Here ’s How Good Liars Get Away With It

By Emily Reynolds Being able to get away with a few white lies can be a useful skill. Giving your boss a plausible explanation as to why you’re late to work, for example, can be fairly handy — why do they have to know you just pressed snooze a few too many times? Some of us get better results than others, of course, when we tell fibs. But those who think they’re better at lying than average seem to have a few things in common, according to new research published in PLOS One. To understand what makes a good liar, Brianna Verigin from Maastricht University and colleagues surveyed 194 participants on their lying habits. First, participants were asked to rate how good they were at deceiving others on a scale of one to ten. They then estimated how many lies they had told in the last 24 hours, and responded to multiple-choice questions about the kinds of lies they had told (e.g. white lies, exaggerations or fabrications), who they had lied to and how they had lied (e.g. face to face, over the phone or by text message). In the second part of the study, participants were asked to share the strategies they use when telling lies, and rate how important they felt verbal and non-verbal (i.e. by using body language) strategies were for getting away with fibs. Finally, they were shown a list of strategies, such as providing details someone cannot check or ensuring stories are plausible, and asked to select which they use. And though previous research has suggested that most people ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Lying Social Source Type: blogs