I wonder how much of this is due to people getting away with it the first time and thus positive reinforcement, also not all lies are created equal. Someone lying on a job application, lying to the cops etc. vs. lying to your friend or spouse for example. This strikes me as a very flawed study.

I think the reasons people lie are more important to examine than this weird phrenology shit trying to peg certain people as predisposed to lying. In short this is pseudoscience bullshit.

If you find yourself in a situation where you decide to (or need to) lie, why wouldn’t you keep doing it?

Parent assaults you if you give them an honest answer? You will learn really fast to give the “correct” answer even when its a lie.

Working customer service? You will lie constantly because answering truthfully typically gets you attacked by the customer, your supervisor and/or your manager.

Anytime you’ve ever been asked, “How are you doing today?”, and you answered, “Okay.”, you were probably lying.

Not sure how I feel about conflating “dishonest behavior” and “lying” in this article…

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.

So… if all I need to do to get more money is just give you the answer “Give me more money”… this is supposed to mean I’m a liar and not a person who needs more money? There was a control group that was asked the same question but without the monetary incentive right?