Slashdot Mirror
Study Finds Little Lies Lead To Bigger Ones (go.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: Telling little fibs leads down a slippery slope to bigger lies -- and our brains adapt to escalating dishonesty, which makes deceit easier, a new study shows. Neuroscientists at the University College London's Affective Brain Lab put 80 people in scenarios where they could repeatedly lie and get paid more based on the magnitude of their lies. They said they were the first to demonstrate empirically that people's lies grow bolder the more they fib. The researchers then used brain scans to show that our mind's emotional hot spot -- the amygdala -- becomes desensitized or used to the growing dishonesty, according to a study published online Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience. And during this lying, brain scans that show blood supply and activity at the amygdala decrease with increasing lies, said study co-author and lab director Tali Sharot. "The more we lie, the less likely we are to have an emotional response" -- say, shame or guilt -- "that accompanies it," Sharot said. Garrett said he suspects similar escalation factors happen in the "real world," which would include politics, infidelity and cheating, but he cautioned that this study was done in a controlled lab setting so more research would be needed to apply it to other situations. The study found that there is a segment of people who don't lie and don't escalate lies, but Sharot and Garrett weren't able to determine how rare those honest people are. It also found that people lie more when it benefits both them and someone else than when they just profit alone.
This might possibly make some sense of my general view that I have about lying, which is that it's not quite as simple as "honest people" and "dishonest people". I'm sure there are some people who are truly dishonest, in that they've thought very clearly about what the truth is and are being intentionally deceptive. However, I know a number of people where I'd be more inclined to say that they're just not really thinking about it.
That might sound weird or a little nonsensical, but what I mean is, there's a certain level of mental activity to "be honest". It's not just about the courage to voice your opinion, but also whether you go through a certain kind of thought process. To give a common example, if you ask your coworker, "How are you doing?" there's a decent chance that person will say, "Good" without even thinking about it. They might be miserable, but it's not necessarily an intentional deception. Maybe you're just being polite, or you don't want to share. Or maybe you're just responding because that's the proper conventional response to the question.
To give a slightly more complex example, if I ask what your favorite movie is, you might just say "Pulp Fiction" even though that's not your favorite movie. Maybe it's a movie that came to mind that you liked. Maybe it was a movie that your decided was your favorite movie well over a decade ago, and you've just used that as your answer when people ask, even though there are other movies you like better. Or maybe you said "Pulp Fiction" just because you thought it was a good answer that other people would agree with.
I used to think that it was as simple as "being honest" or "being dishonest", but I've realized over the years that a lot of times, we just end up giving whatever answer is quick and easy, or the safe answer that won't cause trouble. Some people do it more than others, and I've known a few people for whom communication isn't really about conveying information, but more about social maneuvering. And I don't even mean that it's malicious, since it may be as innocent as just saying whatever will get you to like them and make everyone get along. I think it's not even necessarily an intentional deception, but instead it's more like they're not even thinking about the truth content of their answer in the context of "true" or "false", but more like "achieves the desired effect" or "doesn't achieve the desired effect".
So I'm rambling a little, but I wonder if the amygdala has a role in the evaluation of truth content. If my general thought is correct, it'd be reasonable to think that there's some part of the brain with is being under-used in people who "end up giving whatever answer is quick and easy".
You know, where the character is actively rewarded for, and celebrates some 'negative' ethical attribute? Dungeon Keeper, God of War, most action video games, etc.
Well, if they're paying you money to lie, and more money to lie bigger, then seems to me that's the same dynamic. It's a reward loop, with a context. Doesn't seem to me that this would be any more likely to cause an increase in general preference for lying, than the millions who played Dungeon Keeper being more likely to turn to workplace abuse as a first resort.
That said, context adds a lot - the classic Stanford Prison experiment and similar studies showed how far context and roles can push people with very little prodding.
Seems to me, that more thought should be put into what roles we're building for folks, especially with things like the stock market, the legal system, and managerial roles. Unbounded reward loops have a way of being pushed until something really bad breaks, even with 'normal' people.
I think we can all agree that Trump is a buffoon, but that doesn't worry me since he will be kept on a short leash. If he tries to overstep his presidential authority he would be impeached with a quickness ( many Republicans would be happy to cast that vote ).
Hillary on the other hand is dangerous because she is so corrupt. She has been living in a world of lies for longer than most of us have been alive.
Government corruption is a very real threat to this country. Once it becomes accepted and commonplace it can be very difficult to root out. In many places in the world government corruption is the norm; almost a way of life.
The only check we have on corruption in the executive branch is impeachment, and I am afraid that Hillary will be just as unimpeachable as Obama.
Let's start with Benghazi - 4 dead. Libya in general: 114 civilians killed and 445 wounded during Odyssey Dawn.
Iraq War: (voted for, supported) 4,424 US dead, 30k+ US wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and other casualties
Afghanistan War: (same, same) 2,386 US dead, 20k+ US wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan and other casualties.
After that, we can talk about the dozens of US dead after involvement in her scandals. Vince Foster, et al.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.