
- phaedrus 6y agoThat might not be lying per se but rather an inability to take responsibility. I have two nephews-in-law, there's a dynamic there that sometimes happens between brothers where the younger feels it's unfair if he doesn't get to do / be allowed all the same things as his older brother, but he isn't mature enough, inserts himself anyway, and gets mad and acts out when it doesn't go well for him. The older brother, unable to get the younger to just chill, settles instead for goading the younger one until he melts down. Anyway there've been instances where after losing at football or Minecraft or whatever, the younger nephew has launched on a long monologue to us about how the contest was unfair, that really he should have won, that actually if you look at it a certain way he did win, yes he won and his older brother lost and... on to increasingly fantastic made up story about what happened. It's not so much lying as a "revisionist history" with a magical realism element. It's almost like... grit gone wrong. I.e. grit would be, "I failed once but I won't accept failure permanently and next time I'll try a new tack" versus this is, "I can't accept failure therefore I must justify and explain why I actually was perfect." I find this behavioral tendency worrying.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sevencolors 6y agoKids are always smarter than we think, they can perceive adults lying they just don't always know what to do with that information. I feel the kinder thing is to help understand the concepts of sharing information and why people might lie or withhold.
- op03 6y agoThat is useful obviously but won't work on everyone and makes parents deal with unnecessary guilt and shame when they are raising let's say a Donald. To the liars out there don't think there is something wrong with you. You have your purpose too - Google psychopathy or dark triad in the work place and know that Managers actually use/need you guys too, not just honest Abe. Basically we still live with a stone age level of understanding of personality traits and their pros and cons. But if everyone understands there is a diff between a banana tree, a redwood and a cactus. All having different needs and personalities, only then do we get a good looking botanical garden.
- MiroF 6y agoYour "purpose" isn't determined by your manager's use for you.
- wittyreference 6y agoUhm... good? A basic facility with lying is a fundamental social skill. Unless you intend for your children to be socially awkward / socially ineffective, lying is necessary. The point, much like physical strength or any other sort of double-edged human ability, is to plug it into their broader moral framework, to guide when and for what purposes and to what degree.
- whatshisface 6y ago>lying is necessary. I hear this a lot but do you have any examples?
- mcv 6y agoMaybe it's that claim that's the necessary lie.
- wittyreference 6y agohttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167294203009 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/014616729420300... https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1021369327584 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1021369327584 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0261927X95143003 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0261927X9514300... https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/11808412/personality_and_deception_ability.pdf?1333524318=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3Dpersonality_and_deception_ability.pdf&Expires=1597709290&Signature=bYCPQJp3hVjya45DtwmgBt3fn4rwbymulzQwATmRjlQzmNjJLCmeivMj1JxfQO3icOXWfK67Gxsf12XQ~3jpeyz42QcHxzuOS2T7Ajuc4GL~ErA1kpKNTMMkHzTOL~3dvraFbxnbx--rajEaICgN4ezqmP92MyEtXtj6MNdVpE5K~cbb-kWt7g6DAvgqsgsOvLDrufMaGzfApcjHTN3QaxjIi9fRmuZzVEZx-WLxK7kYUImg9D4KQnTFp8rIhPnzwCGgH1yfYaNLOu9YfsyVdk-4wjEfkvKF2eGTGPuY3FShs~4qjGFHOO4K4iug47nwYjosGgkrHQUBhe66vx3tVA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/11808412/personality_a... This was like, five minutes on google scholar. I'm not going to pretend it's a slam dunk "here's a paper from the esteemed Harvard Professor of Lying-is-Awesome, presenting the grand unified theory of 'deceptiveness and social skills are overlapping traits'," but it's pretty much the null hypothesis.
- 6y ago
- himinlomax 6y agoIndeed. Child development researchers recommend that when your kid asks you a sensitive question, you should always reply "I cannot confirm or deny" if you want them to pursue in a career in Washington, DC or "I plead the fifth" if you expect them to go to law school.
- engineer_22 6y agoThat's right. The object of the game isn't alway "win the game", more often the object is to keep enough partners around to keep playing the game. Trust is a large component of having willing participants in your game - so don't lie!
- air7 6y agoThis, ironically, would be lying to your kids. There are very few (if any) pathological truth-tellers and you are likely not one of them. Any health adult would intentionally lies in certain situations and would be considered foolish/dumb if they didn't. Your kids will inevitably catch you lying and their understanding of "lying is bad" would become "lying is bad if you get caught" and "You're allowed to be outraged when catching others' lies". Teaching your kids how and when to lie, now that's a very tricky thing that I don't have a grip on.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoWe have a 12 year-old with ADHD, and I suspect he's a pathological liar; we call him out on it all the time, but even then, when we ask him a question - even innocuous things like "have you had breakfast" if he's up before we are - his first instinct / default is to answer with what he thinks we want to hear. He knows he doesn't get away with it in most cases. I suspect there's two factors at play; one that he sometimes gets away with it, where we can't be bothered to double check, and second that he may get a little 'thrill' from lying and getting away with it, moreso than the adverse reaction from being called out on it. Mind you, that said, negative attention is also attention, so subconsciously for him it's likely a win-win. Anyway, it's still annoying. It's not (yet) serious things, just mainly some responsibility dodging behaviour.
- P_I_Staker 6y agoDon't forget about control. Lying means you know the truth and others don't. You're the one in charge, and you can alter the fabric of reality.
- quercusa 6y agoWhen raising our kids, we always made the punishment for lying about 'X' far worse than that for doing 'X'. The son was so incompetent at lying that he quickly figured out he was better of telling the truth right away. The daughter had to test things before she came around to that realization.
- pc86 6y agoAny advice that has the word "never" or "always" in it is nonsense a large proportion of the time. Everybody lies. Sometimes it's good, e.g. in order to avoid someone having a surprise spoiled. Or sometimes it's inconsequential, like telling someone that you're fine because you don't have the mental energy to get into what's bothering you (and you know they won't let it go if you were to just say that). Sometimes it's bad. Telling your kids "we always tell the truth" is a lie, because you don't. And it has a high likelihood of (as a sibling comment said) making them unprepared for people who do lie, at least while they're still young. And you can bet that the first time they catch you in a lie, it will be that much worse.
- billman 6y agoJust wondering if you are a parent.
- nekochanwork 6y agoHere's my anecdotal account: I've known a handful of pathological liars, one of whom is my nephew. My nephew's caregivers are not model parents. They are extremely hot and cold: either ignoring the kids for hours at a time, or screaming at the kids over every trivial accident and annoyance. Example: nephew was pouring a glass of water, knocked the cup on the floor, and his parents screamed at him and hit him until he was broken down in tears. Newphew's day-to-day routine is an exercise in walking on eggshells to avoid triggering mom and dad's short temper. Anytime his parent's said a word to him, nephew assumed he'd done something bad again. He began lying at a very young age as a defense mechanism to avoid punishment. He became very distrustful of adults. We had a family get-together once where my nephew was playing with toy dinosaurs. I walk up behind him and say "hey buddy what are doing over there" and he immediately startles and says "I didn't do anything!" I noticed that he started lying habitually. And even lying about things that didn't even matter. If he had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, he'd tell everyone he had a bagel. If he got up early, he said he'd slept in late. If he watched Finding Nemo, he'd say he watched Spongebob. I started challenging him on these things: "why did you just tell me ate a bagel? I was right here fixing the computer when you rolled out of bed at 10am to eat a bowl of cereal this morning." He'd double down, "well actually I got up early and ate a bagel when you didn't see me. And then I had cereal afterward." I'd say "why are you lying to me about something so stupid? I'm not mad, I just don't see why you'd lie about it. What's the point?" "I'm not lying, I swear!" He's 11 years old and his lies are getting bigger, more absurd. He told me his friend's dad is the president of the Pokemon factory and he can get any rare Pokemon card he wants for free, and that he gets to ride around in his friends Lamborghini. I literally think he's lying for sport now, like a game to see what he can get away with. He's going to have a hard time making and keeping friends if he doesn't break the habit soon. I think all of this started from bad parenting. The kid didn't feel safe in his own home, and his defense mechanism became habit, which then became a pathological obsession.
- P_I_Staker 6y agoOr they just learn, "I'm not supposed to lie, so don't get caught."
- TrackerFF 6y agoShould be noted - very strict and harsh parenting could lead to conflict averse/avoidant kids, who in turn will start to lie in order to not stir up anything. And from there, it just builds on.
- miguelrochefort 6y agoThat's lower than I expected.
- foobarbecue 6y agoIt's higher than I expected. This is just the % that admitted to it, too!
- tdons 6y agoI've made a conscious effort to stop lying after reading https://samharris.org/books/lying/ https://samharris.org/books/lying/ Can recommend, it feels great.
- archi42 6y agoSeems like an interesting read, and I thought about getting it (though I'm kind of biased since I agree with Harris' premise). But the top review on Amazon mentions that the author simply "dismisses him [Kant] by saying that he [Harris] has no reason to take Kant seriously.", especially after Kant's extensive work on the topic. (And the reviewer mentions that this seems to be common to Harris work). This is a huge vice in itself. Yes, sometimes arguments are weak, or there is a new idea, or the argument doesn't work anymore because the world changed so much, or whatever - but then just ignoring them feels pretty similar to the occasional white lie, and an entry to "my argument is superior because I gave it".
- P_I_Staker 6y agoI've been a fan of Harris in the past, but I've been getting sick of him lately. He's ridiculously pretentious, arrogant, and a massive asshole about communicating his ideas. He seems to come up with the most unpleasant argument possible. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised about him completely dismissing a respected viewpoint. I don't know why I liked him before, except I was a young atheist, and I was angry. I guess now that I'm older the whole "I am very smart" shtick is no longer appealing.
- raxxorrax 6y agoHonesty just doesn't pay.
- elwell 6y agoAlso, "Not stealing doesn't pay". But, I think on average the long-term is opposite, and it's certainly more important, because, eventually, the long-term dictates future short-terms.
- stared 6y agoAs an Aspie, (almost) every neurotypical person seems to be a pathological liar, not able to make a small talk without committing a few lies. Examples: "I am fine, thanks", "You look great!", "It is a wonderful idea!", "You are our best client", "For our company privacy is a priority", etc, etc.
- HenryKissinger 6y agoThat's just business talk, not lies.
- srinivgp 6y agoYou mean that's business talk _and_ lies.
- qmmmur 6y agoif it's not the truth it's a lie.
- elwell 6y agoCommunication is about shared meaning. The shared meaning here is truthful; it's not so much about the words themselves. If your hearer grew up being taught to hear "How are you?" as a meaningless introduction, and you really wanted to know how they were, you would probably say "How are you really?". Isn't that redundant? Why not just say "How are you?"? Because you are aiming for shared meaning, not accuracy in absolute language.
- qmmmur 6y agoI understand nuance in communication, but its so obviously a lie when a business says they care about you, you are their most priviledged customer etc, etc. They are literally baseless claims that dress up awkward scenarios. They are lies, but people accept them as part of the process.
- 6y ago
- foobarbecue 6y agoI'd like to see this broken down by profession. Lying seems to be part of the job in many.
- buzzy_hacker 6y agoDon’t take the following too seriously, but studies might preselect for liars. You usually need to meet certain criteria to be eligible and participants may fudge their answers to participate. I’ve done food testing on and off through the years and you always need to answer some questions beforehand to determine eligibility. If you gave a “wrong” answer, the survey-asker would say something like “Are you sure?”, prompting you to pick the other choice that made you eligible for the study. Or even without prompting, if I’m trying to get paid to taste bubblegum and they ask how often you have bubblegum, I’m more likely to inflate my reported frequency compared to my actual frequency of gum chewing.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoWouldn't be surprised if this is down to people trying to conform, to answer what is expected of them, or to try and answer what others have. There was a study I saw the other day, may have been Explained on Netflix, where six people were asked a simple question ("which line is the same length as this one"); five were in on it and intentionally gave the wrong answer, the sixth, the actual person under test, would follow the 'consensus' answer in 75% of cases (after three or four others answered with the wrong answer). Herd behaviour is a thing and probably hard to correct for.
- mcv 6y agoI can imagine there are professions where the threshold for lies to count as pathological would be higher than others. If you barely talk, if the few things you say are all lies, that's pretty serious. But for people who talk a lot, like politicians, salesmen, managers, etc, 10 lies per day doesn't sound very high at all.
- frank2 6y agoI heard lying is endemic in Hollywood.
- Brushfire 6y agoWhat about the lies we tell ourselves?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jessriedel 6y agoI had a friend in college who did this, lying frequently about even inconsequential things. I asked him about it, and he said that he rarely lied to get an obvious direct advantage over someone like we imagine. Rather, he mostly just enjoyed knowing that other people were operating under false info, very much like dramatic irony except in real life. It was weird, and I don't think it served him well in the long run. However, his girlfriends were consistently more beautiful than you'd expect for his looks/personality/wealth.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoI had one who would tell outrageous lies, growing from simple comments. It was ludicrous. "This window is a long way up" I'd say. "Some animals can make that jump" he'd come out with. "Kangaroos can do it." "No, I don't think they could. It's too far up?" "Sure they can. I saw one do it! You calling me a liar?" It was exhausting, the nonsense he'd spout. The first time I'd encountered such an obvious prevaricator. I wondered how he functioned.
- and_statistics 6y agoI am a pathological liar. From the small scale (What did you do yesterday? Completed a videogame) to the large scale (lying about my job) to the extreme (multi-year affairs). How does one stop?
- bmmayer1 6y agoHave you gotten professional help? You're clearly aware that you have a problem and you seem to want to fix it, which is a really important first step.
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- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- elwell 6y agoWell assuming you're telling the truth here, I would ask: why do you want to stop? If your answer is a strong one, hold onto it. Hold onto that purpose through the wave of reckoning that will come by exposing all your lies. If you don't have a strong reason, then you may have to go through greater pains before you finally humble out. Psalm 51:17
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ppg677 6y agoObvious to many: After working for 13+ years at wildly successful silicon valley companies and seeing who climbs the latter, it is those who are good at lying. There is a spectrum ranging from blatant lying to manipulative, selective withholding of information.
- spicywatermelon 6y agoWould you characterize the ladder climbees as Machiavellian?
- elwell 6y ago"What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet lose or forfeit his very self?" - Jesus of Nazareth
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Hackbraten 6y ago“I have read and consent to the terms of service and the privacy policy”
- phaedrus 6y agoMy first wife was a pathological liar. I'm bad at reading people and tend to think the best of people, so I remained naive (or willfully blind) to it for a long time. It came to a head when a sweet, mutual friend of ours asked an innocent question about what we were doing later in the day, and my (now ex-) wife gave a completely made up answer. It wasn't a white lie to get out of something, or a deflection to keep privacy, it was simply a pointless falsehood clearly produced on reflex. She was good at keeping track of who she told what lie, so this was the first time I'd been the 3rd party observer to something I could definitively know she was lying about. I confronted her about it later privately, "<name> is our friend, why would you lie to her for no reason?" and she gave a dismissive non-answer. That was the first loose thread that unraveled the whole sweater. It turned out she'd been lying to me and everyone close to her, about things big and small, for many years. It's difficult for me to understand the psychology behind it, but I think it comes down to she feels alternately safer and superior when she knows some truth that someone else doesn't know. Her parents are estranged but stayed together, constantly low-key gas lighting each other. Maybe growing up in that environment is why she reflexively lies. Or maybe it's heritable and the lying leads to that kind of relationship. Either way, I wasn't going to live the same way and peaced out.
- api 6y agoWas she abused physically, emotionally, or sexually? The constant low level gaslighting and other things witnessed may count. I have read that children who are abused can develop these traits as a defense mechanism or as a symptom of low grade dissociative identity disorder.
- rrrrrrrrrrrr 6y agoBased on what some others have said I think you got it at the end there: the feeling of power over others when you know something they don't. Maybe tackling ones own insecurities and fears is the key to being comfortable enough to tell the truth most of the time.
- oceanghost 6y agoI had the same problem with one more level of abstraction: My wife didn't know she was lying. My ex-wife lied about everything, and like you it took me years to figure it out. Everything was always someone else's fault (it was my fault she couldn't work, my fault she didn't clean, my fault she didn't cook), she often rearranged the order of events or even fabricated events in their entirety. Like you, I caught her mother in a bizarre "lie" that unraveled the thing. On XMas eve her mother called very hurt that we hadn't come over for out "traditional Xmas eve." She explained that we just always came over so she didn't think to call and make sure we were coming. The fact is, I have spent every XMas eve with my own family, we have a tradition of having a party on XMas eve, and I have only missed it once due to being hospitalized. You have to understand the sheer madness of this. She imagined that we were going to come over, convinced herself that we had always done so, and that there was no reason to even let us know she expected us. This set off alarm bells in my head, I could see that my wife was remembering things that didn't happen or altering events in her head and this was why we could never talk about anything or reach any common ground because we couldn't agree on ground truth. Eventually I found out she had suffered some trauma, and as a result something called "confabulation" which is more or less a unreliable/false memory.
- throckmortra 6y agoI worked with a co-worker who couldn't stop lying about even the smallest stuff. I took it as a weird personality quirk and it never felt malicious to me because the lies felt like they were created to entertain others
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoSounds like they were 'stuck' in a mode of lying, or they don't consider it to be lying. And that they haven't been called out on it enough for them to think about what they say.
- thdrdt 6y ago"The study found the pathological liars were more likely to experience distress and impaired functioning, especially in social relationships." I am quite interested in the behavior of Trump. As far as we know he tells a lot of lies but it seems the above quote does not apply to him. Could it be that distress and impaired functioning only apply to people who are able to experience negative consequences of their lies? Meaning two things: * There are negative consequences, so they experience them. * They see the consequences as negative.
- mercer 6y agoI don't get the impression Trump is lacking in 'distress and impaired functioning, especially in social relationships'. He seems rather thin-skinned, unhappy, and as far as I can tell he doesn't seem to have any real friends. What makes you think he makes it 'work' other than being, by some measures, successful?
- recursivedoubts 6y agoThe researchers recruited them in 2019 from various mental health forums, social media, and a university. This seems like a classic reflexive problem: why would we expect liars to produce reliable data regarding their lying?