Fact-checked by Grok 2 weeks ago

Lie

A lie is an assertion that the speaker believes to be false, made with the intention to deceive the recipient into believing it to be true.^[1]^[2] This standard definition, articulated in philosophical and psychological literature, requires both awareness of falsity and deceptive intent, distinguishing lies from mistakes, exaggerations without belief in falsity, or mere omissions.^[1]^[3] The English term "lie" originates from Old English lyge or lige, denoting an untruth or deliberate falsehood, with roots in Proto-Germanic forms related to deception.^[4] Lying manifests in various forms, including direct falsehoods, half-truths, and lies of omission, though the latter are debated as true lies absent an assertive statement.^[1] Psychologically, lies often serve self-protective or manipulative purposes, such as avoiding punishment, gaining advantage, or preserving relationships, and are cognitively demanding due to the need to suppress truth while fabricating alternatives.^[5]^[6] Empirically, humans lie frequently—averaging one to two lies per day in social interactions—reflecting its role in navigating complex social dynamics, though habitual lying correlates with eroded trust and interpersonal harm.^[3]^[7] Philosophically, lying has been condemned as intrinsically immoral by figures like St. Augustine, who classified it as duplicitous speech violating divine order regardless of outcome, and Immanuel Kant, who posited truthfulness as a categorical imperative never permitting exceptions, even to thwart harm, as deception undermines rational autonomy and universal moral law.^[8]^[1] These absolutist views contrast with consequentialist perspectives allowing lies when benefits outweigh harms, highlighting ongoing debates over whether lying's wrongness stems from intent, effects, or violation of truth as a foundational epistemic good.^[9]^[1] Detection relies on cues like inconsistencies or nonverbal signals, but remains imperfect, underscoring lying's evolutionary utility in deception-prone environments despite its societal costs in fostering suspicion and suboptimal decisions based on distorted information.^[6]

Definition and Core Concepts

Etymology and Basic Definition

The English noun "lie," denoting a deliberate falsehood, originates from Old English lyge, meaning an untruth or deception, with the corresponding verb leogan (to lie, speak falsely) attested from at least the late 12th century. This stems from Proto-Germanic lugizōną (to lie or deceive), ultimately tracing to the Proto-Indo-European root leugh-, associated with bending, twisting, or distorting—metaphorically reflecting the act of warping truth through words.^[4] The term's evolution highlights a conceptual link between verbal deceit and physical contortion, distinct from the unrelated Old English licgan (to recline), which shares no etymological connection despite homophony in modern English.^[10] A lie constitutes an assertion that the speaker believes to be false, uttered with the deliberate intent to mislead or deceive the recipient, distinguishing it from mere errors, mistakes, or unintentional misrepresentations.^[11] Philosophically and linguistically, this requires both subjective falsity (the speaker's belief in the statement's untruth) and assertive intent under norms of truthful communication, such that even accidentally true statements believed false qualify as lies, while true beliefs honestly conveyed do not.^[12]^[13] This definition underscores lying as an act of epistemic betrayal, rooted in the causal mechanism of substituting known distortion for verifiable reality to manipulate belief.^[14] A lie is traditionally defined as an assertion that the speaker believes to be false, made with the intention that the recipient believe it to be true, thereby deceiving them about its content.^[15] This contrasts with truth-telling, which entails sincerely communicating propositions the speaker believes accurate, aiming to inform rather than mislead. Empirical studies of folk intuitions align with this view, indicating that both belief in the falsity of the statement and intent to deceive are necessary conditions for an act to be classified as a lie by ordinary language speakers. Unlike errors or honest mistakes, which involve conveying falsehoods due to ignorance or misapprehension without deceptive purpose, lies require deliberate knowledge of the statement's falsity.^[12] For instance, a witness providing incorrect testimony from faulty memory commits no lie absent intent to deceive, as the falsehood stems from cognitive limitation rather than volition.^[18] Deception by omission, involving the intentional withholding of pertinent facts to induce false beliefs, constitutes a form of misleading but diverges from lying, which demands an affirmative false assertion rather than mere silence or selective disclosure.^[19] Philosophers such as Immanuel Kant maintained that truth-telling obligates full disclosure in contexts of inquiry, yet distinguished strict lying as the propagation of known untruths, reserving omissions for separate ethical scrutiny.^[20] Harry Frankfurt delineates bullshit from lying by the bullshitter's indifference to truth-values: the liar subverts reality by asserting known falsehoods, presupposing awareness of truth to oppose it, whereas bullshitters fabricate without concern for veracity, prioritizing impression over factual constraint.^[21] This renders bullshit potentially more corrosive, as it undermines epistemic standards without engaging them.^[22] Sissela Bok specifies lying as an intentionally deceptive statement, excluding broader deceptions like equivocation—where ambiguous phrasing induces misinterpretation without direct falsity—or non-assertoric ploys such as gestures or implicatures that mislead sans explicit untruth.^[23] These related tactics deceive through indirection or implication but fail the criterion of asserting believed falsehoods, thus not qualifying as lies proper.^[24]

Classifications and Types of Lies

Lies are classified along multiple dimensions, including their form, the deceiver's intent or beneficiary, and their perceived seriousness, based on empirical research in psychology and communication studies. These categorizations help elucidate the mechanisms and motivations underlying deception in everyday interactions.^[25]^[26] One primary classification distinguishes lies by their form or method of execution:

Fabrication (lies of commission): Involves actively creating and uttering false information, such as fabricating events or attributes to mislead. This direct approach requires cognitive effort to construct and maintain consistency.^[26]
Concealment (lies of omission): Entails withholding relevant true information without asserting falsehoods, allowing the deceiver to avoid disclosure while implying accuracy through silence.^[26]
Equivocation: Features ambiguous or evasive statements that neither confirm nor deny truth, such as vague responses to sidestep commitment, often used to manage impressions without outright fabrication.^[26]

These forms align with interpersonal deception theory, which posits that deceivers strategically adapt their communication to minimize detection risks, drawing from empirical observations of verbal and nonverbal cues in dyadic interactions.^[26] A second dimension classifies lies by intent or beneficiary, reflecting whether deception primarily serves the liar, the target, or both:

Self-serving lies: Aimed at personal gain, such as avoiding embarrassment, punishment, or responsibility, or enhancing one's image or status. Diary studies of 147 participants (college students and community members) revealed self-serving justifications in 45% of college-reported lies and 57% of community lies, with content often involving actions, plans, or achievements.^[25]
Prosocial (other-oriented) lies: Intended to benefit the recipient, typically by sparing feelings or maintaining harmony, such as white lies complimenting appearance. These accounted for 26% of college lies and 24% of community lies in the same studies, more common in interactions with acquaintances than close relations.^[25]
Pareto lies: Benefit both the deceiver and the target, such as mutual flattery in negotiations, though less frequently isolated in everyday empirical data.^[27]

Self-serving lies outnumbered prosocial ones across samples, with participants reporting an average of 1.96 lies per day (college) and 0.97 (community), mostly trivial but self-centered.^[25] Lies are further differentiated by seriousness, contrasting everyday deceptions with grave ones:

Trivial or everyday lies: Short, spontaneous, and low-stakes, comprising the bulk of reported deceptions (e.g., about feelings or minor plans), often repeated without guilt as they protect the liar or mildly benefit others. In one-week diaries, such lies dominated, with fewer told to intimates.^[25]
Serious lies: Involve high consequences, like infidelity (23% of serious college lies) or misdeeds (20-23%), requiring sustained effort and risking relational damage; these are less frequent but judged more deceptive by both parties.^[25]^[28]

These categories overlap; for instance, a falsified alibi may be self-serving and serious. Empirical typologies emphasize that frequency and type vary by relationship closeness and personality traits like extraversion or Machiavellianism, which correlate with higher lying rates.^[25]

Psychological Foundations

Motivations and Cognitive Processes

Individuals engage in deception primarily to avoid anticipated negative outcomes, such as punishment, judgment, or shame, or to secure personal advantages like material gain or social approval.^[29] Empirical diary studies indicate that adults tell lies at a rate of approximately one to two per day, with college students averaging two lies daily and community members one; these lies are often self-centered in casual interactions but shift toward other-oriented motives, such as protecting relationships, in closer ties.^[30] Motivations can be categorized into pro-self (e.g., evading personal harm or acquiring benefits) and pro-social subtypes (e.g., sparing others' feelings), though self-serving protective lies predominate in frequency.^[31] Cognitively, lying imposes greater demands than truth-telling, as it requires simultaneous inhibition of the truthful response, fabrication of a plausible falsehood, and maintenance of consistency via working memory.^[32] This elevated cognitive load manifests in prolonged response latencies and heightened activation in executive control regions, including the prefrontal cortex, during neuroimaging tasks comparing lies to truths.^[33] Functional MRI evidence further reveals differential neural engagement for spontaneous versus instructed deception, with spontaneous lies recruiting broader conflict-monitoring and decision-making networks to weigh reputational risks against immediate gains.^[34] Such processes underscore deception's reliance on inhibitory control and mental simulation, rendering it more effortful and error-prone under divided attention.^[35]

Developmental Aspects and Frequency in Humans

Children begin to exhibit intentional deception around 2 to 3 years of age, coinciding with the emergence of basic theory of mind and executive function skills that enable them to misrepresent reality deliberately.^[36] This initial lying is often rudimentary, such as denying a transgression after witnessing it, and reflects cognitive advances rather than moral intent.^[37] By age 4, approximately 90% of children demonstrate the capacity for successful deception in experimental settings, marking a milestone in social-cognitive development where they understand others' false beliefs.^[38] Lying proficiency and frequency increase through childhood and adolescence, driven by maturing inhibitory control, semantic leakage control (to avoid contradictory details), and socio-moral reasoning.^[39] Preschoolers' lies are typically self-oriented and impulsive, while school-aged children (6-11 years) incorporate intentionality and prosocial elements, such as white lies for politeness.^[40] Peak lying ability occurs in young adulthood, after which it may decline with advanced age due to reduced cognitive flexibility, though empirical data on late-life patterns remain limited.^[39] Parental modeling influences trajectories; exposure to adult deception correlates with higher child dishonesty rates in longitudinal studies.^[41] In adults, self-reported lying averages 1 to 2 instances per day, though distributions are highly skewed: most individuals (about 75%) report 0-2 lies daily, while a minority of prolific liars account for nearly 40% of total lies.^[42] This pattern holds across surveys, including a 2010 U.S. national sample where 92% admitted lying at least once in a recent period, but average frequency remained low.^[39] Approximately 18% of young adults report daily lying, associated with lower self-esteem and academic performance in correlational analyses.^[43] Lies often serve prosocial functions (e.g., sparing feelings) or self-protection, comprising about 7% of daily communications.^[44] Recent replications confirm these rates, with no significant upward trend despite digital communication proliferation.^[45]

Individual and Pathological Variations

Individual differences in lying frequency and propensity are well-documented in psychological research, with the average person reporting 1 to 2 lies per day, though this varies substantially across individuals.^[46] Studies indicate that a small subset of prolific liars accounts for the majority of lies told, consistent with Truth-Default Theory, which posits that most people default to assuming truthfulness while a minority engages in disproportionate deception.^[47] For instance, approximately 18.1% of young adults report daily lying, correlating with lower grade point averages, reduced quality of life, and diminished self-esteem compared to non-daily liars.^[43] Personality traits, particularly those comprising the Dark Triad—narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy—predict higher lying frequency and acceptance of deception in everyday scenarios.^[48] Empirical data show positive associations between Dark Triad scores and self-reported weekly lies, with narcissism exhibiting the strongest link to increased dishonesty.^[48] Individuals high in these traits tend to view lying as a strategic tool for self-advancement, displaying greater ease in fabricating stories across contexts like personal gain or social manipulation.^[49] Measures such as the LYin Lying Tendency Scale further quantify variations in motivations, distinguishing selfish lies (for personal benefit), altruistic lies (to protect others), and social-acceptance lies (to maintain relationships).^[50] Pathological lying, also termed pseudologia fantastica or mythomania, represents an extreme variation characterized by persistent, pervasive, and often compulsive fabrication of elaborate falsehoods without apparent external motive or benefit.^[51] Unlike prosocial or self-serving lies, these deceptions are chronic, escalating from initial fabrications into complex narratives that impair social, occupational, or personal functioning, such as leading to professional ridicule or relational breakdowns.^[52] It is not a standalone DSM diagnosis but manifests as a symptom within personality disorders, including antisocial, narcissistic, or histrionic types, where liars may exhibit no distress from their behavior yet cause significant harm to others.^[53] Prevalence estimates from clinical samples range from 8% to 13%, with lies often grandiose or fantastical, persisting despite confrontation.^[53] Empirical reviews support pathological lying as a distinct entity involving compulsive escalation, neurobiological underpinnings like prefrontal cortex dysregulation, and resistance to intervention due to lack of self-recognized impairment.^[54] Treatment challenges arise from its integration with underlying disorders, with cognitive-behavioral approaches showing limited efficacy absent motivation for change, as liars rarely perceive their conduct as problematic.^[55] In contrast to normal variations driven by situational incentives, pathological forms stem from internal dysregulations, underscoring causal distinctions in deceptive behavior.^[54]

Detection and Countermeasures

Traditional and Empirical Detection Methods

Traditional detection methods for lies have historically relied on ordeals exploiting presumed physiological responses to guilt or fear. In ancient China around 1000 BCE, suspects chewed uncooked rice under questioning; dry rice upon spitting indicated deception, theorized to result from anxiety-induced xerostomia inhibiting salivation.^[56] Comparable practices in medieval Europe included trial by hot iron, where unburned flesh or rapid healing purportedly signaled truth, reflecting causal assumptions that divine intervention or bodily integrity would spare the innocent.^[57] These methods persisted into early modern eras, often intertwined with religious or superstitious rationales, but lacked empirical validation and frequently yielded arbitrary outcomes influenced by chance or suggestion. In non-ordeal traditions, detection emphasized behavioral observation during testimony or confrontation. Ancient texts, such as those from Babylon circa 3000 years ago, noted cues like toe-rubbing or downward gaze as guilt markers, while Greco-Roman interrogators probed for narrative inconsistencies or hesitations.^[58] Modern analogs include intuitive assessments of nonverbal signals—fidgeting, averted eyes, or grooming gestures—and verbal slips, such as over-elaboration or evasion, commonly taught in law enforcement training. Psychologists like Paul Ekman have formalized aspects of this through microexpression analysis, positing fleeting facial flashes reveal suppressed emotions tied to deceit.^[59] Empirical scrutiny undermines the reliability of these traditional cues. Meta-analyses of laboratory and field studies show human lie detectors, including trained professionals, achieve approximately 54% accuracy overall, detecting lies at 47% and truths at 61%—marginally above chance (50%) and invariant across experience levels.^[60] Nonverbal behaviors exhibit no diagnostic specificity; gaze aversion or illustrators like shrugs occur equivalently in stressed truth-tellers and fabricators, confounding detection due to shared arousal responses rather than deception per se.^[61] High-stakes contexts, such as criminal appeals, yield similar null results for isolated cues, with meta-analytic effect sizes near zero.^[62] Verbal-centric empirical methods offer incremental gains by analyzing content quality over demeanor. Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) scores statements on 19 reality criteria—e.g., logical structure, contextual ties, unusual details—deriving from superior memory encoding in experienced events versus fabricated ones. Developed for child sexual abuse cases, CBCA discriminates truths from lies with moderate effect sizes (d ≈ 1.0–1.5) in meta-analyses of youth testimonies, but adult applications show weaker validity (d ≈ 0.5–0.8), vulnerable to coaching or cultural variance.^[63]^[64] Reality monitoring, a related paradigm, leverages perceptual richness (sensory/perceptual details) absent in imagined deceits, yielding small-to-moderate accuracy uplifts (5–10% over baseline) in controlled paradigms.^[65] These approaches outperform nonverbal judgment when judges focus on substantive inconsistencies rather than stereotypes, yet persist below 65% accuracy without corroborative evidence, highlighting humans' default truth bias and cue overreliance.^[66]

Technological and Physiological Approaches

Polygraphs, also known as comparison question tests, measure physiological responses such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and electrodermal activity to infer deception by comparing reactions to relevant versus control questions.^[67] Developed by John Larson in 1921, these devices assume that lying provokes greater autonomic arousal due to emotional conflict or cognitive load.^[57] Laboratory studies report accuracy rates of approximately 80-90% under controlled conditions, but field applications, particularly in screening contexts, yield lower reliability, with false positive rates up to 50% in some meta-analyses, leading the National Academy of Sciences to deem them scientifically inadequate for broad evidentiary use.^[68]^[69] Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) attempts deception detection by observing brain activation patterns, positing that lying engages prefrontal and parietal regions associated with executive control and working memory more than truth-telling.^[70] Early studies, such as those from the 2000s, claimed classification accuracies exceeding 90% in simple paradigms, but subsequent reviews highlight poor generalizability across individuals, contexts, and lie types, with reliability undermined by variability in neural responses and potential countermeasures like mental distraction.^[71] A 2010 judicial review rejected fMRI evidence for lacking sufficient scientific validation, citing inconsistent replication and ethical concerns over false convictions.^[72] Electroencephalography (EEG), particularly event-related potentials like the P300 component, detects lies by measuring brain responses to probe stimuli, where concealed knowledge elicits larger amplitudes due to orienting and memory retrieval.^[73] Systematic reviews of studies from 2017-2024 indicate accuracies of 80-95% in laboratory concealed information tests, outperforming polygraphs in some paradigms by focusing on recognition rather than general arousal, though real-world applicability remains limited by stimulus specificity and susceptibility to habituation.^[73] Voice stress analysis (VSA) technologies analyze vocal micro-tremors and frequency shifts, theorizing that deception induces laryngeal tension reflecting psychological stress.^[74] Field evaluations, including a 2008 National Institute of Justice study, found VSA systems detecting only about 15-50% of deceptive statements on drug use, with no consistent advantage over chance, prompting critiques of pseudoscientific claims by manufacturers.^[74]^[75] Emerging physiological methods, such as ocular-motor deception detection via eye-tracking, monitor pupil dilation, saccades, and fixations under cognitive load, achieving reported accuracies over 80% in controlled trials by exploiting asymmetries in scanning truthful versus deceptive visual stimuli.^[76] These approaches, while promising for specific applications, face challenges in ecological validity and integration with broader multimodal systems.^[77] Overall, physiological techniques hinge on indirect inference from stress or cognitive effort, inherently vulnerable to individual differences in baseline arousal and training effects, necessitating cautious interpretation.^[78]

Reliability Challenges and False Positives

Human lie detection relies heavily on behavioral cues, yet meta-analyses of empirical studies reveal average accuracy rates of approximately 54% for distinguishing lies from truths, only marginally above chance levels, with truths correctly identified at 61% and lies at 47%.^[79] This modest performance persists across professionals such as law enforcement officers and laypersons, attributed to overreliance on invalid stereotypes like gaze aversion or fidgeting, which do not reliably correlate with deception.^[80] Nonverbal indicators, including purported microexpressions, fail to provide consistent diagnostic value; systematic reviews conclude that such fleeting facial movements do not enhance detection beyond baseline guessing and may mislead interpreters by conflating emotional leakage with deceit.^[61]^[81] Polygraph testing exemplifies pronounced reliability deficits, particularly through elevated false positive rates where truthful individuals are erroneously classified as deceptive. Independent studies outside polygraph advocacy circles report false positive rates exceeding 50%, driven by physiological responses to anxiety or unfamiliarity mimicking deception signals such as elevated heart rate or skin conductance.^[82] A comprehensive review by the National Research Council documented false positive incidences ranging from 2% to 50.7% across examinations, averaging 14.1%, with variability stemming from examiner subjectivity and test protocols that amplify innocent stress responses.^[83] These errors have real-world consequences, including wrongful accusations in employment screenings and interrogations, where base rates of actual deception are low, inflating the proportion of false alarms under Bayes' theorem principles.^[84] Broader challenges arise from cognitive biases and contextual factors that exacerbate false positives. Truth bias predisposes detectors to assume honesty, inadvertently boosting false negatives for lies but, in high-stakes scenarios, prompting compensatory scrutiny that flags benign nervousness as deceit.^[85] Cultural differences in expressive norms and individual variations in autonomic reactivity further undermine universality, as cues deemed deceptive in one population may reflect normative behavior elsewhere. Empirical field studies highlight how these issues compound in asymmetric base-rate environments, such as security screenings, where rare deception events yield predominantly false positives even with tools achieving 80-90% controlled accuracy.^[86] Technological aids like AI-driven analysis promise improvements but inherit similar pitfalls when trained on biased datasets, perpetuating erroneous classifications without addressing underlying causal ambiguities in deception signals.^[87]

Consequences and Impacts

Interpersonal and Psychological Effects

Lying undermines interpersonal trust, as deception, once detected, often severs relational bonds and fosters suspicion in subsequent interactions. Empirical studies indicate that discovering falsehoods damages trust between parties, with prosocial lies sometimes temporarily boosting cooperation but ultimately reducing long-term social connection when revealed. In close relationships, frequent deception leads to relational distance, as lies accumulate and require defensive maintenance, cluttering communication and escalating conflicts. Victims of interpersonal lies commonly experience heightened anxiety, confusion, anger, and feelings of abandonment, which can perpetuate cycles of avoidance and resentment.^[88]^[89] Psychologically, the act of lying imposes costs on the deceiver, including diminished self-esteem and elevated negative affect, irrespective of whether the lie serves self-interest or others. Research across multiple experiments demonstrates that even recalling past lies triggers psychological distress, with habitual liars exhibiting lower overall self-esteem, poorer quality of life, and reduced academic performance; for instance, young adults who lie daily report significantly worse grade point averages compared to infrequent liars. Pathological lying, characterized by compulsive deceit without apparent gain, correlates with impaired mental health, though it lacks formal diagnostic status in major classifications like the DSM-5, prompting calls for recognition as a distinct disorder due to its disruptive effects on the liar's functioning.^[90]^[43]^[55] For those deceived, the psychological toll manifests as betrayal trauma, evoking intense emotions such as sadness, rage, and eroded self-worth, often initiating a prolonged grief-like process that challenges relational recovery. Individuals with prior trauma histories may face amplified effects, with lies reactivating hypervigilance and exacerbating conditions like complex PTSD through shattered expectations of safety. These impacts highlight deception's causal role in fostering emotional isolation, as victims internalize doubt about their judgment, potentially impairing future attachments.^[91]^[92]

Societal and Institutional Ramifications

Lies and deception within institutions erode public trust, fostering social fragmentation and reduced cooperation. Empirical models demonstrate that antisocial lying in social networks leads to increasingly disconnected communities, as individuals withdraw from interactions perceived as unreliable, amplifying isolation over time.^[93] This dynamic extends to broader society, where repeated institutional dishonesty correlates with declining interpersonal trust, evidenced by studies linking deception to heightened loneliness and weakened social bonds.^[94] In democratic contexts, such erosion manifests as voter disillusionment, with misinformation campaigns deliberately undermining confidence in electoral processes and governance legitimacy.^[95] In political institutions, deception contributes to policy failures and scandals that destabilize governance. For instance, political dishonesty, including disinformation spread via digital platforms, accelerates the rapid dissemination of falsehoods, resulting in polarized electorates and inefficient resource allocation based on fabricated premises.^[96] Historical analyses of scandals reveal patterns where officials' deceit in constituent relations leads to moral ambiguity around fraud, further entrenching cynicism toward leadership.^[97] Public surveys indicate that awareness of such lies—often self-admitted by politicians through inconsistent narratives—intensifies perceptions of incompetence or malice, diminishing institutional efficacy.^[98] Media institutions amplify these effects through selective reporting and failure to challenge falsehoods, perpetuating a "culture of lying" that distorts public discourse.^[99] Low trust in news outlets, which has reached historic lows since 1975 tracking began, stems partly from audiences perceiving bias, omission of facts, and equivalence between verifiable truths and partisan claims, as critiqued in audience studies.^[100] This institutional corruption, driven by dynamics like insider deceptions and agenda-pushing, fragments information ecosystems, hindering informed civic participation.^[101] Economically, deception imposes substantial costs via fraud and misrepresentation, diverting resources from productive uses. In the United States, consumer-reported fraud losses reached $12.5 billion in 2024, a 25% increase from the prior year, encompassing scams reliant on deceitful promises.^[102] Federal estimates peg annual government-wide fraud at $233 billion to $521 billion, reflecting systemic vulnerabilities in oversight and verification.^[103] Globally, disinformation alone exacts $78 billion yearly in market disruptions and reputational damage to corporations, underscoring how institutional lies cascade into broader fiscal inefficiencies.^[104] These burdens, often underreported, equate to nearly 8-10% of revenues for affected businesses, compounding through lost productivity and heightened defensive expenditures.^[105]

Long-Term Cultural and Economic Costs

Widespread deception in society contributes to diminished social trust, which empirical studies link to reduced economic productivity and growth. Low-trust environments necessitate extensive formal contracts, legal oversight, and hierarchical structures to mitigate opportunism, elevating transaction costs and constraining the formation of efficient, large-scale enterprises beyond familial networks.^[106] In high-trust societies, such as post-war Japan and Germany, spontaneous cooperation enables flexible networks and innovation, fostering prosperity; conversely, low-trust societies like those in southern Italy exhibit pervasive corruption and inefficient governance, perpetuating economic stagnation.^[106] Cross-national analyses confirm that higher generalized trust correlates with greater GDP per capita growth, as trust facilitates investments in physical and human capital while boosting productivity through reduced monitoring needs.^[107]^[108] Deception's erosion of trust imposes long-term economic burdens, including misallocation of resources via fraud and corruption, with U.S. healthcare dishonesty alone estimated at up to $272 billion annually in the early 2010s, diverting funds from productive uses and inflating systemic inefficiencies.^[109] Persistent dishonesty reinforces behavioral norms favoring opportunism, as individuals observing widespread lying rationalize their own deceit, creating feedback loops that hinder institutional reforms and sustain low growth trajectories. In low-trust settings, economic activity remains confined to small, insular groups, limiting scalability and technological diffusion, as evidenced by comparative studies of familistic versus associative cultures.^[106] Culturally, chronic lying fragments social networks and undermines cohesion, as deceptive practices deviate from normative expectations, fostering isolation and relativism over shared truths.^[93] This leads to declining civic engagement and weakened civil society, with low social capital correlating to fragmented communities unable to sustain voluntary cooperation or collective problem-solving.^[106] Over generations, such environments prioritize short-term self-interest, eroding virtues like reciprocity and accountability, which are foundational to cultural resilience; rebuilding trust proves arduous, as deception more readily destroys established norms than it constructs new ones.^[110] In extreme cases, systemic lies propagate ideological echo chambers, polarizing discourse and impeding consensus on empirical realities essential for cultural progress.^[111]

Ethical and Philosophical Analysis

Moral Justifications and Prohibitions

![St. Augustine]float-right Major religious traditions impose strict prohibitions against lying, viewing it as a fundamental violation of divine command and human integrity. In Judaism and Christianity, the Eighth Commandment—"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor"—explicitly forbids false testimony, extending to broader deceptions that undermine truth and justice.^[112] Islam similarly condemns lying as a major sin, with the Quran stating that liars will face severe punishment unless they repent, emphasizing truthfulness as a pillar of faith.^[113] Early Christian thinkers reinforced these bans without exception. St. Augustine, in his treatise On Lying (c. 395 AD), argued that any deliberate falsehood uttered with intent to deceive constitutes a lie, which corrupts the soul regardless of motive, as it opposes the divine nature of truth. He classified lies into categories like those harmful to others or self-deceptive but deemed all morally culpable, rejecting even lies to protect life as they violate the categorical duty to veracity.^[114] Augustine's position influenced Catholic doctrine, which upholds the Eighth Commandment as absolute, permitting no intentional deception even in dire circumstances.^[115] Deontological ethics in philosophy echoes these absolutes. Immanuel Kant, in his 1797 essay On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy, maintained that lying is inherently wrong because it treats others as means rather than ends, violating the categorical imperative to act only on maxims universalizable as rational law. Even lying to a murderer at the door to save a friend remains impermissible, as truthfulness preserves human autonomy and public trust; consequences cannot override this duty.^[116]^[117] Consequentialist frameworks, such as utilitarianism, offer justifications for lying when it maximizes overall welfare. Act-utilitarians permit deception if no better alternative exists and net utility increases, as in wartime intelligence or shielding innocents from harm, arguing that rigid prohibitions ignore context-specific harms of truth.^[118] Some religious traditions allow exceptions, like Judaism permitting lies to preserve life (pikuach nefesh), prioritizing survival over strict veracity in extremis. However, critics contend such justifications erode foundational trust, fostering a slippery slope where subjective "greater goods" rationalize habitual deceit, as empirical studies show repeated lying diminishes societal cooperation and personal credibility over time.^[116]

First-Principles Reasoning on Deception

Deception entails the intentional assertion of a proposition known to be false by the speaker, with the aim of inducing a corresponding false belief in the recipient. This act exploits the presupposition inherent in communication that signals reliably map to reality, enabling coordination among rational agents who depend on accurate information for predictive decision-making. Without this default veracity, discourse collapses into unverifiable noise, as each reception would require exhaustive independent verification, negating the efficiency of language as a causal mechanism for shared knowledge and action.^[1]^[116] From a deontological standpoint grounded in the logic of rational agency, deception contradicts the universalizability of truth-telling as a maxim. Immanuel Kant, in his 1797 essay "On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy," contends that speech exists to convey truth, and any lie undermines this telos by treating the listener's rational capacity instrumentally rather than as an end in itself. Were deception willed as a universal law, it would erode the trust presupposed in all communicative acts, rendering promises, inquiries, and declarations meaningless—since no assertion could be relied upon, the very framework for moral and practical reasoning dissolves. This self-defeating nature arises causally: deception succeeds only against a backdrop of predominant honesty; its generalization incentivizes perpetual skepticism, escalating cognitive and social costs without reciprocal benefit.^[119]^[120] Causally, deception severs the link between empirical reality and belief formation, leading agents to act on distorted models of the world. Rational choice presupposes veridical inputs; false beliefs propagate errors in subsequent inferences and behaviors, such as misallocated resources or failed cooperation in iterated interactions. In strategic settings, where outcomes depend on mutual expectations, initial deceptions may yield short-term gains but erode reputational equilibria, as Bayesian updating by recipients adjusts priors toward distrust, increasing the probability of defection in future exchanges. This dynamic mirrors the prisoner's dilemma extended over time: truth fosters verifiable reciprocity, while deception invites retaliation or withdrawal, diminishing overall welfare through heightened uncertainty. Empirical analogs in economics, such as adverse selection under asymmetric information, illustrate how unchecked misrepresentation collapses markets by incentivizing withdrawal of quality signals.^[116]^[121] Philosophically, the wrongness of deception stems not merely from contingent harms but from its inherent subversion of epistemic autonomy. By supplying fabricated premises, the deceiver usurps the recipient's faculty for independent judgment, akin to poisoning the well of reason. Classical thinkers like Aristotle viewed habitual falsehood as a character flaw eroding phronesis (practical wisdom), as reliable self-knowledge and interpersonal signaling require alignment with facts. Sustained deception thus impairs the deceiver's own causal efficacy, fostering self-deception or habitual divergence from reality, which hampers adaptive responses in a world governed by objective constraints.^[122]

Debates on "Noble Lies" and Utilitarian Trade-offs

![Plato bust][float-right] In Plato's Republic (circa 375 BCE), the "noble lie" (Greek: gennaion pseudos, often translated as a "magnificent myth") is proposed in Book III as a foundational deception to instill acceptance of the ideal city's class structure. Socrates suggests telling citizens that they were born from the earth infused with metals—gold for rulers (guardians), silver for auxiliaries (warriors), and bronze or iron for producers (farmers and craftsmen)—with offspring inheriting parental metals to justify inherited roles and encourage vigilance against degeneration.^[123] This lie aims to foster civic unity and willing subordination, benefiting the polis by aligning individual duties with collective harmony, though Plato acknowledges its implausibility and frames it as a necessary expedient for non-philosophers.^[124] The concept resonates with consequentialist frameworks, predating but paralleling utilitarian trade-offs where deception is permissible if it maximizes overall welfare. Utilitarians assess lies by their net outcomes: a falsehood promoting greater happiness or stability for the many outweighs the harm of individual truth-denial. For instance, act utilitarians might endorse a leader concealing harsh realities to avert panic, as in wartime deceptions that save lives, provided the utility calculus—balancing pleasure, pain, and long-term effects—yields positive results.^[116] Proponents, drawing from Plato, argue noble lies sustain fragile social orders, preventing chaos from unvarnished truths about inequality or human flaws that could incite revolt.^[125] Opponents, particularly deontologists, reject such trade-offs as morally corrosive, insisting truthfulness is an absolute duty irrespective of consequences. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) maintained that lying violates the categorical imperative by treating others as means to an end and erodes rational autonomy, famously arguing one must not lie even to a murderer inquiring after a hidden innocent, lest universalized deceit render communication impossible.^[116] This absolutism critiques noble lies as paternalistic elitism, risking elite corruption and public disillusionment upon exposure, which historically amplifies distrust beyond initial harms—evident in philosophical warnings that fabricated myths undermine genuine virtue and consent.^[126] Debates intensify over empirical viability: while theoretical models posit controlled deception for societal gain, real-world applications often falter, as sustained lies demand perpetual secrecy and invite escalation, per critics like those echoing Kant's concerns about slippery slopes to tyranny. Utilitarian responses invoke rule utilitarianism, advocating habitual truth-telling rules unless exceptions demonstrably enhance aggregate utility, but concede noble lies' rarity due to discovery risks eroding institutional legitimacy.^[116] Philosophers like Leo Strauss (1899–1973) revived noble lies for esoteric political writing to shield truths from masses, yet this invites charges of intellectual hierarchy over egalitarian realism, highlighting tensions between short-term stability and long-term epistemic integrity.^[127]

Evolutionary and Biological Dimensions

Deception in Non-Human Animals

Deception in non-human animals encompasses a range of behaviors where individuals transmit misleading signals to exploit others, often for foraging, mating, or evasion advantages. These include passive forms like camouflage and mimicry, as well as active tactical maneuvers that suggest cognitive flexibility. Empirical observations span taxa, from insects using aggressive mimicry to lure prey—such as Photuris fireflies imitating the luminescent signals of conspecifics to attract and consume them—to vertebrates employing feigned signals in social contexts.^[128] In predator-prey dynamics, post-detection deception frequently involves erratic movements or injury simulation to divert pursuit, as seen in ground-nesting birds like killdeer that perform "broken-wing" displays to lead threats away from nests.^[129] Among mammals, rodents demonstrate rudimentary tactical deception. A 2024 field study of free-living Algerian mice (Mus spretus) revealed flexible dodging behaviors during pursuits, where mice unpredictably altered trajectories to mislead predators, with success rates increasing when deception was employed over direct flight. This marks the first documented evidence of potential intentional tactical deception in mice, analyzed through high-speed video tracking of over 200 chases.^[130] Primates exhibit more sophisticated instances, often involving manipulation of conspecific knowledge states. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), for example, have been observed hiding food from dominant group members or feigning disinterest in mating opportunities to avoid competition, with behaviors varying based on the observer's visual access.^[131] Systematic catalogs of primate deception, such as the 1990 database by Byrne and Whiten, documented over 250 cases across 42 species, including tactical concealment in wild olive baboons (Papio anubis) where subordinates hid affiliations from dominants to evade punishment.^[132] In gelada monkeys (Theropithecus gelada), females actively conceal extra-pair copulations with subordinate males by suppressing vocalizations and repositioning during encounters with dominant males, reducing detection risk by up to 80% in observed instances from a 2013 Ethiopian highland study.^[133] These patterns suggest deception evolves where social complexity or predation pressure favors misleading signals, though distinguishing instinct from intent remains challenging without direct mind-reading evidence. Peer-reviewed analyses emphasize that such behaviors correlate with relative brain size in primates, implying cognitive underpinnings akin to theory of mind precursors.^[134]

Adaptive Role in Human Evolution

Deception, encompassing deliberate lying, conferred adaptive advantages in human evolution by enabling individuals to manipulate social interactions for resource acquisition, status enhancement, and reproductive success in competitive ancestral environments. In small hunter-gatherer groups, where cooperation was essential yet rife with conflicts of interest, deceivers could secure disproportionate shares of food or mates without incurring the risks of overt aggression, thereby increasing fitness when detection probabilities were low. Evolutionary models demonstrate that lying strategies, such as self-benefiting "black lies," can invade truthful populations and stabilize at high frequencies (around 90% among senders) when payoff benefits to the liar exceed costs to the deceived, particularly as receivers evolve skepticism in response.^[135] This dynamic reflects a co-evolutionary arms race between deception and detection, with natural selection favoring traits that minimize cognitive costs of lying, such as reduced nervousness or hesitation cues.^[136] Self-deception emerged as a key mechanism to bolster interpersonal deception, allowing individuals to internalize false beliefs and thereby deceive others more convincingly without betraying telltale signs of duplicity. By dissociating conscious attitudes from unconscious knowledge—through biased information processing, selective memory, or source confusion—self-deceivers project greater confidence and authenticity, enhancing persuasion in leadership, mating, or alliance formation. In ancestral settings, this facilitated overconfident displays that deterred rivals or attracted partners, with empirical links to improved immune function, reduced stress, and longevity via positive illusions. For instance, approximately 50% of daily human lies serve self-interested goals, underscoring persistent selective pressures from such adaptations.^[136] Detection rates, though generally poor (improving to 72% only in high-stakes scenarios like interrogations), further rewarded self-deceivers who avoided scrutiny.^[136] The evolution of language amplified deception's utility as a derived function, enabling abstract manipulation beyond primate-like tactical deceit, though its primary role remains social bonding with honesty to sustain trust. Prosocial lies, which mitigate conflicts or bolster group cohesion, increase developmentally (post-age 7 in children), suggesting innate modules calibrated for balanced use given deception's risks, such as reputational damage or retaliation. Overall, lying's rarity in daily life (fewer than 2 lies per day on average) indicates selection for restraint, where benefits accrue selectively in asymmetric power dynamics or when prosocial variants enhance inclusive fitness without eroding cooperative equilibria.^[137]

Genetic and Neurobiological Bases

Twin studies indicate moderate to substantial heritability in attitudes toward everyday dishonesty and moral judgments of deceptive acts. A study of over 1,000 twin pairs found that genetic factors account for approximately 30-40% of variance in disapproval of dishonest behaviors, with shared environment playing a minimal role.^[138] Similarly, broad heritability estimates for self-reported lying tendencies, as measured by scales like the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire's Lie subscale, range from 29% to 42% in large adult twin samples.^[139] These findings suggest that predispositions to dishonesty arise partly from polygenic influences rather than single genes, though environmental interactions modulate expression. For pathological lying, characterized by compulsive fabrication, genetic contributions are implicated alongside neurodevelopmental factors, but no deterministic "lying gene" has been identified; instead, variants in genes like TPH2, involved in serotonin synthesis, correlate with dishonest choices in experimental paradigms such as the die-under-cup task, where participants underreport rolls for gain.^[140]^[141] Neuroimaging research reveals that deception engages cognitive control networks, demanding greater neural resources than truth-telling due to the dual processes of suppressing veridical information and fabricating alternatives. Functional MRI (fMRI) studies consistently show heightened activation in the prefrontal cortex, particularly the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) for working memory and executive planning, and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for detecting cognitive conflict between truth and lie.^[35]^[142] A meta-analysis of deception paradigms identifies a distributed network including ventrolateral prefrontal regions for response inhibition and parietal areas for attentional allocation, with no brain region reliably more active during honest disclosure than deception, underscoring lying's inherent inhibitory load.^[143] These activations are modulated by context; strategic deception in social interactions recruits additional temporoparietal junction activity for theory-of-mind inferences about others' beliefs.^[144] Pathological forms may involve prefrontal hypoactivation or white matter anomalies, reducing inhibitory control and facilitating unchecked falsehoods, as observed in pseudologia fantastica cases.^[141] Overall, these bases highlight deception as an evolutionarily conserved override of default honesty circuits, reliant on intact executive function.

Historical and Cultural Contexts

Prominent Historical Examples of Systemic Lies

The Donation of Constantine was a forged imperial decree falsely attributed to Emperor Constantine I around 315 AD, claiming he had granted Pope Sylvester I supremacy over the Western Roman Empire, including vast territories and secular authority. Likely fabricated in the papal chancery between 750 and 850 AD to bolster the Church's claims amid conflicts with secular rulers like the Lombards and Franks, the document was systematically invoked in papal bulls and canon law for centuries to legitimize the temporal power of the Holy See. Its exposure as a linguistic and historical anachronism came in 1440 through the philological analysis of Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla, who demonstrated inconsistencies such as references to non-existent titles and Latin styles absent in the 4th century.^[145]^[146] The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated antisemitic tract alleging a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy for world domination through control of finance, media, and governments, originated as a plagiarism of earlier satirical works by Russian secret police (Okhrana) agents around 1897-1903. First serialized in a Russian newspaper in 1903 and published as a book in 1905, it was systematically promoted by Tsarist authorities to deflect blame for pogroms and revolutionary unrest, later adopted by Henry Ford's The International Jew in the U.S. (1920-1922) and Nazi propaganda, including citations in Mein Kampf (1925), contributing to widespread persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Exposed as a forgery in 1921 by The Times of London through side-by-side comparisons revealing direct lifts from Maurice Joly's 1864 anti-Napoleon satire and Hermann Goedsche's 1868 novel, its persistence despite debunking underscores institutional endorsement overriding evidence.^[147]^[148] Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union exemplified state-enforced pseudoscience, where agronomist Trofim Lysenko, backed by Joseph Stalin from the mid-1930s, rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of Lamarckian inheritance claims that environmental changes could rapidly alter heredity in crops and livestock. Promoted through purges of geneticists like Nikolai Vavilov (imprisoned 1940, died 1943) and official decrees, including the 1948 ban on genetics research, Lysenko's methods—such as vernalization and close planting—were mandated nationwide, leading to agricultural failures that exacerbated famines like the 1932-1933 Holodomor (5-7 million deaths) and post-WWII shortages. The doctrine's collapse began after Stalin's death in 1953, with genetics rehabilitated by 1964 under Nikita Khrushchev, though Lysenko retained influence until 1965; retrospective analyses attribute millions of excess deaths to yield drops of up to 50% in key crops.^[149]^[150] The Dreyfus Affair involved the French Army's 1894 framing of Jewish captain Alfred Dreyfus for treason via forged evidence and a secret dossier, despite exonerating ballistics showing Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy as the bordereau's author. Systematically covered up by military intelligence under General Mercier to protect institutional honor and amid antisemitic sentiments, Dreyfus was court-martialed on October 19, 1894, degraded publicly on January 5, 1895, and exiled to Devil's Island; the conspiracy persisted through a 1899 retrial influenced by falsified documents until full exoneration on July 12, 1906, after Émile Zola's 1898 open letter J'Accuse...!. This episode, involving forgery of over 200 documents and perjury by officers like Hubert-Joseph Henry (who confessed and suicided in 1898), eroded public trust in the Third Republic and fueled Zionist movements.^[151]

Representations in Literature, Art, and Folklore

In literature, Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) portrays lying through the protagonist's wooden nose, which elongates each time he utters a falsehood, visually embodying the accumulation of deceit and its inescapability.^[152]^[153] This motif underscores the narrative's moral lesson on honesty, as Pinocchio's repeated lies lead to physical and consequential repercussions until he reforms.^[152] Aesop's fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," dating to ancient Greece around the 6th century BCE, illustrates the perils of habitual lying: a shepherd boy falsely alerts villagers to a wolf attack for amusement, eroding their trust, so that when a real wolf appears, his cries go unheeded, resulting in loss of sheep.^[154] The tale's moral, "Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth," has influenced Western proverbs and cautionary stories against deception.^[154] In folklore, lying contests feature prominently, as in Type 1965 of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther folktale classification, where characters vie with increasingly absurd fabrications, such as a man claiming to lack eyes, legs, or arms, highlighting exaggeration as a form of competitive deceit found across European oral traditions.^[155] Greek mythology abounds with deceptive figures, including Odysseus, whose lies to Polyphemus—claiming the name "Nobody"—enable escape, and gods like Zeus, who frequently employ guile, reflecting deception's role in survival and divine intrigue.^[156]^[157] Artistic representations often allegorize deception through mythological scenes; Diego Velázquez's 17th-century paintings, such as Joseph's Bloody Coat Brought to Jacob (c. 1630), depict biblical deceit where brothers fabricate evidence of fratricide to conceal their betrayal, using dramatic lighting to emphasize moral ambiguity.^[158] In Baroque illusionism, trompe-l'œil techniques simulate reality to deceive the eye, mirroring thematic lies in works like those of the Carracci brothers, though primarily technical rather than narrative.^[159]

Cross-Cultural Attitudes Toward Lying

Attitudes toward lying vary significantly across cultures, often aligning with broader value systems such as individualism versus collectivism. In individualistic societies like those in the United States and Western Europe, lying is generally viewed more negatively, with a stronger emphasis on personal autonomy and objective truthfulness, leading to lower acceptability ratings for most forms of deception.^[160] Conversely, collectivist cultures, including those in East Asia and Latin America, tend to show greater tolerance for prosocial lies that preserve social harmony, protect group interests, or avoid conflict, reflecting priorities of relational interdependence over absolute honesty.^[161] ^[162] Empirical studies on children's moral evaluations highlight these divergences early in development. For instance, research comparing Chinese and Canadian children found that while both groups disapproved of antisocial lies, Chinese participants rated prosocial lies—those intended to benefit the collective—as more acceptable and less morally culpable than their Canadian counterparts, attributing this to cultural norms favoring group harmony.^[163] Similarly, Korean and American children exhibited differences in judging lies versus truths in collective-oriented scenarios, with East Asian children showing leniency toward deceptions that upheld social obligations.^[161] These patterns persist into adulthood, as evidenced by a study of German and Chinese university students, where Chinese participants deemed lying in intergroup contexts more morally justifiable if it served relational or face-saving goals, whereas Germans prioritized truth as an intrinsic ethical duty.^[164] Cross-cultural research on indirect deception further reveals nuanced attitudes. A comparison of U.S. and Russian participants indicated that Russians assigned lower "lie ratings" to indirect statements that conveyed falsehoods without explicit falsity, suggesting a cultural acceptance of implication over direct assertion in communication.^[165] In prosocial contexts, Euro-Americans rated lies motivated by altruism as more acceptable than self-serving ones, but overall less so than Ecuadorians, who balanced individual benefit with communal welfare in their judgments.^[160] Such findings underscore how cultural scripts—shaped by historical emphases on hierarchy, reciprocity, or autonomy—influence the perceived legitimacy of deception, with collectivist norms often framing certain lies as adaptive rather than immoral.^[166] Anthropological evidence complements psychological data, showing that in some non-Western societies, deception is embedded in everyday pragmatics without stigma. For example, ethnographic accounts from China describe "face-saving" evasions as normative politeness rather than deceit, prioritizing indirectness to maintain social bonds over blunt truth-telling.^[167] However, global surveys reveal potential trade-offs: stricter cultural prohibitions on dishonesty in high-trust societies correlate with lower reported cheating rates, while permissive attitudes toward "harmless" lies may erode broader civic honesty in diverse experimental paradigms.^[168] These variations challenge universalist assumptions, emphasizing context-dependent evaluations grounded in empirical cross-national comparisons.

Religious and Theological Views

Abrahamic Traditions

In Judaism, the Ninth Commandment explicitly prohibits bearing false witness against one's neighbor, as stated in Exodus 20:16.^[169] Talmudic literature upholds a high standard of truthfulness, deeming even minor deceptions rabbinically forbidden based on prophetic verses emphasizing integrity.^[170] However, exceptions exist: lying is permitted to preserve human life, promote peace between individuals (shalom bayit), or uphold modesty, as derived from interpretations allowing deviation from strict truth when greater harm would otherwise occur.^[169] Christian theology draws from the same Decalogue prohibition while reinforcing truth as a divine attribute, with Proverbs 12:22 declaring lying lips an abomination to the Lord and Ephesians 4:25 urging believers to eschew falsehood.^[114] Early Church Father Augustine of Hippo, in his treatise On Lying (c. 395 CE), argued unequivocally against all lies, defining a lie as speech intended to deceive regardless of intent or outcome, even in cases like protecting innocents from persecutors, as truthfulness aligns with God's unchanging nature.^[114] ^[171] This absolutist position influenced later thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, who maintained that while evasion or silence might be preferable, deliberate falsehood remains intrinsically wrong.^[114] In Islam, the Quran commands adherence to truth in justice (4:135) and condemns liars alongside disbelievers (9:107), while Hadith collections such as Sahih Bukhari report the Prophet Muhammad stating that truthfulness leads to righteousness and paradise, whereas lying leads to wickedness and hellfire (Bukhari 6094). A hadith further identifies lying as one of three definitive signs of hypocrisy (Bukhari 33). Exceptions are narrowly circumscribed: deception is allowable in warfare ("war is deceit," Bukhari 3029), reconciliation between disputants, or spousal relations to foster harmony, though taqiyya—primarily a Shia doctrine permitting concealment of faith under persecution—remains debated and not a general license for falsehood in Sunni jurisprudence. ^[172]

Eastern Philosophies and Religions

In Hinduism, truthfulness (satya) constitutes a core ethical principle within dharma, requiring adherents to refrain from lying, betraying promises, and suppressing truth, as deception disrupts cosmic order and personal virtue.^[173]^[174] Scriptures classify lying as a sin of speech, often motivated by gain or harm, which binds the soul to negative karma and hinders spiritual progress.^[175] While satya emphasizes speaking what is true, kind, and necessary, it integrates with ahimsa (non-violence), subordinating absolute truth to avoidance of harm in rare contexts, though outright falsehood remains condemned.^[176] Buddhism's fourth precept mandates abstaining from musavada (false speech), encompassing lies, deceit, and misleading words intended to deceive, as such actions generate harmful karma and obstruct the path to enlightenment.^[177] Right Speech (samma vaca), a component of the Noble Eightfold Path, prohibits not only deliberate falsehoods but also divisive, harsh, or idle talk that erodes trust and mindfulness.^[178] The Buddha emphasized intention: speech believed true, even if erroneous, does not violate the precept absent deceitful motive, underscoring causal realism in ethical evaluation where outcomes stem from volition rather than mere words.^[177] Jainism elevates satya (truthfulness) as one of the five main vows for laypersons and ascetics, demanding strict avoidance of lies, half-truths, or exaggerations to uphold ahimsa (non-violence), since verbal harm karmically binds the soul and perpetuates suffering across existences.^[179]^[180] This principle aligns thoughts, words, and actions, viewing deception as a form of violence that confuses the mind and invites karmic influx, with no exceptions for "white lies" as even protective silence is preferred over falsehood to minimize harm.^[181] Confucianism prioritizes xin (sincerity or trustworthiness) as a cardinal virtue, demanding alignment between inner intent and outward expression to foster social harmony and moral rectification, where habitual lying erodes personal integrity and societal order.^[182] Confucius taught that honesty in thoughts, avoidance of bias, and frank self-assessment form the basis of proper conduct, with insincerity (bu cheng) leading to self-deception and relational breakdown.^[183] However, texts like the Mencius permit deception in exceptional cases if it aligns with righteousness (yi), such as strategic misdirection for greater ethical ends, reflecting a pragmatic realism over rigid absolutism.^[184] Taoism views truth as alignment with the Tao's natural flow, discouraging contrived deception in daily life as it disrupts effortless action (wu wei) and invites disharmony, though indirectness or paradox may serve strategic contexts like warfare without moral condemnation.^[185] Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching implies that excessive words, including false ones, obscure reality, prioritizing authentic simplicity over verbal manipulation to avoid karmic-like imbalances in the cosmic order.^[186]

Indigenous and Polytheistic Perspectives

In polytheistic traditions, deception frequently manifests as a divine tool for innovation, survival, or cosmic balance, embodied by trickster deities whose lies challenge rigid order without universal condemnation. In ancient Greek mythology, Hermes exemplifies this as the inventor of lying; on the day of his birth in approximately the 8th century BCE Homeric Hymn accounts, he stole Apollo's cattle, concealed the theft with cunning tracks, and fabricated denials before inventing the lyre from a tortoise shell as recompense, establishing his patronage over thieves and eloquent falsehoods.^[187] Likewise, Norse lore portrays Loki as the god of mischief and deception, whose shape-shifting lies alternately rescue the gods—such as retrieving Thor's hammer Mjölnir through disguise—and precipitate chaos, as in the binding of Fenrir where deceit ensures divine security, illustrating trickery's dual role in maintaining equilibrium.^[188] Hindu scriptures uphold satya (truth) as a foundational dharma, yet permit calculated lies under exigency, reflecting causal trade-offs between veracity and harm prevention. The Mahabharata, composed around 400 BCE to 400 CE, specifies falsehood as allowable in five contexts: to save a life in peril, during marriage rites, against enemies in war, to preserve a secret, or for a brähmin's welfare, as articulated in Book 8, Verse 69, where such deceptions align with broader ethical utility rather than absolute prohibition.^[189] Indigenous traditions often prioritize truth for relational and ecological harmony, equating lies with self-deception or communal rupture, though trickster archetypes pragmatically deploy deceit to expose folly or foster adaptation. Among Native American groups like the Haudenosaunee, 19th-century leaders such as Red Jacket in his 1805 address to U.S. officials defended indigenous truths against colonial fabrications, emphasizing honest discourse as resistance to imposed narratives.^[190] Coyote, a recurrent trickster in tribes including the Navajo and Lakota, lies inventively for sustenance or fire acquisition in oral tales dating to pre-colonial eras, yet faces repercussions that teach boundaries, as in GVSU analyses of trickster motifs where deceit drives cultural lessons on excess.^[191] African indigenous epistemologies similarly distinguish moral lying from factual error, valorizing truth as empirically verified conscience while acknowledging falsehood's pervasive rivalry. Yoruba philosophy defines ooto (truth) as perceptual evidence conjoined with inner testimony, rendering iro (lie) a deliberate ethical breach rather than neutral negation, per analyses in Barry and Sodipo's 1986 ethnographic work.^[192] In West African-derived creation myths, such as those syncretized in African-Cuban lore with roots in Yoruba or related traditions, the creator fashions mighty Truth and frail Falsehood as foes, only for Falsehood to decapitate and swap heads with Truth, symbolizing their inextricable confusion in human affairs since antiquity.^[193]

Contemporary Issues and Debunking Narratives

Deception in Politics and Media

Deception in politics frequently involves strategic misrepresentation to influence voter behavior and maintain power. Empirical analysis of public claims by U.S. politicians reveals patterns of false statements, with fact-checking data from PolitiFact documenting over 2,400 claims by 444 politicians, many rated as false or misleading.^[194] Studies further indicate that politicians averse to lying exhibit lower reelection rates, implying that deception can yield electoral advantages by aligning with voter expectations or avoiding scrutiny.^[195] For instance, experimental research shows voters struggle to detect lies in political statements, with accuracy rates often below chance, allowing deceivers to evade accountability.^[196] Historical cases underscore systemic political deception. President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration exaggerated the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, fabricating details of North Vietnamese attacks to justify escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam, a deception later declassified and confirmed by naval historians.^[197] Similarly, Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal involved coordinated lies to cover up a 1972 break-in at Democratic headquarters, leading to his 1974 resignation amid irrefutable evidence from tapes and testimony.^[198] These events, verified through official investigations, illustrate how deception sustains policy agendas despite eventual exposure. In media, ideological bias shapes reporting, often amplifying political narratives. Quantitative measures of U.S. media outlets, based on citation patterns of think tanks, place networks like CNN and The New York Times left of the congressional median, indicating systematic slant in story selection and framing.^[199] Such bias correlates with undercoverage of scandals unfavorable to aligned parties, as seen in empirical reviews of partisan coverage disparities.^[200] Mainstream outlets, influenced by institutional left-leaning tendencies, have propagated unverified claims, such as initial dismissals of the COVID-19 lab-leak hypothesis in 2020, later deemed plausible by intelligence assessments.^[201] Fake news propagation exacerbates media deception, spreading faster than factual reporting on platforms like Twitter, where false stories reach six times the audience of true ones due to novelty and emotional appeal.^[202] Case studies of misinformation, including reconfigured COVID-19 falsehoods, show 59% derived from real events but distorted for virality, eroding public trust.^[203] This dynamic enables political actors to leverage media echo chambers, where biased amplification reinforces deceptions, as evidenced by machine learning analyses of headline sentiment revealing growing polarization.^[204] Overall, these patterns highlight causal links between institutional incentives and deceptive outputs, prioritizing narrative over veracity.

Role in Ideological Conflicts and Propaganda

Lies constitute a foundational element in propaganda during ideological conflicts, enabling actors to shape narratives that advance partisan agendas by distorting reality and eroding trust in opposing viewpoints. Propaganda, as a systematic effort to influence attitudes through selective truths or outright fabrications, relies on deception to foster group cohesion and delegitimize adversaries, often exploiting cognitive vulnerabilities like the illusory truth effect, where repeated falsehoods gain perceived validity regardless of evidence.^[205] This tactic has been empirically linked to polarization, as high-volume dissemination overwhelms rational scrutiny, a pattern observed in both historical and modern regimes.^[206] The "big lie" technique, articulated by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf (1925), posits that colossal falsehoods are more credible to the masses than minor ones, as people assume no entity would risk fabricating deceptions of such scale; Hitler argued this stemmed from the public's reluctance to attribute immense audacity to authorities.^[207] Joseph Goebbels, as Nazi Propaganda Minister from 1933, operationalized it through state media, repeatedly asserting the "stab-in-the-back" myth that Jews and communists betrayed Germany in World War I, despite military records showing internal collapse due to resource shortages and Allied advances by November 1918.^[208] This deception mobilized support for aggressive expansionism, contributing to policies that culminated in the Holocaust, where propaganda framed Jews as existential threats, deceiving the populace into accepting genocidal measures as defensive necessities.^[209] Soviet propaganda similarly weaponized lies in ideological warfare, employing a "firehose of falsehood" model characterized by rapid, voluminous dissemination across channels to drown out counter-narratives, as analyzed in post-Cold War declassifications.^[206] Notable examples include the denial of the Holodomor famine (1932–1933), which killed an estimated 3.9 million Ukrainians through engineered starvation, portrayed instead as a natural disaster or Western exaggeration to conceal Stalin's collectivization policies aimed at crushing peasant resistance to communism.^[210] In contemporary conflicts, such as Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, state outlets propagated claims of Ukrainian "Nazification" and fabricated evidence of bioweapons labs, inverting documented Russian atrocities like the Bucha massacres (March 2022), where over 400 civilians were killed, to justify aggression under anti-fascist ideology.^[211] These patterns underscore how lies in propaganda not only sustain ideological dominance but also impede empirical accountability, with studies indicating that partisan media consumption prioritizes ideological alignment over factual accuracy, amplifying deception's reach.^[212]

Empirical Evidence Against Normalized Deceptions

Habituated deception, including socially accepted forms such as white lies, correlates with neural adaptations that diminish the cognitive and emotional costs of dishonesty, facilitating escalation to more frequent or severe lies. Neuroimaging studies demonstrate that repeated acts of deception reduce activation in brain regions associated with conflict monitoring, such as the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, effectively habituating individuals to moral transgression and increasing the likelihood of habitual lying.^[213] This adaptation undermines self-regulatory mechanisms, as dishonesty initially depletes cognitive resources but progressively becomes less effortful, leading to patterns of compulsive or pathological lying observed in clinical populations.^[214]^[53] Interpersonal relationships suffer measurable erosion from normalized deceptions, with even minor falsehoods fostering distrust and emotional disconnection. Experimental and survey data indicate that white lies, intended to avoid discomfort, often generate suspicion upon detection, compounding over time to impair relational intimacy and stability.^[215]^[216] In romantic partnerships, dishonesty—regardless of scale—destroys foundational trust, with qualitative analyses revealing patterns where small deceptions evolve into cycles of avoidance and resentment, ultimately heightening conflict and dissolution risk.^[217] Longitudinal observations of parent-child dynamics further show that routine parental lying predicts poorer emotional adjustment and increased deceptive tendencies in offspring, perpetuating intergenerational harm.^[218] At the societal level, pervasive deception correlates with diminished social cohesion and trust metrics, as empirical network analyses reveal that undetected lies fragment cooperative structures by inducing generalized suspicion among deceivers and targets alike.^[93] Studies on deception frequency demonstrate reduced perceived social connection, with participants engaging in lies reporting heightened interpersonal distrust, which scales to broader community fragmentation.^[219] This effect manifests in quantifiable outcomes, such as lower cooperation rates in experimental games where prior deception exposure lowers reciprocity, mirroring real-world declines in institutional trust amid normalized misinformation.^[220] Overall, these findings underscore that normalizing deceptions incurs cumulative costs to psychological integrity, relational bonds, and collective welfare, contravening assumptions of harmlessness.^[221]

References

[1]
The Definition of Lying and Deception
Feb 21, 2008 · So-called 'lies of omission' (or 'passive lying' (Opie 1825)) are not lies (Douglas 1976, 59; Dynel 2011, 154). All lies are lies of commission.
[2]
lie - APA Dictionary of Psychology
Nov 15, 2023 · n. a false statement or a false presentation, known to be untrue, that is made with the intention to deceive. Despite the moral and legal ...
[3]
What Is a Lie? | Psychology Today
May 16, 2019 · Lying can be conceptualized as just one form of deception, which is defined as “the act of causing someone to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid.”
[4]
Lie - Etymology, Origin & Meaning
"an untruth; conscious and intentional falsehood, false statement made with intent to deceive," Middle English lie, from Old English lyge, lige "lie, falsehood, ...
[5]
The Psychology of Lying - ScienceDirect.com
Lying involves a deceiver and deceived, with the deceived participating. Lies can be complete deception, half-truths, exaggerations, or omissions, and are ...
[6]
[PDF] The Psychology of Lying and Deception - UND Scholarly Commons
Mar 24, 2025 · Lying is a fundamental behavior, often to appear more enjoyable, and is a form of deception. It is mentally demanding, with cues like longer ...
[7]
How bad is lying | The psychology behind lies - Psytherapy
People lie to control situations, avoid vulnerability, due to past experiences, to avoid difficult feelings, or to avoid disappointing others.
[8]
Against Lying: Some Historical Arguments in Favor of Moral ...
Augustine argued that lying is always wrong because it is an act that is always intrinsically duplicitous. The paper then explicates the positions of three ...
[9]
https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/kant-2023-2043/html?lang=en
[10]
How did "to lie" (i.e lie about something) and "to lie" (i.e. lie down ...
Dec 8, 2012 · To lie (lie, lied, lied): a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
[11]
What is Lying? by Don Fallis :: SSRN
Aug 27, 2010 · Lying is saying what you believe to be false when you believe that the following (Gricean) norm of conversation is in effect: "Do not say what you believe to ...
[12]
The truth about lying - ScienceDirect.com
The standard view in social science and philosophy is that lying does not require the liar's assertion to be false, only that the liar believes it to be false.
[13]
The Philosophy of Lying » Neel Burton author website and bookshop
Sep 24, 2019 · Lying feels bad and damages pride and self-esteem. It is a slippery slope that leads to further and greater lies and other ethical violations.
[14]
Lying is linguistic - Language Log
Jul 28, 2009 · A lie is a statement which the speaker (or writer) believes to be false and which is made with an intent to deceive. I think intent is a better ...
[15]
[PDF] Lying by explaining: an experimental study - PhilArchive
Abstract. The widely accepted view states that an intention to deceive is not necessary for lying. Proponents of this view, the so-called non-deceptionists, ...
[16]
https://www.u.%5Barizona
[17]
[PDF] An Empirical Investigation of the Concept of Lying* Adam J. Arico ...
Amongst philosophers, the traditional definition is that you lie if you assert something that you believe to be false with the intent to deceive (see Augustine ...
[18]
Lying and oblique intention: reply to Krstić - Oxford Academic
Nov 14, 2024 · Vladimir Krstić (2023) argues that some putative counterexamples to the definition of lying in terms of an intention to deceive are not genuine counterexamples.
[19]
ethics - Is there any situation where lying by omission would be ...
Feb 19, 2017 · Lying by omission is a deliberate choice to hide or withhold some relevant information that would influence the decision process of another party.
[20]
What is Kant's view of lies of omission? : r/askphilosophy - Reddit
Nov 28, 2020 · It is generally accepted that kant believed that lying to another is a moral wrong. But what about not being entirely honest?Missing: definition | Show results with:definition
[21]
On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt | Issue 53 - Philosophy Now
But 'lying' is perceived to be a conscious act of deception, whereas 'bullshitting' is unconnected to a concern for truth. Frankfurt regards this 'indifference ...
[22]
Lying vs. Bullshit | Reason and Meaning
Oct 29, 2020 · Surprisingly, Frankfurt thinks bullshit is more dangerous than lies because it erodes the very idea of truth. As he puts it: It is impossible ...
[23]
Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life by Sissela Bok
Bok defines a lie as an intentionally deceptive message in the form of a statement (Bok 15). Deceptive messages are subject to distortion by self-deception.
[24]
Lying, Deceptive Implicatures, and Commitment - Michigan Publishing
Dec 28, 2022 · Deceptive implicatures are a subtle communicative device for leading someone into a false belief. However, it is widely accepted that deceiving by means of ...
[25]
[PDF] The Many Faces of Lies Bella M. DePaulo, PhD Department of ...
How Often Do People Lie? What Do People Lie About? How Do Liars Justify Their Lies? What Kinds of People Tell Lies Most Readily?
[26]
(PDF) Interpersonal Deception Theory - ResearchGate
Aug 7, 2025 · IDT identified three main fundamental forms of interpersonal deception: equivocation (avoiding comments), concealment (omitting facts), and ...
[27]
Differentiating everyday lies: A typology of lies based on beneficiary ...
Nov 1, 2018 · The benefit of our typology of lies is that it clarifies an important part of the psychological process behind lying behavior: beneficiary and ...
[28]
(PDF) Serious Lies - ResearchGate
Aug 10, 2025 · However, the former category of relationships exhibits a greater number of lies judged as serious by the liars and the lied-to (DePAULO & BELL, ...
[29]
Research Reveals the Most Common Reasons People Lie
Dec 21, 2022 · Motivations for lying · To avoid being judged or feel shame. · With the aim of avoiding punishment. · To protect themselves from retaliation. · For ...
[30]
[PDF] Lying in Everyday Life - Sociable Media Group
To determine whether the content of the lies varied with the sex composition of the dyad, we created separate vari- ables for each kind of lie for each kind ...
[31]
Motivations, Moral Components, and Detections of Lying Behavior to ...
This empirical study suggests that there are two levels of motivation in lying behavior: pro-self and pro-social. The main difference between these two subtypes ...
[32]
Lying: The Neuroscience of Deception and Its Impact on the Brain
Lying requires more cognitive effort than telling the truth because the brain must manage and manipulate falsehoods while inhibiting the truthful response. This ...
[33]
Neural correlates of deception: lying about past events and personal ...
These studies identified several brain regions that show increased activation when people lie compared with when they tell the truth (Langleben et al., 2002; ...
[34]
Neural correlates of spontaneous lying and truth-telling
The present study aimed to investigate the neural processes underlying spontaneous and instructed lying and truth-telling, and to investigate the different ...
[35]
Cognitive neuroscience of honesty and deception: A signaling ... - NIH
Signaling games provide a framework to organize the complex set of cognitive processes associated with honest and deceptive behavior.
[36]
Emergence of Lying in Very Young Children - PMC - NIH
Jan 7, 2013 · The first level of primary lies emerges around 2–3 years of age when children begin to be able to deliberately make factually untrue statements.
[37]
Little Liars: Development of Verbal Deception in Children - Lee - 2013
Jan 18, 2013 · Lying is common among adults and a more complex issue in children. In this article, I review two decades of empirical evidence about lying ...
[38]
Toddlers who lie 'will do better' - BBC News
May 17, 2010 · Only a fifth of two-year-olds tested in the study were able to lie. But at age four, 90% were capable of lying, the study found. The rate ...<|separator|>
[39]
Chronicle of deceit: Navigating the developmental cognitive ...
The authors found that lying frequency and proficiency and inhibitory control increased during childhood, peaked in adolescence and young adulthood, and then ...
[40]
The truth about why kids lie, with Victoria Talwar, PhD
But psychologists' research has found that lying is a normal part of childhood. In fact, it's a developmental milestone. Victoria Talwar, PhD, of McGill ...
[41]
Understanding social-environmental influences on the development ...
This study examined the impact of an adult lying to a child. They found that school-age children (but not preschoolers) who were lied to by an adult were ...Review · Lying Modeled In The Family · Lie-Telling Trajectories<|control11|><|separator|>
[42]
Lie prevalence, lie characteristics and strategies of self-reported ...
Dec 3, 2019 · The prevalence of lying in America: Three studies of self-reported lies. ... View Peer Review · Download Article (PDF) · Download Citation.
[43]
The phenomenology of lying in young adults and relationships with ...
18.1% of the sample reported lying every day. Daily Liars showed worse grade point averages, quality of life, and self-esteem.
[44]
How often do people lie? - Currents | UW-La Crosse
about 75 % of survey respondents — told zero to two lies per day. Lying comprised 7 % of total communication and almost 90 % of ...
[45]
This Is How Often People Lie in a Day | Scientific American
Oct 31, 2023 · Based on survey data from 205 participants, Markowitz found that on average, people told 1.08 lies per day, but once again with the distribution ...
[46]
Lying Statistics & Facts - Magnet ABA
The average person reports telling approximately 1 to 4 lies daily, reflecting significant variability in lying behavior.
[47]
A few prolific liars in Japan: Replication and the effects of Dark Triad ...
Apr 15, 2021 · Truth-Default Theory (TDT) predicts that across countries and cultures, a few people tell most of the lies, while a majority of people lie ...
[48]
Does the Dark Triad Influence the Nature and Frequency of Lying?
May 26, 2025 · Research on lying frequency by DT individuals has shown positive associations between the reported number of daily or weekly lies and narcissism ...
[49]
Lies in the Dark: An Analysis of Dark Personality Traits and Dishonesty
Nov 28, 2024 · Results indicated that those with dark personality traits tend to lie more often and accept lying in everyday situations. Additionally, dark ...
[50]
The LYin Lying Tendency Scale: Capturing individual differences in ...
The LYin Lying Tendency Scale: Capturing individual differences in selfish, altruistic, and social-acceptance lying tendencies. Citation.
[51]
Pseudologia Fantastica - StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf
Jul 15, 2024 · Pseudologia fantastica (PF), also known as pathological lying or mythomania, is a mental disorder characterized by persistent, pervasive, and often compulsive ...
[52]
Pathological Lying: Symptom or Disease? - Psychiatric Times
In the workplace, as their lying behavior becomes increasingly clear to their colleagues, pathological liars stand the risk of bearing the brunt of rude jokes, ...
[53]
Pathological Lying: Psychotherapists' Experiences and Ability to ...
Jul 30, 2021 · Findings from the study revealed the prevalence of pathological lying to be 8%–13%. Individuals with pathological lying behavior reportedly told ...
[54]
Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a ... - NIH
Pathological lying seemed to be compulsive, with lies growing from an initial lie, and done for no apparent reason. Conclusions. The evidence supports ...Missing: taxonomy | Show results with:taxonomy
[55]
Can a pathological liar be cured? With Drew Curtis, PhD, and ...
And so the criteria for pathological lying is people who tell an excessive amount of lies and that impairs their functioning, brings about distress and poses ...
[56]
Lie detection tests have worked the same way for 3000 years
Mar 6, 2023 · The earliest recorded lie detection method was used in China, around 1000 BC. It involved suspects placing rice in their mouths then spitting it ...
[57]
Historical Techniques of Lie Detection - PMC - PubMed Central - NIH
Aug 20, 2015 · After phrenology, in 1881, the first modern lie detection device called Lombrosso's Glove was created by an Italian criminologist, physician and ...Lie Detection · Early Methods Of Lie... · The Polygraph
[58]
History of Detecting Deception - Case IQ
In ancient Babylon 3,000 years ago, it was believed that a liar would look at the ground and rub his or her big toe around in a circle. The Prophet Isaiah ...
[59]
Deception Detection | How to Tell If Someone is Lying
There is no single, definitive sign of deceit itself; no muscle twitch, facial expression, or gesture proves that a person is lying with absolute certainty.
[60]
Accuracy of Deception Judgments - Charles F. Bond, Bella M ...
People achieve an average of 54% correct lie-truth judgments, correctly classifying 47% of lies as deceptive and 61% of truths as nondeceptive.
[61]
Research on Non-verbal Signs of Lies and Deceit: A Blind Alley - NIH
Dec 14, 2020 · But we have now sufficient evidence that there are no specific non-verbal behavioral signals that accompany lying or deceitful behavior. We can ...
[62]
New and improved accuracy findings in deception detection research
Lies can be detected by persuading liars to confess and tell the truth. Until recently, accuracy in deception detection experiments was 54 ± 10% with an ...
[63]
A systematic review of the validity of Criteria-based Content Analysis ...
Apr 18, 2024 · CBCA is one of its components, and it is not a 'lie detection tool' (for thorough discussions of common misunderstandings of SVA and CBCA, see ...
[64]
Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) reality criteria in adults
... detection, lie detection, truthful account, Statement Validity Assessment, SVA. ... Discerning truth from deception: Is Criteria-Based Content Analysis effective ...
[65]
Verbal Lie Detection: Its Past, Present and Future - PubMed
Dec 1, 2022 · This article provides an overview of verbal lie detection research. This type of research began in the 1970s with examining the relationship between deception ...
[66]
No evidence that instructions to ignore nonverbal cues improve ...
Apr 20, 2022 · ... nonverbal cues on people's lie detection accuracy. In ... cues, thereby increasing deception detection performance. Experiment ...
[67]
6 Alternative Techniques and Technologies | The Polygraph and Lie ...
The study of lies about actions and beliefs with only measures of facial behavior yielded a hit rate of 75 percent for the lie about beliefs and 70 percent for ...
[68]
[PDF] Meta-Analytic Survey of Criterion Accuracy of Validated Polygraph ...
Page 1. Meta-Analytic Survey of Criterion Accuracy of. Validated Polygraph ... As a practical matter, PDD tests are often referred to as lie-detection.
[69]
An Update of the 2003 National Academy of Sciences Report on ...
Current Status of Forensic Lie Detection With the Comparison Question Technique: An Update of the 2003 National Academy of Sciences Report on Polygraph Testing.
[70]
Using Brain Imaging for Lie Detection: Where Science, Law and ...
The polygraph, which measures activity of the peripheral nervous system to gauge truthfulness, has been the primary technical method for lie detection during ...Missing: eye tracking
[71]
Functional MRI lie detection: too good to be true? - PubMed
Despite some significant concerns about validity and reliability, fMRI lie detection may in fact be appropriate for certain applications.
[72]
fMRI Lie Detection Fails Its First Hearing on Reliability
Jun 1, 2010 · “Furthermore, different types of lies may produce different brain ... Scheffer, admitting lie detection evidence to bolster Semrau's credibility ...
[73]
Neurophysiological Approaches to Lie Detection: A Systematic Review
This systematic review aims to evaluate recent studies (2017–2024) on EEG-based lie detection using ERP P300 responses, especially in relation to recognized ...
[74]
Voice Stress Analysis: Only 15 Percent of Lies About Drug Use ...
Mar 16, 2008 · As our findings revealed, the two VSA programs that we tested had approximately a 50-percent accuracy rate in detecting deception about drug use ...
[75]
Research casts doubt on voice-stress lie detection technology
Feb 10, 2004 · “Voice-stress analysis is fairly effective in identifying certain variations in stress levels in human speech, but high levels of stress do not ...
[76]
https://eyecanknow.com/blogs/truthconnect%25E2%2584%25A2/voice-stress-analysis-vs-ocular-motor-deception-detection-a-comparison-of-lie-detection-technologies
[77]
https://eyecanknow.com/blogs/truthconnect%25E2%2584%25A2/the-science-behind-lie-detection-exploring-various-techniques
[78]
Do “lie detectors” work? What psychological science says about ...
Aug 5, 2004 · Do “lie detectors” work? What psychological science says about polygraphs. Last updated: October 14, 2025 Date created: August 5, ...
[79]
Accuracy of deception judgments - PubMed
Our meta-analyses reveal that people are more accurate in judging audible than visible lies, that people appear deceptive when motivated to be believed, and ...
[80]
Why do lie-catchers fail? A lens model meta-analysis of ... - PubMed
First, it has been suggested that lie detection is inaccurate because people rely on invalid cues when judging deception. Second, it has been suggested that ...
[81]
Microexpressions Are Not the Best Way to Catch a Liar - PMC
A cognitive approach to lie detection, in Deception Detection: Current Challenges and New Approaches, eds Granhag P. A., Vrij A., Verschuere B. (Chichester ...
[82]
Deception Detection and the Autonomic Nervous System - PMC
However, studies performed outside of the polygraph community have found very high false positive rates, up to 50% or greater. ... false-negative polygraph exam.
[83]
Scientific Validity of Polygraph Testing: A Research Review and ...
false positives ranged from 2 to 50.7 percent and averaged 14.1 percent; and; false negatives ranged from O to 28.7 percent and averaged 10.4 percent. The wide ...
[84]
Appendix I: False Positive Index Values for Polygraph Testing
Table I-1 illustrates the effects of accuracy and thresholds on the false positive index, with four illustrative base rates.
[85]
How humans impair automated deception detection performance
That truth bias leads to typically higher accuracy in truth-detection compared to lie detection (Levine et al., 1999). In contrast, automated deception ...
[86]
Does Random Assignment versus Self-Selection of Liars and Truth ...
Yet, despite the obvious value of accurate lie-detection, research shows that people typically detect deception only slightly better than chance (Bond & DePaulo ...
[87]
Detecting deception with artificial intelligence: promises and perils
Moreover, the base rate at which deception occurs is much lower in mass screening applications, which dramatically increases the number of false positives (i.e. ...Missing: studies | Show results with:studies
[88]
Deception is associated with reduced social connection - PMC - NIH
Sep 14, 2023 · People sometimes engage in deception because they are seeking personal gain or to avoid negative consequences. Other times, people avoid having ...
[89]
How Secrets and Lies Destroy Relationships - Psychology Today
Jan 31, 2018 · 8. The victim of deception may begin to react to the avoidant behavior by feeling confused, anxious, angry, suspicious, abandoned, or needy.
[90]
The costs of lying: Consequences of telling lies on liar's self‐esteem ...
Dec 30, 2023 · This article examines the psychological consequences for the liars themselves, as they are participating in what is generally perceived as ...
[91]
Why Being Lied to Hurts Us So Much | Psychology Today
Sep 4, 2012 · By telling lie after lie, we eventually can suffer from building a false version of reality that increasingly distances us from our real selves.
[92]
Why Lies Are Triggering for Many With Childhood Trauma
Apr 29, 2024 · Lies can damage trust in any relationship. Yet individuals who have experienced trauma may be especially vulnerable to the effects of lies.
[93]
Effects of deception in social networks - PMC - PubMed Central - NIH
Social psychologists commonly characterize the degree of human deception by distinguishing four types of lying: (i) prosocial—lying to protect someone, or ...
[94]
Deception is associated with reduced social connection - Nature
Sep 14, 2023 · ... lie would lead to the same outcome. Ironically ... lying behavior (LiES overall) and self-reported loneliness through interpersonal trust.
[95]
Misinformation is eroding the public's confidence in democracy
Jul 26, 2022 · One of the drivers of decreased confidence in the political system has been the explosion of misinformation deliberately aimed at disrupting the democratic ...
[96]
Deception and Dishonesty in Politics: The Need for Truth - LinkedIn
Jan 28, 2024 · Deception and Dishonesty in Politics: The Need for Truth. Centre for ... In the internet age, the consequences of disinformation spread rapidly ...Missing: economy | Show results with:economy
[97]
Political scandals, media bias and the moral ambiguity of fraud and ...
Oct 8, 2025 · ... dishonesty in their relationships with constituents, colleagues and ... Organizations gone wild: The causes, processes, and consequences of ...
[98]
Liars know they are lying: differentiating disinformation from ... - Nature
Jul 31, 2024 · Politicians catching themselves lying by changing their story, indicating they were telling an untruth on at least one of those occasions (O' ...
[99]
Why the News Is Not the Truth - Harvard Business Review
What has emerged, Weaver argues, is a culture of lying. “The culture of lying,” he writes, “is the discourse and behavior of officials seeking to enlist the ...
[100]
Bias, Bullshit and Lies: Audience Perspectives on Low Trust in the ...
Others are criticised for not calling out lies, keeping information back, or creating a false equivalence of partisan opinions that are obscuring facts and ...
[101]
The Institutional Corruption of News Media - James Madison Program
The lecture will explore and critique three dynamics that have caused news media to stray from the normative end of reporting realities.
[102]
FTC Data Show a More Than Four-Fold Increase in Reports of ...
Aug 7, 2025 · Most notably, combined losses reported by older adults who lost more than $100,000 increased eight-fold, from $55 million in 2020 to $445 ...Missing: economic | Show results with:economic
[103]
Fraud & Improper Payments | U.S. GAO
The federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, according to GAO's government-wide estimates based on data from fiscal ...
[104]
What's the real cost of disinformation for corporations?
Jul 14, 2025 · Disinformation costs the global economy $78 billion yearly, per a 2019 University of Baltimore and CHEQ study, impacting markets, ...Jesus Serrano · The Business Cost · Deepening The Risk
[105]
Fraud Costs Businesses Nearly 8% of Their Equivalent Revenues ...
New data reveals U.S. companies lost an average of 9.8% of equivalent revenue to fraud—46% more than last year and 27% above the global average ; Scam/Authorized ...
[106]
Social Capital and Civil Society - Francis Fukuyama
Low levels of social capital have been linked to inefficient local government in southern Italy, as well as to the region's pervasive corruption. In many Latin ...
[107]
Social Trust and Economic Growth - Oxford Academic
Social trust can logically influence economic growth through four distinct channels: (1) by affecting the rate of productivity growth directly; (2) by ...Theoretical Directions · The Empirical Evidence · Establishing the Association
[108]
The link between trust and economic prosperity - Deloitte
May 20, 2021 · Greater levels of trust can raise the quantity and quality of investments in physical and human capital. It can also boost productivity growth ...
[109]
[PDF] The moral cost of lying - Raymond Duch
Apr 23, 2020 · cost to society of this dishonesty are enormous. Health care fraud may amount to up to $272 billion in US alone (Berwick and Hackbarth, 2012) ...
[110]
Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity
Sep 1, 1995 · But, Fukuyama argues, trust and other cultural virtues can be destroyed more easily than created. Large centralized governments destroy those ...
[111]
The Crisis of Trust - by Francis Fukuyama - Persuasion
Oct 18, 2024 · It is hard to see how the economy will prosper if consumers are picking products according to their partisan affiliations, or how the state will ...
[112]
Defending the Biblical Position Against Lying - Apologetics Press
Feb 21, 2010 · You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor (Exodus 20:16). You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another (Leviticus ...Missing: major | Show results with:major<|separator|>
[113]
World Faiths: Lying and Deceit | The Review of Religions
Mar 22, 2021 · There is no evil that cannot be done by the liar, who has transgressed the one law of truthfulness and who is indifferent to the world beyond.
[114]
CHURCH FATHERS: On Lying (St. Augustine) - New Advent
Now whoever utters that which he holds in his mind either as belief or as opinion, even though it be false, he lies not. For this he owes to the faith of his ...
[115]
The Lowdown on Lying | Catholic Answers Magazine
Sep 20, 2023 · The Catholic tradition takes the Eighth Commandment—“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”—extremely seriously.
[116]
Lying - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics - Santa Clara University
Lies are morally wrong, then, for two reasons. First, lying corrupts the most important quality of my being human: my ability to make free, rational choices.<|separator|>
[117]
Lecture 13: A Lesson In Lying - Harvard Justice
Immanuel Kant believed that telling a lie, even a white lie, is a violation of one's own dignity. Professor Sandel asks students to test Kant's theory with this ...<|separator|>
[118]
Act‐Utilitarianism | Lying and Deception - Oxford Academic
Act‐utilitarianism implies that lying is morally permissible when, and only when, there is no alternative course of action open to one that has better ...
[119]
Kantian Deontology – Introduction to Philosophy: Ethics - Rebus Press
His contemporaries thought there must be cases where lying is permissible, and Kant responded in “On a Supposed Right to Lie From Philanthropy.” In this essay, ...
[120]
On a supposed right to lie from philanthropy, by Inmanuel Kant (1797)
Aug 6, 2025 · In his 'On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy' (SRL) Kant makes the astonishing claim that one is not entitled to lie even to save a ...
[121]
[PDF] A Game-Theoretic Foundation of Deception: Knowledge Acquisition ...
Oct 1, 2018 · This paper proposes a game- theoretic framework of a deception game to model the strategic behaviors of the deceiver and deceivee and con-.
[122]
Classical Philosophical Approaches to Lying and Deception
Classical Philosophical Approaches to Lying and Deception ; Publication Date. 2018 ; Abstract. This chapter examines the views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle ...
[123]
Plato's Republic, Book III: The Noble Lie - Great Books Guy
Oct 23, 2017 · The noble lie devised by Socrates has two parts. First, Socrates persuades the rulers and the guardians that they were born of the earth, but not of all the ...<|separator|>
[124]
The Truth about Plato's “Noble Lie” - VoegelinView
Jan 2, 2020 · The phrase “noble lie” does not even occur in the text of Plato's Republic. The over-translated Greek phrase is gennaion ti hen, “some one noble [thing].”
[125]
What Is a Noble Lie? - The Kenyon Review
Feb 22, 2007 · The noble lie is noble because it benefits the soul of the person who believes it. The lie in this sense will communicate to the soul of the believer as much ...
[126]
The nasty truth about the noble lie - openDemocracy
Oct 15, 2003 · Noble lies run headlong into journalistic ethics, which are based on the opposite principle: that society works best when based on truth.
[127]
Misremembering Plato's Noble Lie - ROY TSAO
May 27, 2016 · The political purpose of the noble lie is to persuade the common citizens to accept the rule of the guardians (the philosopher kings). It's ...
[128]
Deception in the Animal Kingdom | Scientific American
Sep 1, 2019 · Camouflage, mimicry and tactical deception are three key types of animal deception, with blurred boundaries between categories, as the ...
[129]
A framework for understanding post-detection deception in predator ...
Jun 23, 2023 · Researchers have studied deceptive traits for centuries, but a unified framework for categorizing different types of post-detection deception in ...
[130]
Catch me if you can: free-living mice show a highly flexible dodging ...
Jul 3, 2024 · This deceptive dodging is the first evidence of a behaviour suggestive of intentional tactical deception among mice.Abstract · Background · Methods · Discussion
[131]
Cooperation and deception in primates - ScienceDirect.com
In experimental food competitions, primates flexibly manipulate group-mates' behavior to tactically deceive them. Deception can infiltrate cooperative ...
[132]
Tactical deception in primates
Who will be the first to try this method of studying tactical deception with a wild primate? 4. Children are primates, too. We have been rightly rebuked for ...
[133]
Evidence for tactical concealment in a wild primate - Nature
Feb 12, 2013 · This is the first study to systematically document tactical deception in a primate living in a natural environment. In agreement with our first ...<|separator|>
[134]
Cooperation and deception in primates - PubMed
In experimental food competitions, primates flexibly manipulate group-mates' behavior to tactically deceive them. Deception can infiltrate cooperative ...Missing: non- scientific
[135]
The evolution of lying in well-mixed populations - Journals
Jul 26, 2019 · Using this as motivation, here we use methods of statistical physics to study the evolution of lying, or deception. ... Evolutionary Psychology, ...<|separator|>
[136]
[PDF] The evolution and psychology of self-deception
WILLIAM VON HIPPEL, professor of psychology at the. University of Queensland, Australia, conducts research in social cognition and evolutionary psychology.
[137]
Deception as a Derived Function of Language - PMC
Sep 27, 2016 · Third, with respect to potential adaptive functions for language, considerable evidence shows deception ... Human Evolutionary Psychology.
[138]
The heritability of moral standards for everyday dishonesty
Genetic variation explains variation in assessments of dishonest actions. · Common environment does not explain variation in assessments of dishonest actions.
[139]
The Heritability of Moral Standards for Everyday Dishonesty
Aug 5, 2025 · (1999) in a large study of adult twins and family members reported broad heritability estimates for the Lie scale of 29-42%. More recently, a ...
[140]
To Cheat or Not To Cheat: Tryptophan Hydroxylase 2 SNP Variants ...
May 2, 2016 · Hence, we hypothesize that SNP variants in the TPH2 gene will contribute to honest versus dishonest behavior in the die-under-cup laboratory ...
[141]
Is Pathological Lying a Genetic Disorder? - Lie Detector Test
Jul 31, 2025 · These brain differences may underpin the compulsive nature of pathological lying, driving individuals to lie even when it is counterproductive ...
[142]
Neural Correlates of Different Types of Deception - Oxford Academic
In the present study we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor neural activation while people lied or told the truth. To date, three fMRI ...
[143]
Distinguishing deception from its confounds by improving the validity ...
We confirm this problem by demonstrating that a neural predictor of deception can also predict selfish, nondeceptive choices, suggesting that the predictor ...<|separator|>
[144]
Neural mechanisms of deception in a social context: an fMRI ...
Jul 1, 2020 · All of these processes can explain higher cognitive load of deception: conflict monitoring, working memory, action selection, and inhibition2,8, ...<|separator|>
[145]
The Donation of Constantine | Christian History Magazine
However, in the 15th century it was proven by Nicholas of Cusa, a German cardinal and scholar, to be a forgery. Apparently it had been forged during the ...
[146]
https://www.historyskills.com/classroom/ancient-history/donation-of-constantine/
[147]
An Antisemitic Conspiracy: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Nov 26, 2024 · However, all of them promote antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jews. 2. Adolf Hitler and other top Nazi Party leaders knew that the ...
[148]
Protocols of the Elders of Zion | #TranslateHate | AJC
A fraudulent document attributed to the secret police of Tsarist Russia, first disseminated in the early 20th century and still circulated today.
[149]
Lysenkoism Against Genetics: The Meeting of the Lenin All-Union ...
The triumph of Lysenkoism became complete and genetics was fully defeated in August 1948 at a session of the academy headed by Lysenko.
[150]
The Soviet Era's Deadliest Scientist Is Regaining Popularity in Russia
Dec 19, 2017 · Trofim Lysenko's spurious research prolonged famines that killed millions. So why is a fringe movement praising his legacy?
[151]
Fighting For France: The Dreyfus Affair
Investigators quickly alighted on the only Jewish member of the General Staff of the French Army as the likely culprit: Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935).
[152]
Is the Original Pinocchio Actually About Lying and Very Long Noses?
Sep 14, 2021 · Collodi's Pinocchio is also intermittently mendacious. And on a couple of occasions the author punishes him for his lies by making his nose grow ...
[153]
The Adventures of Pinocchio Symbols, Allegory and Motifs
Feb 2, 2023 · Pinocchio's nose is a symbol of dishonesty. To emulate how one lie tends to necessitate more lies to support it, Collodi depicts Pinocchio's nose growing ...
[154]
The Shepherd Boy & the Wolf - Library of Congress Aesop Fables
The Wolf killed a great many of the Boy's sheep and then slipped away into the forest. Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth. ‹ back · next ›.
[155]
Lying Tales
Lying Tale There were once five men. The one had no eyes, the second had no legs, the third was dumb, the fourth had no arms, the fifth was naked.
[156]
Famous Liars in Greek Mythology - Synonym - Classroom
Famous Liars in Greek Mythology · 1 Behind the Trojan Horse · 2 Gods Tricking Gods · 3 Lying and Kings · 4 A Hero's Defeat · 5 An All-Powerful Liar.
[157]
Lying to Survive - IAI TV
Jul 9, 2015 · Deception is a recurring theme in Greek mythology, with many stories about Dolos (the spirit of trickery and guile) and Apate (the goddess of fraud and deceit).
[158]
Velázquez's Allegories of Deception - Artventures
Oct 27, 2013 · In Joseph's Bloody Coat Brought to Jacob, the lies and deception are still occurring. Joseph's jealous brothers have sold him into slavery ...
[159]
Beautiful Painted Lies: Deception and Illusionistic Painting in the ...
A painting that lies will encourage very different responses determined by the expectations of the participants. The place of deception in the visual arts ...Missing: depictions | Show results with:depictions
[160]
The acceptability of lies: A comparison of Ecuadorians and Euro ...
Overall, Euro-Americans rated lies as more acceptable than Ecuadorians. In both cultures, lies motivated by a desire to benefit others were considered to be ...
[161]
Cross-Cultural Differences in Children's Choices, Categorizations ...
This study examined cross-cultural differences and similarities in children's moral understanding of individual- or collective-oriented lies and truths.
[162]
Differences in the Evaluation of Prosocial Lies: A Cross-Cultural ...
Jul 22, 2019 · Prosocial lies are a form of non-literal communication used cross-culturally, but how they are evaluated depends on socio-moral values, and communication ...
[163]
A cross-cultural comparison of the relation between children's moral ...
This study examined the relation between children's moral standards of honesty and their lie-telling behavior and the role that culture plays in this relation.
[164]
Cultural influence on the acceptability of lying in an intergroup ...
The current study examined differences between German ( N = 62 ) and Chinese college students (N = 66) concerning acceptability and morality of lying in an ...
[165]
Lying Without Saying Something False? A Cross-Cultural ...
Dec 11, 2021 · The present study examines cross-cultural differences in people's concept of lying with regard to the question of whether lying requires an ...Missing: impacts widespread
[166]
Acceptance of lying from a cross-cultural perspective. Beyond ...
Cross-cultural differences in the acceptance of lying were studied mainly by focusing on collectivism-individualism dimension. We argue that employing other ...
[167]
(PDF) Cross-cultural studies on concepts of lying - ResearchGate
Feb 21, 2024 · Blum (2005) describes the use of lies during her experience in China as an American foreign visitor. The author enumerates several situations in ...
[168]
Social norms and dishonesty across societies - PNAS
Jul 28, 2022 · Normative type and maximal dishonesty. (Upper) Box plots of perceived injunctive norms over honest (blue) and dishonest (red) reports broken ...
[169]
Telling the Truth ...and When It Is Permissible to Be Less Than Honest
It is only by rabbinic law that it is forbidden to tell white lies as well, as the verse says13: "Indeed, they deceive one another and do not speak the truth; ...Missing: Ninth | Show results with:Ninth
[170]
Truth and Lies in the Jewish Tradition
Jewish moralist literature sets a high standard of truthtelling, but one not without exceptions. By Rabbi Louis Jacobs. Share.Missing: Ninth | Show results with:Ninth
[171]
St Augustine On Lying
Sep 24, 2021 · St Augustine teaches us, “there is a difference between lying and being a liar. A man may tell a lie unwittingly; but a liar loves to lie.”
[172]
Taqiyya and Islam | Facts about the Muslims & the Religion of Islam
Sep 5, 2023 · Taqiyya refers to using vague, unclear, or ambiguous speech. It involves a form of concealment that may not necessarily be outright lying or falsehood.
[173]
[PDF] Hinduism's Code of Conduct
338 what is hinduism? Adhere to truthfulness, refraining from lying and betraying promises. Speak only that which is true,.
[174]
[PDF] THE PRINCIPLES OF HINDU ETHICS
(suppression of truth and suggestion of falsehood) is mere lying. To Dāsaratha Rāma says: “ I desire neither dominion, nor happiness, nor the earth, nor any ...
[175]
[PDF] HINDU CONCEPTS OF SIN | SriMatham
believing in false doctrines i.e. clinging zealously to unexamined and irrational views, contemplating harming another. 2. Speech — lying to gain ...
[176]
[PDF] What Is Dharma? - Hindu American Foundation
Overcoming such negative emotions and cultivating an all-encompassing love and forgiveness is the goal and the means of practicing ahimsa. ○ Satya (truthfulness): ...
[177]
Right Speech – Sammā Vācā - Insight Meditation Center
If one speaks something false believing it to be true, there is no breach of the precept as the intention to deceive is absent. Though the deceptive intention ...
[178]
The Fourth Precept - The Existential Buddhist
Jan 10, 2011 · The Pali Canon identifies four types of wrongful speech: 1) lies, 2) backbiting and slander, 3) abusive and hurtful speech, and 4) frivolous ...<|separator|>
[179]
Religions - Jainism: The lay Jain code - BBC
Sep 11, 2009 · Jain scripture expects lay Jains to follow the following twelve vows. ... Truthfulness - Satya: Jains must always be truthful. Jains must ...Missing: lying | Show results with:lying
[180]
Satya: How to Live Your Truth - beYogi
Jan 13, 2015 · You can start to see why with satya: Lying can be harmful, so therefore dishonesty violates ahimsa. An interesting discussion surrounds how ...
[181]
The Principle of Satya: Aligning Thoughts, Words, and Actions with ...
Dec 16, 2022 · The practice of Satya requires a commitment to honesty in all aspects of life. This means avoiding lies, half-truths, and exaggerations and ...
[182]
http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e516/23b10702a079edc58188ac8822adfed77e41.pdf
[183]
Why Is It Important to Be Honest? An Answer From Confucius
Jun 9, 2023 · Confucius says honesty is key to proper conduct, including being honest in thoughts, avoiding biases, and being frank about skills and ...Missing: sincerity | Show results with:sincerity
[184]
The value of falsity in the Mencius: early confucianism is not ...
Jul 10, 2015 · Major figures, such as Confucius and Mencius, argue that doing what is appropriate according to may include the use of lies or deception.
[185]
Taoism & Confucianism in Chinese Warfare - TheCollector
Sep 29, 2021 · Other Taoist principles reflected in Sun Tzu are indirectness, secrecy, and paradox. Together, they form the backbone of his “Tao of deception,” ...
[186]
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu Translated and Explained — Chapter 20
But the mechanism of exclusion from society is much the same, whether people leave their fellow men to pursue the path of truth or that of deception. In any ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[187]
HERMES MYTHS 2 GENERAL - Greek Mythology
Gibbs) (Greek fable C6th B.C.) : "Hermes filled a cart with lies and dishonesty and all sorts of wicked tricks, and he journeyed in this cart throughout the ...
[188]
Viking Mythology - Loki and Unmanliness - The Art of Manliness
Jun 10, 2015 · Small and seemingly innocent acts of deception can snowball into ruinous avalanches. The punishment of loki. Even the gods eventually got sick ...
[189]
Lying in Hinduism - VedKaBhed.Com
May 14, 2014 · Lying in Hinduism ... Mahabharata 8.69 ”In a situation of peril to life and in marriage, falsehood becomes utterable. In a situation involving the ...
[190]
Truth and Lies: The Native American Narrative - Dartmouth
Apr 27, 2023 · The exhibit aims to dispel colonial misrepresentations of Native Americans and expose the invasive practices used to create these inaccurate ...
[191]
Tricksters
Tricksters are also creative liars. They lie in order to obtain sex or food, or the means to cook or procure food. Many of their tricks originate in this quest ...
[192]
[PDF] The Notion of Truth among the Yoruba's - Medwin Publishers
Mar 22, 2022 · Ontologically, the negation of an epistemic proposition is not regarded as lie among the Yoruba, rather it is regarded to as falsehood, but due ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[193]
African Creation Stories - Exploring Africa
He created Truth and he created Falsehood. He made Truth big and powerful, but he made Falsehood skinny and weak. And God made them enemies. He gave Falsehood a ...
[194]
False claims in politics: Evidence from the US - ScienceDirect.com
In this paper, we use data on 2459 public claims made by 444 politicians from the leading US fact-checking site (PolitiFact) to provide an empirical analysis ...
[195]
Eliciting preferences for truth-telling in a survey of politicians - PNAS
Aug 24, 2020 · Since politicians who bluff, displace blame, or use strategic deception try to appear honest, identifying those who are dishonest is extremely ...
[196]
Deception Detection in Politics: Can Voters Tell When Politicians are ...
However, the research on cues to deception also indicates that not only are the stereotypical cues to deceit not useful, but that there are few useful cues, and ...
[197]
The history of lies on the campaign trail | PBS News
Dec 4, 2015 · The worst offenses of the current election cycle (so far, at least) pale in comparison to the biggest campaign lies of the modern political era.
[198]
Richard Nixon and 5 Other Deceitful Politicians - ABC News
Aug 8, 2014 · The scandal counts as the most explosive political deception in U.S. history, cutting short Nixon's second term despite his parting words that " ...
[199]
[PDF] A MEASURE OF MEDIA BIAS1 - Columbia University
Abstract: We measure media bias by estimating ideological scores for several major media outlets. To compute this, we count the times that a particular ...
[200]
(PDF) Empirical Studies of Media Bias - ResearchGate
In this chapter we survey the empirical literature on media bias, with a focus on partisan and ideological biases. First, we discuss the methods used to measure ...
[201]
A history of PolitiFact's Lies of the Year, from 2009 to 2024
Dec 17, 2024 · Lies about COVID-19 infected America in 2020, as conspiracy theories and misinformation, including that new coronavirus was overblown, and maybe ...
[202]
Study: On Twitter, false news travels faster than true stories
Mar 8, 2018 · Researchers from the Media Lab and Sloan found that humans are more likely than bots to be “responsible for the spread of fake news,” writes ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[203]
Fake news: Why do we believe it? - PMC - PubMed Central
In the case of COVID-19, 59% of fake news was found reconfigured from existing news and 38% fabricated [13]. Many studies found that fake news was driven by ...
[204]
Study of headlines shows media bias is growing
Jul 13, 2023 · University of Rochester researchers used machine learning to uncover media bias in publications across the political spectrum.Missing: empirical | Show results with:empirical<|separator|>
[205]
Illusory Truth, Lies, and Political Propaganda | Psychology Today
Mar 21, 2024 · Illusory Truth, Lies, and Political Propaganda · Repeat a lie often enough and people will come to believe it. · The Illusory Truth Effect.
[206]
The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model - RAND
Jul 11, 2016 · We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of ...
[207]
Big Lie - ECPS
The big lie is the name of a propaganda technique, originally coined by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, who says “The great masses of the people will more easily ...
[208]
11 of the Biggest Lies in History | HowStuffWorks
11 of the Biggest Lies in History · The Trojan Horse · Han van Meegeren's Vermeer Forgeries · Bernie Madoff's Ponzi Scheme · Andrew Wakefield's 'Study' on Vaccines ...Missing: verified | Show results with:verified
[209]
Joseph Goebbels On the “Big Lie” - Jewish Virtual Library
The OSS psychological profile of Hitler described his use of the big lie: His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or ...
[210]
What were the biggest lies of Soviet propaganda? - Quora
Aug 31, 2017 · Soviet government always claimed that people's living conditions in the Western countries were worse than in the Soviet Union.
[211]
Countering disinformation with facts - Russian invasion of Ukraine
Below, you will find a sample of the many lies by the Russian regime about its invasion of Ukraine, along with the truth.
[212]
Partisanship sways news consumers more than the truth, new study ...
Oct 10, 2024 · The study finds that the public at large tends to put partisanship over truth when consuming news. This holds true across the political spectrum, education ...
[213]
The Brain Adapts to Dishonesty - PMC - NIH
Testing realistic deception in a brain-imaging scanner is notoriously difficult, as participants need to repeatedly, deliberately and voluntarily act ...
[214]
What Dishonesty Does to Your Brain | Thought Leadership
New research in neuroscience offers a window into the brain, and it shows that moral choices like dishonesty do have observable effects.
[215]
Be honest: little white lies are more harmful than you think - Psyche
May 10, 2023 · Even well-intentioned white lies can foster disconnection and distrust – openness and honesty really are the best policy.
[216]
Little White Lies: How Dishonesty Affects Intimate Relationships
Jul 20, 2017 · Lying can impact this intimacy by affecting all parts involved: the one who lies, the one who is lied to, and the relationship as a whole.
[217]
Dishonesty in Romantic Relationships: A Framework of Forms ...
Sep 10, 2025 · Primarily, dishonesty destroys trust, which is considered the pillar of every romantic relationship. Dishonesty creates “a huge lack of trust,” ...<|separator|>
[218]
Parenting by lying in childhood is associated with negative ...
Engaging in pathological lying is an early risk factor of psychopathy (Levenson et al., 1995). Thus, it is important to investigate the associations between ...Missing: consequences habitual
[219]
(PDF) Deception is associated with reduced social connection
Most deception research has indicated that deception elicits negative attitudes, negatively impacts relationships, and typically severs trust (Hart & Curtis, ...
[220]
The dosage of deception: How frequency and type influence trust ...
324) assert that, “lying and deceit are an integral part of effective negotiation”. This raises an important question: How can deception be both a behavior that ...
[221]
The Consequences of Dishonesty | SPSP
May 26, 2015 · Lying can be cognitively depleting, it can increase the risk that people will be punished, it can threaten people's self-worth by preventing them from seeing ...<|separator|>

Lie