Do your pants really catch fire when you lie? How about your nose? Does it get longer with each little lie that you tell? If both of those were true, your nose would be really long but you wouldn’t care that much because you would be more worried about your pants catching fire at least twice a day.
Studies have shown that the average human lies or at least stretches the truth at least two times a day. For some people, it is much greater than two times a day. Like most of our traits and behaviors, our ability to lie is an evolutionary trait that must have given us some kind of advantage to survival since it is so widely universal. A series of studies reviewed by National Geographic Magazine shed science on our unstoppable lying.
Evolution of the Lie
Most researchers believe that lying probably started when humans developed language. Before language, animals had to defend themselves or steal from others by using physical force. The development of communication in humans allowed them to gain in some way by a force other than a physical one. They lied. It is much less likely to get killed by telling a lie compared to physically fighting with someone. Those that lived passed their lying genes on while those killed by fighting could not. Over time, more humans developed the ability to lie and it became a common trait. That’s evolution.
Good Liar, Bad Liar
Everyone knows somebody that is so good at lying that they can manipulate themselves out of any situation. However, everyone also knows somebody that is so bad at telling a lie that it is almost funny. Why are some people so good and some people so bad at telling a lie? A study found that people who tend to lie a lot have at least 20% more neural fibers in their prefrontal parts of their brain compared to those that do not lie as much. This means that their brain can communicate faster.
A faster communicating brain is good for telling a lie because your brain often has to calculate several steps ahead to predict how far their lie is going to go. A good liar also has to quickly develop another lie in case the first lie was not sufficient. A quicker brain will help the person come up with a new lie fast. A slower brain may not keep up and the lie unravels.
The question is: do people with more neural fibers lie more or are more neural fibers created by the brain when you lie a lot? Research has not been able to answer that question yet.
Why are we so gullible?
While humans have evolved to become pretty good liars, our species has not evolved a very good internal lie detector. We humans fall for a lot of lies and sometimes that hurts us. How many times have you seen a social media share that is spreading some amazing news or discovery — only to be proven false? Or take any political season, here entire groups of people are giving a completely opposing facts about the same subject. How can that be? It can’t. Somebody — or more likely — everyone is lying in order to benefit themselves in some way.
Researchers have said that humans believe lies so much is because we have spent our whole lives learning from others. It is natural for us to take what somebody says as truth even though we know that we sometimes lie.
The Stress of Lying
Some may find it easy to lie but a person has to put a lot more effort into lying instead of telling the truth. It is too easy to forget your own lies and get caught up with them later. You don’t have to keep track of anything when you are simply recalling the truth. That being said, not all lies are designed to hurt people. The most common lies are ones we create to save a person’s feelings or to be nice to somebody.
So are you a bad person if you lie? Of course not. Most people use most of their lies to make other people feel better. It’s those people who constantly lie to gain an advantage over you or to make themselves look better than everyone else that you need to stay away from. That habitual lying will prove to be harmful to both the liar and to the receiver.