What makes people tell the truth

Boasting about something untrue is an obvious instance. It is common in children, some adolescents, and even adults. If discovered it harms the reputation of the boaster, but not much more than that. Claiming falsely to have earned money for previous investors moves into the criminal realm.

To maintain privacy, without asserting that right, is another reason why people may lie. Another topic I will return to in my newsletter about trust. Some people lie for the sheer thrill of getting away with it, testing their unsuspected power.

Many children will at some point lie to their parents simply to see if they can do it. Some people do this all the time enjoying the power they obtain in controlling the information available to the target. Avoiding embarrassment is still another motive for some serious and many trivial lies.

The child who claims the wet seat resulted from spilling a glass of water, not from wetting her pants is an example, if the child did not fear punishment for her failure, just embarrassment. Avoiding embarrassment is relevant to many less serious lies that come under the rubric of lies-of-everyday-life. Very often people lie to get out of an awkward social situation.

One is that the lie being told may not seem a lie to the person telling it. Repetitive liars can sometimes feel so much pressure that their memory is unreliable. They try to relieve that pressure by saying something that will make the situation work. For that person, what was just said is what they want to believe. The person lying may so badly want the lie to be the truth that the lie becomes his or her actual truth.

People who lie repeatedly often have a desire to be in control. When the truth of a situation doesn't agree with such control, they produce a lie that does conform to the narrative they desire. Such people may also worry they won't be respected if the truth can leave them looking poorly. Instead, they offer a lie that casts them in a good light, but they aren't able to see that in most cases that what they offered has no basis in reality.

But what would happen when the dose was upped? At this point I felt some trepidation. There was a risk that I might say something that I really didn't want the world to know, but, confident in my ability to keep on lying, I told Dr Leach to go ahead.

I was given another slightly larger dose of sodium thiopental and this time I actually felt more sober, more in control. So what happened next was a complete surprise. Again Dr Leech asked me my name and my profession.

This time there was no hesitation. Well, executive producer, well, presenter, some, mix of the three of them. I'm still confused about what happened because one effect of the drug is to distort short-term memory.

But I think the reason that I spoke the truth on this occasion is because the thought of lying never occurred to me. So does it work? Well my conclusion after trying it out and speaking to experts is that it will certainly make you more inclined to talk, but that when you are under the influence you are also in an extremely suggestible state.

The reason you become more suggestible is probably because the drug is interfering with your higher centres, like your cortex, where a lot of decision making goes on. Example: Failure to answer the question. Example: Invoking religion. Manipulation : These behaviors are meant to disrupt your game plan. Example: Failure to understand a simple question. Aggression : These behaviors are typically exhibited by a person who feels cornered, and who needs to lash out to get you to back off.

Example: Attacking your credibility. Reaction : These are behaviors that are triggered by the autonomic nervous system when your question creates a spike in anxiety. Example: Hand-to-face activity. Your aim is to identify a cluster , which is defined as any combination of two or more deceptive behaviors, which can be verbal or nonverbal. Under our model, the first deceptive behavior has to occur within the first five seconds after the stimulus, which is your question.