Balloon Boy’s vomit and the science of lying
For the sake of this post, I’m assuming that the Balloon Boy incident was a hoax, and that Falcon Heene didn’t have the stomach flu when he vomited on Good Morning America and the Today Show.
What, then, does his puke tell us about the psychological costs of lying?
Scientists generally agree that lying takes more effort than just telling the truth. And intuitively, that seems to make sense. A liar has to keep track of two mental constructs — the truth and the lie — and keep them separate. A truth-teller, on the other hand, has to keep track of just one, and tell it like s/he sees it.
Luckily, we don’t have to rely solely on intuition for evidence that lying takes more brain power. Aided by brain-imaging machines, neuroscientists say they can spot a lie happening in real time, and that, in line with the “lying takes more effort” hypothesis, more brain regions light up when someone’s lying compared to when they’re truth-telling.
(One company called No Lie MRI claims to have a greater than 90 percent efficacy in detecting prevarication. “The first and only direct measure of truth verification and lie detection in human history!” reads No Lie’s tag line.)
Another study finds that lies take 30 percent longer to tell than truths. Apparently, the brain needs more time to keep it all straight.
And yet another finds that pathological liars have notably different brains. The ratio of white matter to gray in their prefrontal cortices is much higher than the more truthfully inclined — or, for that matter, than a group of antisocial controls. (T/S’s Ryan Sager mentions this study in relation to master Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. Neuroscientists must be slavering as they anticipate examining his brain.)
Evolutionarily speaking, white matter correlates with greater intelligence. We’ve got more of it than our monkey and ape relatives (who lie plenty, by the way), and they’ve got more than most other mammals. Autistic people, on the other hand, who often can’t lie, tend to have less white matter than non-autistic people. And maybe that tells us something about the lie-enabling role of white matter. They have trouble fibbing, scientists think, because they lack a “theory of mind” — that internal simulation of what other people are thinking. White matter, an excess of which differentiates the human brain from that of other animals, makes us expert deceivers.
Some neurodegenerative conditions support the notion that a robust capacity for lying is a sign of brain health. Those suffering from Parkinson’s disease, for example, which involves a lowered metabolism in the prefrontal cortex, have trouble deceiving others. Even before they develop the disease, future Parkinson’s patients often earn Honest Abe reputations, not to mention less admirable reputations for inflexibility. All of which begins to make you wonder, is excessive honesty evidence of a brain deficit — a kind of lack of creativity?
The authors of the brain matter study cited above interpret their findings as evidence that lots of white stuff compared to gray predisposes one to pathological lying. I, however, can’t help but wonder if a lifelong habit of lying might not effect structural changes in the brain, leading to an abundance of lie-enabling neurons. After all, London taxi drivers have larger “navigational centers” of the brain, and meditators have thicker “attention” areas. Why wouldn’t liars grow huge deception zones?
The study that best explains Falcon Heene’s heaving on national TV, though, examines the connection between the lying brain and the churning stomach. Fibbing, it seems, predictably causes an increase in “gastric arrhythmia” — a.k.a. irritating juices and nausea. Oh, the stress of keeping our lies organized and coherent! But really, lie-induced nausea shouldn’t come as a surprise. We tend to forget that our body contains two masses of neurons, two brains — one in our head, one in our gut. And they’re so inextricably connected that, like the creators of No Lie MRI, which claims to peer directly into your brain, the scientists behind this study advocate eschewing the classic polygraph in favor of lie-detection by stomach-monitoring.
Posted by Moises Velasquez-Manoff
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
Mr. Velasquez-Manoff,
I think someone has confused pathological, compulsive, and effective lying. People generally lie because they have some apparent psychological motive or external benefit. In the case of the Heenes, their lies were part of a plan to sought to obtain a reality TV show about themselves. They had clear motives, psychologically they desired attention and financially they desired the revenues for TV show. Pathological lying is the exact opposite of this, pathological lies appear to be purposeless and in some cases, they are actually damaging to the liar. Pathological liars are actually bad liars, they are unable to convince others that their lies are true, the general point of a lie. This is generally thought to be a symptom of organic deficit in the brain. These people know what the truth but cannot tell it to others.
In contrast, compulsive lying is may a learned problem. Children who are punished for telling the truth or who see their parents lie successfully start to tell lies out of habit and example. These people also know the truth but simple have learned not to do so.
One of the reasons being an effective liar is difficult is that it does, as you note, require the liar to understand the truth and then construct a lie that the listener will believe. The lie, to be effective, must be personalized to the listener. A lie that will work for one person will not work for another. So it is difficult to tell a single lie, they tend to multiply and more and more people become involved. This is why the best lies are just half the truth.
The most effective liars are those who lie to themselves. After repeatedly lying to themselves, they come to actually believe their own lies. This usually takes a long time but with practice it may well take less. As some wit once noted “Why be a hypocrite when it is so easy to deceive yourself”. It would be interesting to see if this instrument would be able to pick out those sorts of lies.
[...] http://trueslant.com/hivemind/2009/10/26/balloon-boys-vomit-and-the-science-of-lying/ a few seconds ago from web [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Balloon Boy, Balloon Boy. Balloon Boy said: Science explains why I puked: http://bit.ly/3rrwB0 [...]
[...] science of lying By onlinetradingplatforms Balloon Boy’s vomit and the science of lying http://trueslant.com/hivemind/2009/10/26/balloon-boys-vomit-and-the-science-of-lying/ True/Slant – New York,NY,USA Evolutionarily speaking, white matter correlates with greater [...]
Balloon Boy’s parents propose a new show– starring themselves! Biting satire @ http://www.thelintscreen.com
As someone who suffers from Parkinson’s i find the paragraph related to Parkinson’s to be completely off-base. It bears no relationship to my own experience, and in five years of research I’ve encountered no other article asserts a link between Parkinson’s and frontal lobe.