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How Little White Lies Can Lead to Great Big Ones
Studies show lies increase with repetition but only when the participant benefited. Self-interest is the thing that pushes people down that slippery slope.
In this political season of outrageous lies, I sometimes wonder: How can politicians say things with a straight face that they know full well aren’t true? How did it get that way? Are liars born honest and become corrupted later, or are they born to become lying politicians, or businessmen, or even scientists who manipulate data? In other words, is dishonesty hard-wired, or is it a learned behavior? What does science say?
Experimentally, it’s a tough problem. Some studies have involved putting experimental subjects in an MRI machine and instructing them to lie. But that’s akin to telling a subject to cry and then assume that his or her scan revealed anything relevant to a real-life situation.
Many liars, some famous, some less famous, but all having gotten caught, trace back the origins of their big lies to a succession of smaller, ostensibly insignificant lies. Which begs the question: Why is it so? Why don’t big liars start with the big lies? What inhibited them in the first place and what allowed them to progress to the point of major deception?
