0:02

Almost everyone lies occasionally.

0:05

Even if you consider yourself scrupulously

0:08

honest, you've probably told

0:10

the occasional fib. But

0:12

for a small percentage of people, lying

0:15

isn't something that they do

0:17

every once in a while. It's a way

0:19

of life. Researchers have

0:21

found that while most people tell between

0:23

zero and two lives per day on

0:25

average, the most prolific lives

0:28

might tell five, ten, or even

0:30

twenty. In recent weeks,

0:32

the liar most in the news has been newly

0:34

elected representative George Santos. Whose

0:38

long list of career embellishments, deceptions,

0:40

and outright falsehoods came to light

0:42

only after he won his seat. Santos

0:45

appears to have made up college degrees, real

0:47

estate holdings, even Jewish ancestry

0:50

among his many other fabrications. So

0:53

what drives big liars to lie?

0:55

And are there motivations different from

0:58

those other people who lie less frequently?

1:01

Is pathological lying a mental health

1:03

disorder? How common is it?

1:05

And are liars more prevalent in some

1:07

professions like politics or sales?

1:10

Or are those unfounded stereotypes? Are

1:13

there differences in line between men and women,

1:15

people of different social backgrounds, or

1:17

among people who consider themselves religious.

1:20

And finally, how can you recognize

1:22

prolific liars in your life and protect

1:25

yourself from being duped? Welcome

1:28

to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship

1:30

podcast of the American Educational Association

1:32

that examines the links between psychological science

1:35

and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.

1:41

We have two guests today. The first is

1:43

doctor Drew Curtis and Associate professor

1:45

of psychology and director of the master's

1:47

and doctoral programs in counseling psychology

1:50

at Angelo State University in

1:52

San Angelo, Texas. Doctor Curtis

1:54

is a licensed clinical psychologist who

1:57

studies pathological lying and deception,

1:59

particularly in the context of therapy

2:01

and within healthcare professions intimate

2:04

relationships, and parental relationships.

2:07

Our second guest is doctor Christian Hart,

2:10

a professor of psychology and director

2:12

of the psychological science graduate program

2:14

at Texas Women's University. He

2:17

is an experimental psychologist who conducts

2:19

research primarily online in

2:21

deception. He is also the former

2:23

president and current executive director

2:25

of the southwestern psychological association.

2:29

Curtis and Hart are the coauthors

2:31

of the book pathological lying,

2:33

theory research and practice, which

2:36

was published in November by APA

2:38

Books. They are also writing a book

2:40

for the general public called Big what

2:42

psychological science tells us about lying

2:44

and how you can avoid being duped, which

2:47

will be published by APA books later this

2:48

year. Thank you both for joining me

2:51

today. It's a

2:51

great pleasure to be here. Thank you. Thanks for having

2:53

us. Great. Well, I

2:56

started the introduction talking about how we

2:58

all lie sometimes. So

3:00

what is the difference between someone who just lies

3:02

occasionally and a pathological lie?

3:04

Is it just how often they're lying

3:06

or are the causes and motivations different?

3:10

Dr. Curtis, do you want to take that one? Yeah,

3:12

absolutely. A lot of our work has really

3:15

set out to ask that question. Among

3:18

people who lie, is there a clinical

3:20

population, is there a group that different

3:23

from people who might tell big liars. And essentially,

3:25

we found and and put forth theory

3:27

and and research that there is.

3:30

And so the criteria for pathological lying

3:32

is people to who tell an excessive

3:35

amount of lies and that impairs

3:37

their functioning, brings about distress,

3:39

and poses some kind of risk of danger

3:41

to themselves or others. Well,

3:43

doctor Hart, let me ask you, what about the substance

3:46

of the lies? When we're talking about a pathological

3:48

liar, Does that person tell

3:50

different lies from

3:51

just, you know, your average everyday garden

3:54

variety liar? Well, there's

3:56

not a a lot of research on that

3:58

topic, what we can

4:00

gather from reading through the extensive case

4:02

literature on pathological liars

4:05

over the past century. Is

4:07

that their lives tend to be somewhat

4:10

varied. We can find some pretty clear

4:12

cases where they're allowing for

4:14

some sort of financial motivation or financial

4:17

gain. But but one of

4:19

the patterns that we tend to see perhaps

4:21

more than you see in in your typical

4:23

everyday form of liar is

4:26

lies that are aimed at bringing

4:30

attention on oneself. And

4:33

so that's probably the biggest distinction

4:35

that we see. Pathological

4:37

lying is not at the moment

4:39

considered a mental health diagnosis. But

4:41

you have both advocated for it to be

4:43

added to the diagnostic and statistical

4:46

manual of mental

4:47

disorders. Why is

4:49

that? Why do you want to see that? Well, I

4:51

think it's got a robust

4:53

history in clinical,

4:56

psychiatry, and psychology. A lot of

4:58

our work and research search on on

5:00

the the literature, the most prominent

5:02

psychiatrist, the Times,

5:05

you know, late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen

5:07

hundreds, have well documented

5:09

the existence of pathological

5:11

lying. And it's how different names, you know, like

5:13

pseudologia, Fantastica, mythomania.

5:17

And so it's been well documented and

5:19

tucked away by what we would say

5:21

as the most prolific prominent

5:23

researchers in clinicians

5:25

throughout time. And so

5:27

it's been recognized by them early

5:29

on and then some zeitgeist, essentially

5:32

we've lost We've

5:35

lost it throughout

5:37

time. And so Chris and I have

5:39

picked back up the gauntlet to to look

5:41

at this phenomena. A

5:43

research has corroborated based

5:45

on that theory that there is there

5:48

is a group of people who

5:50

they're line impairs their

5:52

problems and they're looking for some kind of

5:54

treatments or some kind of help. So

5:56

we've essentially just been

5:58

very passionate to look at that

6:00

and our research has corroborated that

6:03

it should be recognized as a diagnostic

6:05

entity. How optimistic are

6:07

you that you will succeed in getting

6:09

the diagnosis included? And what's

6:11

involved in that? There's

6:13

a lot involved in, I guess, I'm fairly

6:16

optimistic. You know, the

6:18

the DSM and the American Psychiatric Association

6:20

has criteria for what what

6:23

needs to be done when submitting that and there's

6:25

task force and many intelligent

6:27

people working hard to to

6:29

recognize these things that It's

6:32

not maybe what some of the common public

6:35

thinks is you just create a label to stigmatize

6:37

people that it's a pretty lengthy process

6:39

and you have to show that there's

6:41

the existence of something that

6:44

people struggle with. And by

6:46

providing a label, there's gonna do more

6:48

benefit than cost harm.

6:51

And and so I think not only our work,

6:53

but work of others before us have

6:55

demonstrated that there's more people

6:57

who truly suffer from this and and want

6:59

help. In anecdotally,

7:02

we've had people reach out to us via emails

7:04

saying, Hey, I came across your

7:06

work and I'm willing to travel across

7:08

several states for treatment. I need

7:10

help with this or significant other

7:13

marriage is about to end and and desperately

7:15

need some help. And can you help me

7:17

and it's unfortunate when we don't label it

7:20

as a diagnostic entity.

7:22

You know, at this point, we we can't say we

7:24

can formally call it anything and and

7:26

can't treat you accordingly. And

7:28

so it would be beneficial then to the person

7:30

who thinks that they've that they have the

7:32

disorder, that their insurance, for

7:34

example, would would cover the treatment. That's

7:36

that's why we need this. Right?

7:39

That's one of the major reasons. You certainly

7:41

want some insurance to cover treatment.

7:44

And then another reason we want to

7:46

recognize treatment is so researchers can

7:48

start looking at what are the effective treatments,

7:50

what are the empirically supported treatments

7:52

that we can use to help

7:54

people treat this in the

7:56

most cost effective and time

7:58

effective manner? Well, doctor

8:00

Harte, let me ask you how

8:02

common is pathological lying?

8:05

Do we know what percentage of the

8:07

population

8:08

might qualify as a pathological

8:10

liar? Yeah, answering that question has

8:12

been a little problematic. Historically,

8:16

researchers have looked at it, but they've looked

8:18

at it within kind of narrow

8:20

populations populations that were

8:22

having people

8:24

in juvenile detention facilities and

8:27

things like that where obviously you might expect

8:29

the rates to be considerably higher

8:31

than the general population.

8:33

Drew and I conducted a study that we published

8:35

a few years ago where we tried

8:37

to look at

8:37

this. And based on

8:40

the data we collected, we

8:43

are

8:43

showing rates around, like, eight to

8:45

thirteen percent, but a big

8:47

caveat with that is we are collecting

8:49

data from

8:52

people on websites where they might

8:54

have some particular interest in this and

8:56

might have be more

8:58

likely to to have a problem with

9:00

lying. So the more recent

9:02

data that we've collected that we talk about in

9:04

our book, I think we would put

9:06

the the rate at somewhere closer

9:08

to five

9:08

percent, if not even smaller than that.

9:11

And one other thing there,

9:13

without having this as a diagnostic entity

9:16

labeled, we

9:18

can't collect some of that data too. So I

9:20

think it's, you know, chicken or egg. Once

9:22

we recognize pathological

9:24

lying in the DSM, then as

9:26

it's getting diagnosed, we can get

9:29

more accurate data of what its

9:31

prevalence is. Howard Bauchner: Now, your

9:33

book talks about differences in line

9:35

based on gender, social status

9:37

and some other demographic characteristics.

9:39

Could you detail what you

9:41

and other researchers have found in

9:43

those areas?

9:44

Sure. I'll talk a little bit about that.

9:48

With the gender, we don't really

9:50

see any gender differences in the

9:52

frequency with which people

9:54

lie. We we do see some differences

9:57

and the types of things that

9:59

men and women lie about,

10:01

for instance. Women are

10:03

more apt to tell lies that are

10:05

relational in nature. Whereas

10:08

men are more apt to tell, we're

10:10

gonna self serving, selfish

10:12

wise, I guess it would be the best way to describe

10:14

them. We see some

10:16

other traits

10:18

and characteristics that are associated

10:20

with more frequent lying.

10:23

You know, you

10:25

mentioned religiosity at the

10:27

at the beginning of this program. We actually

10:29

just completed a fairly large

10:31

study on that topic and didn't find

10:34

much of a relationship at

10:36

all between religiosity and

10:38

lying. Age

10:40

is probably the biggest factor.

10:42

If we look at

10:44

the frequency of long across the

10:46

time, across the lifespan, lying

10:49

seems to peak and late adolescence. So

10:51

it kind of gradually increases throughout

10:53

childhood peaks and late adolescence, and then

10:55

slowly declines across adulthood.

10:58

So age is certainly the

11:01

factor that we've identified so far that

11:03

seems to be the strongest predictor of

11:05

line. Then we also have personality

11:07

traits. So,

11:08

you know, your listeners are

11:10

probably familiar with the dark

11:12

triad personality traits,

11:14

some, you know, these different malevolent

11:17

personality traits those tend to be

11:19

associated with lying. Looking

11:21

at kind of big five personality traits

11:24

we find the people who are low in

11:26

agreeableness and high in neuroticism

11:29

are more likely to lie. And then finally,

11:32

people who have low self self

11:34

esteem are much more inclined to lie

11:36

than those who have higher levels of

11:38

self esteem. So I

11:40

think the research shows that lying

11:43

in in people starts around

11:45

age three. Right? That's when children

11:47

first figure out that they can sort

11:49

of fib to mom and dad. But

11:52

at what age does pathological

11:54

lying start? Do you know?

11:56

Our work has largely suggested

11:59

the onset, primarily

12:01

in adolescence, late childhood

12:03

adolescence. And so one

12:05

of the studies that Chris

12:08

and I with Dr. Victoria

12:10

Tower are currently working on is

12:12

looking at an

12:14

adolescent sample to

12:16

look at some more specific

12:18

factors of e etiologies. So looking

12:20

at executive functioning within

12:22

that group and looking at the onset. So digging

12:24

a little deeper into adolescence. There

12:27

is a stereotype of

12:29

dishonest politicians with

12:31

George Santos being a very extreme example

12:34

right now, although not the only one,

12:36

or other types of snake

12:38

oil salesman. Is there a

12:40

kernel of truth to that? Are pathological

12:43

liars more common in some

12:45

professions than others?

12:47

We

12:47

haven't seen any evidence of that.

12:49

When we look at at lying,

12:51

generally, we

12:53

see that people tend to lie when they

12:55

have a motivation or an

12:58

incentive to lie. And that those

13:00

motivations and incentives are

13:03

more common in some professions

13:05

than others, certainly. In

13:07

sales, and in politics,

13:09

it's very difficult to be

13:11

entirely honest and effectively do

13:13

one's job. And so taking, you

13:16

know, politics, you know,

13:18

as as an example, we

13:20

can see that people

13:22

who go into politics don't

13:24

seem to be any less honest typically

13:27

than than people in the general population.

13:30

However, what we see is that politicians

13:35

who lie more are much

13:37

more likely to be reelected And

13:39

so what it suggests is that the people

13:41

who go into politics are probably

13:44

no less honest than you and

13:46

me, but there's something about the profession

13:48

that pushes them in a direction where they

13:50

might have to conceal certain truths

13:52

that might

13:54

might cause them to lose some of their

13:56

favorability with the public. And

13:59

might push them to to fabricate

14:02

information and exaggerate and

14:04

perhaps even conceal the

14:06

truth and lie. Well, are pathological

14:09

liars aware that they are lying or

14:11

do they tend to believe what they're

14:13

saying? And do they really grasp

14:15

the consequences of their falsehoods. Our

14:19

research has has indicated different

14:21

research asking about questions

14:23

of awareness or even some

14:25

assessment research we've done where we brought people

14:27

in conducting

14:29

psychological evaluations one on

14:31

one. You know, many the

14:34

definition, let me back up. The definition of

14:36

of being of lying is an

14:38

intentional act. So you're you're

14:40

intentionally trying to make someone believe

14:42

something you don't believe be true.

14:44

And that definition is important for

14:46

us because it helps distinguish delusion

14:50

or aspects of psychopathology ichosas

14:52

where someone's delusional, where they're

14:54

actually intending to lie. And

14:56

so with that awareness, you know, many

14:59

pathological wires are

15:01

aware and they are intentionally lying.

15:03

Now, sometimes, you know,

15:06

sometimes they may say it's for an innocuous reason

15:08

or sometimes they may say I

15:10

don't know why I said what

15:12

I said or, you know, someone asked

15:14

you, what's your favorite Siri on you say

15:16

weetis even though it's Cheerios? And, like,

15:18

why don't you lie about that? That's seemingly

15:20

innocuous. Why would you do that?

15:22

They may say something like, I'm not sure

15:24

why I did. And then it, you

15:26

know, it can build up from that, you know,

15:28

becoming this monstrous lies

15:30

to cover lies to cover lies.

15:33

But many of the times that they

15:35

are aware and in the moment they'll say

15:37

doing so almost as a compulsion

15:41

reduces the the anxiety and they feel

15:43

momentarily relief. But

15:45

then sometime afterwards, you know, maybe

15:47

hours, maybe the next day or two, that's

15:49

where the remorse and the guilt comes

15:51

in where they they're thinking, why did I lie

15:54

about weedy's. Why didn't I just

15:56

say I like cheerios? Or why

15:58

did I lie about my favorite

16:00

band or song? Why did I do that?

16:02

And that's where the guilt and remorse will will be

16:04

present. Are pathological

16:07

liars more likely to be

16:09

dishonest in other ways For

16:11

example, were they more likely to

16:13

cheat on their taxes or

16:15

have extramarital affairs? Or

16:17

is lying its own thing? And

16:19

it's just a a separate type of dishonesty?

16:22

That's

16:22

another area where there's

16:25

not much research this

16:27

has been carried out specific on pathological

16:30

liars that would allow us to answer that question.

16:32

However, if we look at lying more

16:34

broadly, what we have found in

16:36

our research is that if

16:38

people tend to tell one type

16:40

of lie or behave dishonestly

16:43

in one type of way, they

16:45

tend to lie and be

16:47

dishonest in other ways as well. And so

16:49

for example, we've measured various

16:52

categories of lies from benevolent

16:54

white lies to malicious lies

16:56

to kind of vindictive lies. And

16:58

what we what we find is that

17:01

People who tell a lot of one type of

17:03

lie tend to tell a lot of the other

17:05

types of lies as well. So there's these

17:07

strong correlations between the

17:09

different types of dishonesty So

17:11

what this suggests to us

17:13

is that for the most part,

17:15

if if we're categorizing someone as

17:17

being a prolific liar, they're

17:19

probably gonna be lying across domains.

17:22

However, we also make a point in

17:24

our upcoming book that

17:26

some people are deceptive in

17:29

specific niche areas. And so we're

17:31

talking about occupations a little

17:33

bit ago. So someone might be in a

17:35

position where they find themselves

17:37

recurrently lying at the

17:39

workplace either to deal with a problematic boss

17:41

or to to, you know, sell products

17:43

to customers or what have you, but then

17:45

might be fairly honest with their

17:47

family. And so we can have

17:49

certainly examples of people who have these niche

17:51

areas where they're prolific liars and

17:54

honest in other areas. But by and

17:56

large, dishonest people tend to be

17:58

dishonest across the different domains of

18:00

their lives. There's a documentary

18:02

that just launched on Netflix about

18:04

Bernie Madoff, you know, pulled off.

18:06

The biggest investment ponzi scheme

18:08

that we have ever seen even bigger than the

18:11

similar scheme we're seeing right

18:13

now, but apparently by cryptocurrency

18:15

dealer Sam Bankman Freed. These

18:19

types of frauds where you rob Peter

18:21

to pay Paul as they say

18:23

are arguably a form of

18:25

lying. Would you people

18:27

who perpetrate these types of frauds

18:29

as pathological liars, even

18:31

though at least in these cases,

18:34

these individuals appear to be honest

18:36

in other areas of their

18:37

lives. Howard Bauchner: Yeah,

18:38

I think if we're going to talk about

18:41

whether their pathological liars

18:43

are not I'll invite

18:45

your attention back to the way that we've

18:47

been characterizing pathological

18:50

lying in our in our book and the way we

18:52

characterize it is these are people

18:54

who prolifically lie,

18:56

but the line causes distress and

18:58

dysfunction in their lives and

19:00

and so forth. And so when we look at people like

19:02

Bernie Madoff and other scammers

19:04

and fraudsters, I mean, yeah, I

19:06

think it's it's probably

19:09

in many cases, we're looking at

19:11

something more along the lines of an antisocial

19:14

personality disorder rather than

19:16

what Drew and I would conceptual lies

19:18

as pathological

19:18

liars. So these are people who are

19:21

certainly doing a lot of

19:23

lying, but their lying is very

19:25

specific with this malicious intent to

19:27

manipulate and take advantage of others with

19:29

this callous disregard lack

19:31

of lack of remorse and so

19:32

forth. Does pathological top

19:35

line tend to be a separate

19:37

disorder or is it associated with other

19:39

disorders that have say a more

19:41

formal recognized diagnosis at

19:44

this point? Well, that's a great

19:46

question that many times comes

19:48

with some clinicians. One of the studies Chris and

19:50

I did was looking specifically

19:53

at psychotherapist looking at licensed

19:55

psychologist. And, you know, when there is

19:57

no diagnostic label,

19:59

what do you do? So we found

20:01

a number of our research participants who

20:03

are licensed psychologists indicated they

20:06

had come across individuals who are

20:08

pathological liars. And

20:10

they believed them to be pathological liars.

20:12

And so what they ended up

20:14

doing was to provide some treatment

20:16

needed some diagnostic category, many times they

20:18

would give a personality disorder

20:22

diagnosis. And so that

20:24

happens. And sometimes you know,

20:26

there may be rebuttals or arguments

20:29

against some of the work Chris and I are doing

20:31

from others saying, well, that the

20:33

pathological line is just a symptom of

20:35

something else, like a

20:37

personality disorder. It's a symptom of

20:39

antisocial personality disorder.

20:42

Some of the work that we've done

20:44

in our lab assessing

20:47

individuals, giving them

20:49

psychological evaluations, we find

20:51

that the pathological lying sample.

20:53

They don't fit the diagnostic criteria

20:55

for anti social personality disorder.

20:57

Many of them haven't had

21:00

any kind of run ins with the law

21:02

or any kind of forensic complications.

21:04

Many times, there's there's lack of

21:06

there's no aggression. So aggression is another

21:09

criteria of anti social personality

21:11

disorder. Many times, as I

21:13

said earlier, they tend to feel

21:15

remorse. And so that doesn't fit

21:17

the same picture as anti

21:19

social personality disorder or

21:21

psychopathy. And so

21:24

separating that is very

21:26

important for clinicians. It's also good

21:28

for people to understand who

21:30

might be suffering from pathological

21:32

lying where they line up. And

21:34

then Charles Decade

21:36

from Yale suggested pathological

21:40

lying as well being being

21:42

catered for the DSM as a diagnostic

21:45

entity. And under that

21:47

specifies of

21:49

fictitious disorder, And

21:51

so Chris and I, based on our research, would

21:53

agree with Charles DK suggesting

21:56

pathological lying being the

21:58

overarching diagnosis. And

22:00

then subtypes and specifiers

22:02

like fictitious disorder

22:05

or pseudologia, Fantastica.

22:07

Are there effective treatments

22:11

for pathological lying? Can people

22:13

get better with therapy

22:15

if they're motivated to do so? And

22:17

if so, what types of therapy

22:19

work? Well, as a

22:21

clinician, I tend to hold an

22:23

optimistic view of change for

22:25

people. And so and that's where I land. You know, we run-in

22:27

the same problem with, you know, it's

22:29

a great question. Can people get better?

22:32

And so we go back to the same problem when we don't have

22:34

a formal diagnosis for

22:38

pathological lying, we don't have research

22:41

based treatments to see what is most

22:43

effective and will these things

22:45

be helpful? So that

22:47

poses a problem for us, but

22:50

in our book, we talked

22:52

about some research we did with therapists

22:55

and then our own

22:58

inferences of treatments. And largely

23:00

therapists and ourselves, we think that

23:02

cognitive behavioral therapy would

23:04

be highly effective to

23:06

treat and work with people who suffer

23:08

from pathological lying. And so

23:10

essentially, what you can do is help people become aware

23:13

of their cognitions. What's

23:16

the function? Of their lives when which

23:18

situations might they have a

23:20

higher proclivity to tell lives, and

23:23

typically that's gonna be relationally. So

23:25

being aware of those situations, and

23:27

then a lot of behavioral treatments.

23:32

So some of these we call

23:34

differential reinforcement of other

23:36

behavior or habit reversal training.

23:38

Essentially, the idea is you become aware

23:40

of your behaviors become aware of when you lie

23:43

and and not give that

23:45

attention, rather reinforce

23:48

honesty behaviors. And

23:50

that may mean even when honesty doesn't

23:53

necessarily lead to a good

23:55

consequence. You know, if you tell someone that

23:57

ask you, do you like my new haircut? My son

23:59

just got a new haircut, and he

24:02

doesn't like it too well. So if

24:04

you If you you get asked that, you know,

24:06

you could lie to make someone feel good. Oh, it looks

24:09

great. Or you could be honest and, you know,

24:11

there's some consequences there. But

24:13

even with pathological lying, we'd have

24:15

to reinforce telling

24:17

the truth even if the consequence may

24:19

not be the most desirable for

24:21

the person. But isn't there kind of a catch twenty two though

24:23

for the therapist because you're dealing with

24:25

somebody whose problem is lying? So how do you

24:27

know that your patient is telling you

24:29

the truth? Yeah,

24:31

that's a great question. And that kind of fueled a

24:33

lot of Chris and I, our interest in

24:35

this early on, and our work early on

24:37

in just deception within therapy.

24:40

So therapy rests on the assumption of honesty

24:42

that all that we do and

24:44

talk therapy is that we assume our

24:46

patients are honest. One

24:49

of the things with pathological

24:51

lying to understand is even though

24:53

they tell lies much more frequently

24:55

than most people, they're not lying all

24:58

the time about everything. And

25:00

so even in some of our assessment

25:02

studies, the question I

25:04

would ask people at the end is what have you

25:06

lied to me today about, and many

25:08

of them would indicate nothing. Why

25:12

not? You know, why haven't you lied? And many of them would

25:14

say answers like, well, This is

25:16

a real struggle from me. I'm hoping to

25:18

advance science. If you learn from

25:20

me, you can help out other

25:22

people. So so they're not lying

25:24

all time about everything. And I think that's important to

25:26

note. The other thing to note there

25:28

too is I

25:30

think very important for therapists.

25:33

Is when someone lies to

25:35

us, we typically take it personal and get

25:38

defensive. And that

25:40

typically isn't productive in therapy. So the way

25:42

you overcome that is

25:44

is kind of know

25:47

your stance become non defensive.

25:50

And use that to try to understand with

25:52

the patient. You know, what's the function of

25:54

this lie? Are you wanting

25:57

Are you wanting me to give you praise? Are you wanting me to think

25:59

of you in a certain light? Are you

26:01

trying to form a certain impression? Do

26:03

you not want me to think poorly

26:06

of you? But if you start asking those

26:08

questions, I think that that

26:10

would breed more trust and compassion

26:12

for the person to to lean in and

26:14

understand them. And that's why Chris and I

26:16

really wrote the book we wrote

26:18

was to lean in and understand

26:20

pathological lying much deeper

26:23

rather than just, you know, turning away and saying,

26:25

you know, these are crazies that we can

26:27

never understand, but, you know, people who are

26:29

suffering and and won't help. What

26:31

about group therapy as a as a treatment? Doesn't

26:33

that give you the option,

26:35

the opportunity for other people

26:37

to sort of call out liars as opposed

26:39

to having the therapist have to do

26:42

that? Yeah, yeah, we suggest

26:44

group therapy and I'm

26:46

laughing because you're absolutely right. You know, one of the ways that

26:48

group therapy works is the therapist

26:51

doesn't have to call out the patient. So the

26:53

brilliance of any kind of

26:55

interpersonal work is other members in

26:57

the group can say, hey, you know,

26:59

b s, you just lied.

27:01

And and that works

27:03

so much so well in a group

27:05

therapy context because it's not about

27:07

patient client opposing

27:09

each other, rather it's

27:11

about other people who are seeing this thing in

27:13

you too. Dr. Hart, let me

27:15

throw this one at you. How can

27:17

people recognize and protect

27:19

themselves from pathological liars?

27:21

Are there telltale signs

27:23

or particular personality traits of

27:25

the most hardened pathological large. I

27:27

think we we know that we're very bad

27:30

at at telling telling when

27:32

people are lying to us. And

27:34

pathological liars, I mean, how do

27:36

we suss them out as opposed to just

27:38

an everyday

27:39

liar? Yeah, it's a it's a perplexing

27:42

problem. In in your correct people,

27:44

are really poor lie detectors.

27:46

If we look at if

27:48

people's ability to detect when

27:50

people are lying versus being honest

27:52

in laboratory studies, what we

27:54

find is that people perform at

27:56

only slightly above chance

27:58

levels. That is they'd be almost

28:00

as effective just flipping a coin guessing

28:02

whether someone's guessing whether

28:04

someone's being honest or not. And it really

28:06

kind of gets back to the fact that we

28:08

are a cooperative

28:10

species and so we tend to have

28:13

what's referred to as a truth default

28:15

that is we just assume people

28:17

are being honest when they speak

28:19

and so we tend not to be

28:22

on guard for deception. So

28:24

when we when we look at

28:27

at how people actually detect

28:29

lying, it's not by you seeing that

28:31

someone's looking a scanner or they're,

28:33

you know, fidgeting with their hands

28:35

or shuffling their feet. But

28:38

rather, we detect people are lying

28:40

by hearing them

28:42

say things that conflict with

28:44

factual information we actually

28:47

know. Or we find out they're

28:49

lying by by

28:51

gathering additional information from

28:53

third parties or in some

28:55

cases people just feel guilt be in contrast.

28:57

And so when we look at how could

28:59

we avoid being duped by

29:01

pathological liars, my

29:04

answer would be is the same way we

29:06

avoid being duped by everyone

29:08

else. And primarily what that

29:10

is is We have

29:12

we are sensitive to signs

29:14

of trustworthiness. When we

29:16

meet people, we

29:20

we walk in with usually a

29:22

fairly trusting attitude that we

29:24

only trust people so far. And so

29:26

for example, if we know that someone has

29:28

an incentive to lie to

29:30

and incentive to manipulate us, we're gonna

29:32

be more on guard and more apt to

29:35

detect their dishonesty. Likewise,

29:38

if we we can rely on people's

29:40

reputations. If I know nothing

29:42

about your reputation, I'm gonna be a

29:44

little bit more suspicious you

29:46

say than if I know you quite well and and know you

29:48

to have a reputation as

29:50

being an honest person.

29:52

But generally, when when we talk

29:54

to people about pathological liars

29:57

that they have met or known and

29:59

how they knew those people were lying.

30:01

What we find is they say that the

30:03

people say unbelievable things

30:06

is they're making claims that just

30:08

don't seem likely to have

30:10

actually happened, or they say

30:12

things that are inconsistent And

30:14

so for example, the, you know, you're mentioning the case

30:16

of George Santos, I believe he indicated

30:19

his mother died during the

30:21

nine eleven attacks, and then later

30:24

claim that she had died, you know, a

30:26

decade later. And so we when

30:28

we see inconsistency in in

30:31

information, that can be a a

30:33

queue. So really what we're doing is we're

30:35

looking for coherence, we're looking for proof, and we're

30:37

looking for the reputational status of

30:39

a person, all of those together

30:42

can inform us of who we should be

30:44

suspicious of and maybe who we can

30:46

we can be more trusting of.

30:49

So how will your upcoming book online

30:51

differ from the one that we at APA have

30:53

already published? I found that to be quite

30:56

excess I mean, I don't think you need to be

30:58

a psychologist to read that, but what what's gonna

31:00

be in your new book? Well, thanks

31:02

for for the the kind words

31:04

about the first book we're hoping to make it accessible. But

31:08

the difference in this in

31:10

the second book is it doesn't focus

31:12

on pathological liars.

31:14

We certainly address

31:16

pathological liars, but we look at

31:19

at people who lie

31:22

prolifically or tell extremely consequential

31:24

lies aside from pathological

31:26

liars. So, you know, we're probably talk in

31:28

a lot of cases about people who exhibit

31:31

signs of psychopathy or

31:33

anti social personality disorder

31:35

or other personality disorders.

31:38

But really what we're interested in is the people who tell

31:40

the consequential lies or the

31:42

extremely frequent lies where they

31:45

develop reputation as being a

31:47

dishonest person. And we're

31:49

looking at how do they develop into

31:51

these types of big liars

31:54

what are the consequences of their big line

31:56

with on themselves, on the

31:58

people around them, and on society

32:01

more broadly? And then we

32:03

examine ways for

32:05

cultivating honesty, both in

32:07

ourselves and the people around

32:09

us. And we we talk

32:11

to a certain degree about different

32:14

tactics we can use to avoid being duped.

32:16

Howard Bauchner: So what what are

32:18

you both working on now? What are the big

32:20

questions that you're trying to answer

32:22

at the moment. One of the things

32:24

that kind of mentioned earlier that Chris and

32:26

I with Victoria's Tower

32:28

are working on it, digging deep into the

32:31

etiologies. So onset

32:33

and cause of pathological lying, you

32:35

know, the the big broad question

32:37

all psychologists have nature and nurture,

32:40

how much of one or the

32:42

other. And as a clinician, most

32:44

clinicians want to understand etiologies. So

32:46

we're really digging into those

32:48

questions that that we don't know

32:50

about how how it develops and how

32:52

it maintains. And then are there

32:54

certain developmental trajectories that

32:57

lead to a path of pathological lying

32:59

compared to normative lying. So

33:01

that's where we're focusing a

33:03

little more specifically right now with some of

33:06

our

33:06

research. Chris, since we wanna

33:08

add to that? Yeah. We're also doing a little

33:10

bit of work on

33:13

the motivator. The the what

33:15

drives people to lie, especially what

33:18

drives people to lie to

33:21

excess And so we can see that people

33:23

don't lie randomly. They don't lie

33:25

for no reason at all. If we see

33:27

someone lying, there's there's some sort

33:29

of an incented driving

33:31

them to lie. But we also

33:33

most people balance that with

33:35

some distance in them to lie. So,

33:37

you know, it if you are caught lying, it's certainly

33:40

gonna affect you reputationally,

33:42

which is gonna hamper your ability

33:45

to have the types of social relationships you

33:47

desire. But then we also each

33:49

have a moral sense of

33:51

self that seems to curb

33:53

most of our bad behavior. So we don't refrain

33:55

from bad behavior simply because we're

33:57

worried about getting caught. We refrain

33:59

from it because we don't

34:01

wanna view ourselves as being awful people. And

34:04

so trying to understand those complex

34:06

motivations that are behind people's

34:08

decisions to

34:09

lie, especially, lie prolifically, will remain honest

34:12

as another area of interest of

34:14

ours. And then one other thing more

34:16

recently, Chris

34:18

has led is developing an instrument to assess

34:20

pathological lying more fully.

34:22

An instrument that researchers and

34:25

clinicians can use so we can

34:28

assess pathological lying to answer, you know,

34:30

some of these questions, get a little more accurate

34:32

prevalence rate and

34:34

study these things. Well, I want to

34:36

thank you both for joining me today. I have found

34:38

our conversation really interesting and

34:40

enlightening, and and I mean

34:43

that honestly. We appreciate

34:46

it. We enjoy it as well.

34:48

Honestly, thank you so much for

34:49

having us. It's been a great pleasure

34:51

talking with you. You can find

34:54

a link to preorder the book

34:56

Big Lires on APA's website,

34:58

WWW dot APA dot

35:00

org, and just go there and search for big liars. Or you

35:02

can't wait, you can order their current

35:04

book pathological lying theory research

35:06

and practice also on the

35:08

APA website. For

35:10

previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology, visit us

35:13

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35:15

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35:20

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35:32

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35:34

Our sound editor is Chris Condeian. Thank you for listening. For

35:37

the American Psychological Association,

35:39

I'm Kim Mills.