The best liars don’t invent stories from scratch. Research reveals the tactic that helps them get away with deception.
The most effective way to lie is to stay close to the truth while adding a few carefully chosen embellishments.
So say respondents to a survey that asked people to report how much they lie, how good they are at it and what the best strategy is.
People who considered themselves poor liars said their attempts at deception usually resulted in vague or unclear statements.
The most common strategy was simply to omit information.
The study also found that men rate their own lying ability as roughly twice as high as women do.
Although, naturally, they could be lying.
Dr Brianna Verigin, the study’s first author, said:
“We found a significant link between expertise at lying and gender.
Men were more than twice as likely to consider themselves expert liars who got away with it.
Previous research has shown that most people tell one-two lies per day, but that’s not accurate, most people don’t lie everyday but a small number of prolific liars are responsible for the majority of lies reported.
What stood out in our study was that nearly half (40 per cent) of all lies are told by a very small number of deceivers.
And these people will lie with impunity to those closest to them.
Prolific liars rely on a great deal on being good with words, weaving their lies into truths, so it becomes hard for others to distinguish the difference, and they’re also better than most at hiding lies within apparently simple, clear stories which are harder for others to doubt.”
How expert liars operate
For the study, 194 people were asked how many lies they tell each day, how good they are at lying, who they told them to and how they told them.
According to the results, expert liars prefer face-to-face deception and seldom lie on social media.
People reported telling the most lies to friends, family and colleagues.
The most common type of lie was the ‘white truth’, followed by exaggeration, withholding information, mixing lies with truths and, finally, complete fabrication.
Everyday lies are surprisingly difficult to detect, Dr Verigin said:
“Time after time, studies have shown we are not as good at detecting lies as we think we are.
At best, most of us have a 50:50 chance of getting it right when someone is pulling the wool over our eyes.
We wanted to focus on those who are good at lying and try to understand how they do it and to whom.”
Related
The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Verigin et al., 2019).
