Hey smart people, Joe here. So there’s this famous experiment on lying. A behavioral economist named Dan Ariely gave
groups of people a set of math problems. You’re supposed to find the 2 numbers that
add up to 10. Pretty much everyone can solve these, if they’re
given enough time. But in the experiment you’re only given
5 minutes to do a whole bunch of ‘em. And, you’d get a dollar for each one you
got right. When the 5 minutes are up, you’d stop and
count how many questions you got correct. Then put your paper in a shredder. Tell the tester how many you got right, and
collect your money. Except the papers weren’t really shredded. So researchers could tell who lied. Around 7 in 10 people cheat in this scenario. On average people said they solved 6 problems,
but they only actually solved 4. What’s interesting is people didn’t lie
as big as they could lie. They made a calculated lie. Big enough to get some extra moolah, but not
big enough to raise suspicion, they thought. These were normal people, just like you and
me. Just about everyone is willing to tell a little
lie like this in return for a reward. If you think we can separate people into those
who lie and those who don’t, or you think that lying is abnormal and unacceptable, well
that’s incorrect. Everyone lies Like you’re on the internet. You know people lie all the time. But take an honest look at yourself. Have you lied today? Ever say “I know, we should totally catch
up!” “Oh yeah, script's almost done, got like
2 more lines” "Oh weird, must have gone to my spam folder"
"I love flossing! Every day!" What’s your dating profile say? Drive a little faster than the speed limit? Last time someone asked you how you’re doing
…did you tell them the whole truth? "Oh great!" And these are just little lies. The world is full of larger lies, and more
sinister liars. Lies that can do real harm. Most of us consider ourselves pretty good,
generally truthful people. So why do we do this? I mean, if we’re supposed to be the most
intelligent species on Earth, the most socially complex organism that we know of in the universe,
why are we just incapable of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Well, lucky for you, I have all the answers! Ok, that’s a lie. But you’re gonna learn a lot. This is why we lie. [MUSIC] Lie, deception, cheat, falsehood, untruth,
mislead, falsity, fiction, concoction, fib, fabrication, hoax, forgery, exaggeration,
malarkey, hogwash, baloney, misrepresentation, fake. [BLEEP] So what is a lie? Definitions are a good place to start. It’s “someone acting to create a false
belief in their victim.” Even if that victim is themselves. Yeah, you can lie to yourself, and we all
do. Which is pretty wild… that means one part
of our brain is actually keeping information from another part of our brain on a regular
basis… yikes. There are a lot of different kinds of lies:
We can say something that isn’t true. But we can also lie by avoiding the truth
Or exaggerating the truth, the total other direction
Or even casting doubt on truth itself Lies can be actions that we take
Or actions that we don’t take These are all lies. Everyone does this. Everyone lies. And it’s not our fault. At least, sort of. If you’ve been watching this channel for
a while, maybe you’ve heard this quote before: Nothing in biology makes sense except in the
light of evolution. And that’s absolutely true. Everything that we are, everything that we
do, we evolved to be this way. And in general, traits—even psychological
traits like lying—stick around for a reason. And that’s kind of a dark thought to consider:
that lying is actually useful. So useful that not only did nature keep it
around, it made us really good at it. So how often do people lie? Studies on college students show they lie
in a quarter of conversations with a best friend; half the time with acquaintances;
and almost 80% of chats with strangers. Lied to romantic partners in a third of conversations. They even lied to their moms in half their
calls home. Sorry mom. Lying and deception is not limited to humans,
of course. Living things exchange all kinds of signals
with each other. Sounds, colors and patterns; movements and
behaviors; chemicals and molecules. And they can deceive with all of them. Viruses are lying to your immune system—molecular
deception. Parasites that control the minds of their
hosts so the parasites can survive and reproduce. Flowers that look like female bees, to trick
males into “pollinating” them. Camouflage? That’s just lying with your body. Or the beetle that covers itself in the chemical
odor of a baby ant larvae, so the ants carry it off to the nursery, where it eats their
real babies, while the ants take care of the murdering fake baby. All lies! These are just a handful. Lying is everywhere in nature. But no other animal is capable of such a broad
range of lies and deceptions as we are. Because we can verbalize… ”verbal lies”…
whoa. We can speak our deception. The average human adult can speak something
like 10,000 words, and many of us can speak far more loquaciously. That was kind of a humblebrag. Which might be another form of lying! These words can be combined in countless ways
to exaggerate facts, omit them, or invent new ones. No one knows when our species first developed
the capacity to lie, but scientists think our lying skills exploded when we developed
spoken language. And thanks to language, unlike most other
lying animals, we direct most of our lies at our own species, at each other. How do we rationalize this, how do we make
excuses for all this lying? Think about this for a second: What do we
want out of the everyday interactions we have with other people? Maybe to just be pleasant, maybe we want our
opinion heard, or to give some impression of ourselves, or maybe we want to make others
feel good, strengthen our friendships, influence people, push them to do something we want
them to do, increase our status and power by wanting people to believe we have the answers
to things… Can we cut that last one? We all have motivations like these. And we can act on these motivations truthfully,
or deceptively. Most of the lies we tell are everyday white
lies. And these generally fall into 5 categories: Lies about our feelings and opinions. "I love that shirt! It's your color." Their plans or whereabouts;
“I already donated at work. A lot. ” Our knowledge, achievements, or even our failings;
“I’m a constitutional law expert on Twitter” Explaining our actions or behaviors;
"Sorry I am late, car trouble! The rotator splint or something" Or personal facts or possessions;
"I don't have any change, I don't even like money" These aren’t Earth-shattering things, but
they are super common. How do we rationalize lying about stuff like
this, so frequently? When people lie, they often justify it (consciously
or unconsciously) by feeling that they are protecting the target of the lie and also
protecting themselves. Thinking that both they and the target would
feel worse if truth had been told rather than lie. In this way, lying is a form of prosocial
behavior. “Self-centered lies” are lies told to
protect the liar psychologically—like saving the liar from embarrassment, or disapproval,
or conflict—or they’re told for the liar’s personal gain. "What kinda watch is that?" "It's a Rolex. You can't look at it" “Other-oriented lies” are kinda the opposite. They’re also told for psychological protection,
but to protect the target of the lie, not the liar. Trying to spare other people from embarrassment,
disapproval, conflict, or from getting their feelings hurt. "Aww your baby is so cute!" Maybe unsurprisingly, people are more likely
tell self-serving lies than lies that serve others. And people are more likely to tell self-serving
lies to strangers or acquaintances, and they tell more protective “other-oriented”
lies to close friends and family. But from the liar’s point of view, both
of these are kind-hearted, altruistic actions. Like, in your head, you’re being nice by
lying. Most lying isn’t to manipulate and exploit
people. No. Most common lies are to boost self-esteem,
or to protect people’s feelings, or to get people to like us more. According to psychologists, being honest all
the time isn’t always the best idea for strengthening social bonds. Which is… a lot to unpack. Bring that up in your next therapy session
and let me know how it goes. People do tell more serious lies, of course. Lies that have the potential to seriously
harm relationships, or that cover up fundamental parts of their identity, or that put others
in danger. And whereas people are less likely to tell
those small self-serving lies to people they are closest to, they are more likely to tell
large serious lies to people they are closest to. Which is messed up. But that’s because those little lies you’d
tell to strangers or acquaintances to save embarrassment or conflict, sharing those truths
with people we’re closest to actually strengthens those relationships. You might tell a casual work friend that you
don't mind they they stole your best knock knock joke, and then go tell your partner
that actually you do care. Who's there? Hurt feelings. And you and your partner strengthen your bond
over that. So psychologically, it’s to our advantage
not to lie about little stuff to people we value. BUT… because we value the people we’re
closest to, because those relationships mean so much to us, it actually makes it more likely
that we’ll tell them riskier or more serious lies, because there’s a lot more to lose. It’s easy to think of lying as absolutely
wrong and worth condemning when we view it as a moral issue all on its own. But it isn’t an issue that exists all on
its own. Like, we care about honesty, but we also care
about love, and happiness, and not doing things that are painful or uncomfortable. We have to weigh all of these goals at the
same time, and complete honesty doesn’t always win over those other concerns. Maybe acknowledging that we care about other
people’s feelings, or that we are loyal to people who depend on us, or that people’s
intentions are sometimes more important than their actual actions "Aw that is a really great picture! I'm gonna hang that up in my office, I totally
know what it is" I mean... maybe acknowledging those things
can be the moral high ground sometimes? It’s great when love and honesty coincide,
but they don’t always, because relationships are complicated! And being constantly uncomfortable in that
moment between the two sides, I think maybe keeps us working hard to make our relationships
better. Besides these prosocial behaviors, there’s
another big way that people rationalize lying… and they don’t do any of this consciously
by the way… they look for hints that lying is socially acceptable in that moment. Ok, so you remember that experiment with the
math problems and the money. They did it again. Except this time someone stands up after like
30 seconds and loudly declares “I solved all of them” . Obviously lying. If you think that super-liar is not like you,
if they look different, if they dress different, they aren’t in your “in group”? It’ll actually make you act more honest. You don’t want to be like them. But if a person like you, for whatever reason
or identifier, if a person in your “in group” lies and gets away with it? It increases the chance that you will lie
too. Because that person sends a signal: Lying
is socially acceptable. The key to making a lie work, even if you’re
lying to yourself—which, again, we do a lot—is the person you’re lying to can’t
spot the lie. Luckily for liars (which all of us are), we
are really bad at spotting lies. Even professionals—interrogators, lawyers,
Among Us Twitch streamers. Lousy at lie-spotting. And that’s because we have a bias to believe
that what other people tell us is generally true. Our default assumption is that we aren’t
being lied to. Even though we obviously get lied to ALL the
time! Why do we err on the side of assuming something’s
true? At this point it’s useful to take a look
at human history. Like all the way back. The human brain took the form it has today
about 150,000 years ago or so. We live a very different life than those ancestors,
but we’re using essentially the same hardware, and most of the same software as stone age
humans. Human brains did not evolve to be the greatest
tool in the universe for the pursuit of truth, they only did what they had to do to survive. And surviving a hundred thousand years ago
involved very different choices. Imagine you hear a predator sound in the grass. Even if it’s the wind 99 times out of 100,
there’s a big potential punishment for assuming it’s not a predator: You could die. But there’s a low punishment, and high reward!
for assuming it is actually a predator. You might be wrong, but you’re alive because
your default assumption was that what you think you heard was true. The humans who didn’t assume that got eaten,
and our stone age mind is the one that survived, warts and all! But we are carrying that stone age mind through
a very different world today. And some people aren’t sure that old-school
mind is cut out for the job. I am probably not the only one wondering if
lying is getting worse lately. I mean, we’re on the internet right now,
remember? Researchers did that math problem/money experiment
one more time. You do your math problems, timer goes off,
shred your paper, report your answers. Only this time, first you get tokens. Then you take those tokens somewhere else
over there to get actual money. This bit of distance, separation between the
actual lie and the person you are cheating and getting the reward from, it made people
cheat twice as much. And this is kind of scary. We’re more distant from each other these
days than ever before. It’s easier to lie when you don’t have
to do it to someone’s face. So is it just gonna get worse, until no one
tells the truth, ever? I actually don’t think so, because luckily
getting lied to really sucks! Primate researcher Frans de Waal once trained
monkeys so if they traded a token, they’d get some cucumber. But if one monkey witnessed another monkey
getting a free cucumber, the first monkey would throw food, and I dunno, probably throw
poop too. The monkey that got lied to refused to cooperate
until fairness was restored. So other animals agree, getting lied to or
cheated sucks. And this is probably why social animals have
to keep lying and cheating kind of under control. Because if you lie and deceive too often,
or too obviously, the rest of your species won’t cooperate with you, and you have less
chance of surviving and passing on your genes. But even if nature keeps lying from totally
taking over, it isn’t going anywhere. Seems pretty hopeless, eh? I mean, I’m a scientist, I’m in the truth
business, and I want my business to succeed! Are we just doomed to lie, and be lied to? Maybe not. Scientists did that experiment one more time,
with the math problems, timer, shredder, money… but before they started, they made the test
subjects just promise not to cheat. And those people lied less. Just by saying they weren’t going to lie. Because instead of letting your unconscious
mind drive your behavior, and all the lying and cheating that leads to, your conscious
mind weighs in, and that’s enough to get you to lie less often. Maybe that’s all morals are. Using our conscious mind, this amazingly powerful
tool capable of imagining, capable of putting us into the footsteps and minds of others
and experiencing the world from their perspective, using this tool to control our actions instead
of that silent, unseen, unconscious controller, the one that is willing to lie so much. I kind of love that we can succeed in that,
by doing that thing that only our species can do: by telling ourselves a story: “I
will strive for truth, and try to be honest and maybe we can all lie less.” I hope that’s true, anyway. Stay curious
