r/science • u/nohup_me • 1d ago
Psychology A study shows that individuals who have lied once are likely to lie again in similar situations, whereas honest and humble people lie less often. Researchers also found a link between dishonest behavior and certain personality traits.
https://www.mpg.de/24406277/0328-stra-once-a-liar-always-a-liar-151860-x937
u/will_scc 1d ago
"People who tend to lie, tend to lie"
Feels like it's a fairly circular bit of logic there.
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u/Next-Cheesecake381 1d ago
Well, to be more specific it’s “a person who lies in a certain situation is probably going to lie again in the same situation.”
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u/will_scc 1d ago
Which is like.... Even more narrowly useless and obvious.
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u/Next-Cheesecake381 1d ago
If you read the article the findings of this research actually contradicts established beliefs from previous research, in that past history of lies is actually more predictive of future lying than previously thought. I guess there’s a level of nuance there that is pretty specific. I find that on this sub most people are quick to dismiss as “obvious” even though a science sub should be more self-aware of how incremental progress is made on an individual study’s level, and that nuance is tight
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u/NightFlameofAwe 1d ago
Not worth it. Redditors gonna redditor. "Actually I knew this all along and I'm superior. I don't even need to read the article. No i don't know what hindsight bias is and I'm unsure what that has to do with anything. "
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1d ago
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u/Next-Cheesecake381 1d ago
What is not newsworthy to you may be newsworthy to someone else. This is a general science sub. Not every post is going to intrigue you directly
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u/sciscientistist 1d ago
Are you dishonest because you always lie or are you always lying because you are dishonest?
Bruh
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u/DalisaurusSex 1d ago
The second part is even more hilarious: "honest...people lie less often."
Great! You could have found that out by reading the dictionary definition of "honest".
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u/swedocme 1d ago
Liars will be liars
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u/Im_eating_that 1d ago
You're forgetting the most important finding though. Honest people are honest.
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u/DiarrheaMonkey- 1d ago
If I had a dollar for every published paper I’ve read that was based on proving a truism, I could buy something fairly nice.
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u/LowlySlayer 12m ago
A lot of times it's worth proving these things. But I think "people who are honest like less than people who lie" is pushing it a bit.
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u/DiabolusMachina 1d ago
I think that conclusion is too simple. I would argue that people that try lying will mostly get a positive reaction or avoid a negative one. And because of that they will continue to lie.
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u/Thick_Marionberry_79 1d ago
The big issue is honest/humble and lies are generally culturally constructed or perceived. Meaning culture can shift the constructs of these words
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u/Expensive_Shallot_78 22h ago
Has anyone read what kind of "methodology" they've been using? These studies are often so cringe.
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u/Syystole 1d ago
Most of this sub contain common sense posts like this
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u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 1d ago
Yup. But challenging and testing ideas is science. It's worth investigating that which we think is obvious, because often enough we are wrong.
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u/but_a_smoky_mirror 1d ago
“It’s the dishonest ones you can trust to be dishonest. It’s the honest ones you can’t trust because you never know when they’ll do something dishonest”
- Capt Jack Sparrow
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u/IneedHennessey 1d ago
One of the most useless headlines I've ever read.
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u/peridoti 1d ago
There's a lot of examples where the headline looks dumb, people tear it apart, and then there's more value about the experiment in the abstract or full study. This is... uh... Not appearing to be one of those times. It's pretty bland through and through.
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u/Throwaway-4230984 1d ago
I am still waiting for research that will find that most people consider salt to be salty
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u/Miss_Aizea 1d ago
Not my husband, he has the tastebuds of a mermaid. I've actually had to spit out food he's seasoned with salt because it physically hurt me.
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u/sponge_bob_ 1d ago
you jest, but you have scientific definitions making things like water not actually wet or peanuts not being nuts
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u/Chorus23 1d ago
Which personality traits OP? As someone below said, you're stating the blooming obvious. Was there anything insightful or surprising it this 'study'?
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u/Jesse-359 1d ago
The only surprising thing about this is how many people either have such difficulty detecting when they are being lied to or actively want to be lied to.
In other words, the interesting part of the psychology here is that many people apparently either don't make this connection, and believe that someone who lies to others won't lie to them - incorrectly as this study shows - or that they don't care that they are being lied to and will continue to 'believe' the speaker even when they suspect or know they are being lied to, which is really very weird.
If this were not the case, then the tendency to want to hide this behavior and only lie occasionally in order to gain advantage in a specific circumstance would dominate - but this study suggests that isn't the case - a liar will lie frequently, and without much regard to the circumstance.
So it's more about the fact that there are a lot of suckers, and that suckers stay suckers - which, to be fair, was also kind of obvious.
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u/Rinas-the-name 1d ago
I never understood the psychological phenomenon whereby people will believe that something that is a very obvious lie must not be a lie because “nobody would lie that blatantly”.
But we know that is one of the ways people fall for repeat liars. As evidenced by recent politics.
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u/On_MyNinthLife 1d ago
Possibly because people assume that lying requires to be smart, cunning and interpersonally sophisticated. Like some sort of master spy.
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u/Rinas-the-name 1d ago
Those people have never had kids then. Lying requires the belief you are smarter than others and won’t be caught, and/or no fear of repercussions if you are.
Most know he’s lied, they just don’t care so long as it’s their team. It makes me question their integrity.
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u/ThrowbackPie 1d ago
a liar will lie frequently, and without much regard to the circumstance.
This is incorrect.
The study found that lying was highly circumstantial and the same circumstance was predictive of the same lie.
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u/Jesse-359 1d ago
Ok, that's fair, I misread that somewhat. It indicates that they will lie habitually, in circumstances where they've decided that it is 'safe' to do so, while avoiding circumstances where they might feel it is unsafe.
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u/nohup_me 1d ago
What specific steps did the researchers take? They created three scenarios that were similar in one key aspect: In each instance, subjects were able to earn a bonus payment by giving a certain response, knowing that experimenters would not be able to trace whether their response actually represented the truth. That said, researchers were able to estimate the relation between someone’s tendency to lie and their self-reported personality traits.
What did they learn? In all three situations, significantly more people claimed a win than was to be expected if everyone had been honest. Even more importantly: “Being dishonest in one situation makes it likely that someone will also act dishonestly in other, similar situations”, Thielmann sums up. She sees this as counter-evidence to the prevailing assumption that lying varies notably depending on the situation.
Honest and humble people lie less frequently
In addition, the researchers were able to identify yet another association, i.e., that persons with certain personality traits—such as honesty-humility—are far less likely to lie repeatedly. In psychology, honesty-humility is one of six traits of the well-established HEXACO model of personality. This model includes: emotionality (E), extraversion (X), agreeableness (A), conscientiousness (C) and openness to experience (O). Persons with a low score are considered to be unfair, corruptible, and stingy, and to show little regard for societal conventions.
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u/Wh00ster 1d ago
honesty-humility is one of six traits of the well-established HEXACO model of personality. This model includes: emotionality (E), extraversion (X), agreeableness (A), conscientiousness (C) and openness to experience (O). Persons with a low score are considered to be unfair, corruptible, and stingy, and to show little regard for societal conventions.
I guess the interesting part, is then that if we were to be able to score everyone, objectively, in this, then we'd have a baseline for how "corruptible, etc" people are.
But the hard part is getting people to agree on the merits and value of such a score. Quantifying the human experience is itself tricky and opens the door for exploitation by exactly the "unfair, corruptible, and stingy" people in question!
As we've seen in ... recently ... this isn't necessarily something that many people care about.
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u/alienbringer 23h ago
The result is not necessarily counter to the prevailing assumption about people’s willingness to lie depending on the situation.
If situation A and situation B are near enough, then they are effectively the same. Whereas if situation A and situation C are completely different, with little to no similarities, then that truly would be dependent on the situation.
Example:
Situation A - you are in your 20’s and with a girlfriend and you cheat on her and get caught.
Situation B - you are married (different girl than both in situation A) and you cheat on her and get caught.
Situation C - you are in a court of law about some criminal charge.
If you are likely to lie in Situation A to try and “get out” of being caught. You would also be likely to lie in Situation B. It is similar enough to be the same situation, even with potential differences in outcome (dating just break up, marriage divorce is more severe), or differences in age (20’s vs 30’s and maturity levels of individuals).
Whereas lying in Situation A has no bearing on whether you would lie in Situation C.
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u/LeftSky828 1d ago
I had a boss who had a habit of lying so much, I estimated one per hour. It was usually to compensate for an inferiority complex (my best guess). I always felt like why-are-you-like-this? He had a really good position, a department of fifty people, got along well with people, etc., He really didn’t need to try and impress, but it was his personality.
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u/Sea-Wasabi-3121 1d ago
Studies on lying are confusing, because they only deal with situations where you can demonstrate there is a liar.
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u/ThomasEdmund84 1d ago
tbf its interesting in that its evidence for making judgement calls around other people and their lying, I think a lot of people are quite forgiving and/or see lying as a sort of mistake/one instance of bad judgement.
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u/Taint__Whisperer 1d ago
In my experience, the only person in a group of friends who doesn't hear any conversations about lying is the liar themselves. People just file them away as a liar, be ultra skeptic about their stories, and laugh lightheartedly about the lies behind their backs. It's like, "ah that is just him, hes that way and we like him anyway."
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u/individualine 1d ago
A compulsive liar will lie again? Is that supposed to be news? We have a potus that does this everyday.
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u/CodRare5863 1d ago
It’s a disease, like giving up. If you lie or give up once you get a little anxiety, but it passes. Then it’s a little easier to lie or give up next time. Eventually these individuals don’t even try anymore and just give up right away by lying about things from the get go.
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u/Shwowmeow 1d ago
“Study shows that people who eat at McDonalds, tend to eat more McDonalds Fries than those who do not like the restaurant.”
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u/Otherwise_Pumpkin_69 1d ago
Headline is engagement bait, no self respecting journalist writes like that
Simply don't engage
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u/podian123 1d ago
"honest people lie less"
Wow. Scientists bless us with incredible facts each day.
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u/robcozzens 1d ago
Wait a minute… did they double check this? I have a hard time believing that honest people don’t lie as often as liars! This changes everything!
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u/ImLittleNana 1d ago
I wish I could say that ‘Lying liars are gonna lie’ was an obvious statement, but current events lead me to believe that many people do not find past performance a reliable predictor of future behavior. They also don’t trust science so this study won’t help the people that need it most.
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u/Split-Awkward 1d ago
Can someone tell me how “lying by omission” fits into this.
It’s so insidious and very often plausibly deniable.
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u/Erazzphoto 1d ago
What’s the difference between individuals who have lied once and those that lie less often?
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u/sonostreet 1d ago
"WARNING: If you're Gambling your money away, most likely your brain is hacked by a.i."
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u/Jennyflurlynn 1d ago
I lied as a child and into young adulthood because I feared my punishment if I was honest. I would be punished if I was honest and if I lied. If I lied I would get a few days of relief. Most of the time, I didn't know what I was saying was a lie. As a grown adult, and no longer fearing psychological and emotional punishment, I'm honest and truthful.
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u/Mereinid 1d ago
I can't believe someone was conned into funding this survey. Of course if you lie once, you'll be apt to do it again and if you don't lie, well your a rarity in this world.
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u/trailrunner68 1d ago
The thing about liars is that you can identify them by the untrue things they say. That ,and it costs everyone else billions of dollars a year in lost time for no reason. Thus, knowing a liar should result in a tax deduction, like a donation to a church.
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u/Dunky_Arisen 1d ago
Who the hell keeps funding these pointless studies? And, follow-up question, how do I petition them to give some of their monopoly money to me?
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u/TheDriestOne 1d ago
This subreddit has been mostly garbage clickbait titles with little substance lately. What’s going on with that?
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