tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/lying-1990/articlesLying – The Conversation2024-01-12T17:09:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2209672024-01-12T17:09:30Z2024-01-12T17:09:30ZBBC’s The Traitors: how unconscious biases can impact who you think is guilty<p><em>This article contains spoilers for the first five episodes of season two of The Traitors.</em></p>
<p>Subterfuge, betrayal, murder and money abound in the BBC hit series The Traitors, now in it’s second season. It’s no surprise that it has become a huge hit. </p>
<p>The basic premise of the show is that you have “the faithful” and “the traitors”. The game hinges on everyone presenting themselves as a faithful, but with the knowledge that there will be at least one traitor among them. </p>
<p>If the faithful manage to identify all traitors then they will share the £120,000 jackpot. However, if by the end of the game there are any traitors left, they will steal the jackpot from the faithful.</p>
<p>Once a day there is a “round table” discussion where players discuss who they think may be a traitor and vote to banish someone. This is particularly important given that each night the traitors can “murder” a faithful, who does not return to the game the following day. </p>
<p>However, this process is unlikely to rely solely on logical reasoning or tactical scheming. Implicit biases will always rear their heads. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470939376.ch25">cognitive bias</a> is a change in judgement based on characteristics or traits. Sometimes people are aware of their biases, so psychologists refer to these as explicit. However, most of the time people are unaware, and we refer to such biases as implicit. </p>
<p>Looking back to season one of The Traitors, many contestants were sceptical of a player called Tom because he was a magician, a job that is designed to deceive people. This ultimately led to him being banished from the game, despite being one of the faithful. This would be an example of explicit bias because the contestants admitted they made their decision based on Tom’s job. </p>
<p>Another contestant called Maddy pursued a vendetta against fellow player Wilf. However, this never gained support from the rest of the group as it was only based on her getting a “bad vibe” from him, despite her being correct that Wilf was a traitor. This could be an example of implicit bias, as Wilf’s popularity with the group appeared to save him from being banished right until the final hurdle.</p>
<p>Implicit biases like these can influence us in everyday life and, by definition, we are not aware of it. Here’s how they may be influencing decision making in the latest season of TV’s ultimate game of deception.</p>
<h2>Handsome traitors</h2>
<p>At the round table, aspersions are cast, guilt apportioned and suspicions aired. Every trait, behaviour pattern and word uttered is unpicked as the group try to work out who might be one of the traitors among them. Research shows there are things about a person that might make people think they are more or less guilty.</p>
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<p>Take 22-year-old Harry, a conventionally attractive white man. His looks are a fortunate trait for Harry, as attractive people are often judged as having more <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212144715300107?casa_token=PWXbZ5f_6U0AAAAA:xQr2nG44lXXO-3i36Gni-9S5BYgm1JZnl6Xk-N1L4cqgcZKW3gisYdy8wxgf_UV886DWK7AuOg4">positive characteristics</a> such as intelligence and kindness. This is sometimes referred to as a “halo effect”. It may have helped make him the perfect traitor – he has sailed through the first five episodes undetected. </p>
<p>By contrast, Ash, a 45-year-old Asian female who was less conventionally attractive, struggled to deflect accusations from the rest of the group and was recently banished. Members of “the faithful” have questioned Ash over her interest in people’s votes during the round table events.</p>
<p>Granted, Ash was a traitor and we only saw a snapshot of the day’s events but, looking at the group’s reasoning, it is unlikely that she asked anything that others hadn’t. They were all there to find traitors or to masquerade as faithfuls looking for traitors. Harry had probably asked similar questions.</p>
<p>However, implicit biases involving <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1999.85.3.1051?casa_token=Y1tNOncKN24AAAAA:61I-H-rZfTm0DQ1mKcTorx1vlLfmPZkSGZke5MyftEcU3MKyXV5y3s-lgOfddT3wonBvY55b4SqWKw">age</a>, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103120303607?casa_token=lZLp9dhPMeAAAAAA:E6MRC0xgHR3QKdOoSTkWKDi1Hk7f1Dt_lngAYlOsQffxa43Y4Zt4ZpK27pLFMJEx2YUYOBEoJio">sex</a>, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953617303039?casa_token=02iTTwYjoc4AAAAA:mUm12vParcDHdRM2s5gSx92Rww144KHR-YiFMz9_jr_UKYsqKdPW8uKNa7OTC0llormHtalD180">ethnicity</a> and attractiveness could all have contributed towards Harry’s safety and Ash’s undoing.</p>
<h2>Popular traitors</h2>
<p>In episode three, another traitor named Paul was voted the most popular member of the group. Popularity has long been associated with <a href="https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2044-8260.1979.tb00339.x">attribution bias</a>, which is the tendency to explain a person’s behaviour by their character rather than based on events that have happened. </p>
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<p>Likewise, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119202400.ch23">affinity bias</a>
is the tendency to favour people who share similar interests and experiences with us (who we have an affinity with). So being a popular, favourable character has perhaps protected Paul to a certain extent.</p>
<p>In episode four, contestants Zack and Jaz questioned Paul due to his calm and collected demeanour, claiming that this may be indicative of a traitor – an explicit bias. Luckily for Paul, the implicit biases mentioned seemed to save him.</p>
<p>Quite often in The Traitors, once someone’s name comes up at the round table, it is very difficult for them to defend themselves and suspicion spreads through the group. We have seen this herd mentality when banishing faithfuls Sonja and Brian, and when the group piled on traitor Ash. </p>
<p>However, when it comes to Paul, accusations seem to fall on deaf ears, and another contestant has even defended him, stating: “100% I think Paul is a faithful. 100%.” So, it could be that the implicit attribution and affinity biases have saved Paul, for now at least. </p>
<p>Whether we like it or not, by definition we are unaware of numerous cognitive biases that can influence our decisions profoundly. Sometimes they can help us, as we saw with Harry and Paul, and sometimes they can go against us, like we saw with Ash. The Traitors is just a game, but it is probably worth bearing in mind that these biases also exist in the real world and influence our decisions every day.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>You might think someone is guilty because of unconscious opinions you hold regarding certain traits.Daniel Walker, Lecturer in Psychology, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2206302024-01-09T13:42:16Z2024-01-09T13:42:16ZThe Traitors: why context is key when it comes to uncovering liars<p><em>Warning: includes spoilers for episode one of The Traitors.</em></p>
<p>The Traitors has returned to BBC One with a second season after the runaway success of the reality show’s debut series. </p>
<p>In the game show, 22 strangers stay at a remote castle and compete in a number of challenges to win a prize fund of £120,000. A small number of players are secretly selected as the “traitors”. </p>
<p>The remaining players, known as the “faithfuls”, have to root out the traitors if they are to take home the cash prize. They must do this before the traitors “murder” them – sending them out of the competition overnight. </p>
<p>Fellow faithfuls do not know who has been “murdered” until the unlucky player does not arrive for breakfast in the castle the next morning. The traitors must lie about their identity and appear as a faithful if they want to win. </p>
<p>The faithfuls seem to find it difficult to uncover the traitors’ true identities, whether that is at the round table, where the players discuss who they think are traitors, or as the traitors enter the breakfast room the morning after a “murder”. The faithful seem unable to tell lies from truth. </p>
<p><a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-08177-001">Research has found</a> that people are only marginally more accurate than chance at judging whether someone is lying or telling the truth. </p>
<p>One reason we are such poor lie detectors may be because we tend to believe others are telling the truth more often than we think that others may be lying to us. This is called the “<a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-08177-001">truth bias</a>”: that is, a bias towards believing what others say.</p>
<p>People are not always truth biased, though. For example, police officers making judgments of strangers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1406">show a bias</a> to think that suspects are lying. But when they are making judgments of strangers in contexts unrelated to their job, they <a href="https://doi.org/10.7334/psicothema2016.357">become truth biased</a>. </p>
<p>And while those of us who are not police officers are ordinarily truth biased, when we believe we are in a situation where more people have lied than told the truth, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.1904">we become lie biased too</a>. So, whether we tend towards guessing others are lying or telling the truth depends on the situation.</p>
<h2>The Traitors and the problem of context</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2015.06.002">Adaptive Lie Detector account</a> (Alied), a theory of how people decide who is lying, offers an explanation for these findings. It claims that when people make judgments about a particular statement (such as “I was in Wales last week”), they try to use reliable information about that statement to decide if it’s true or not. </p>
<p>For example, CCTV footage confirming the claim would be reliable information that the person is telling the truth. A witness contradicting the claim would be reliable information that they are lying. </p>
<p>Alied says that when reliable information is not available, people instead use their understanding of the situation to make a judgment. If most people in this situation usually tell the truth, Alied claims that people will usually believe others. If most people in this situation lie, Alied claims people will usually disbelieve others. Research in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.1904">my own lab</a> and in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000169">other labs</a> has supported Alied’s claims.</p>
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<p>In The Traitors, there is very little reliable information available to the faithful. There is no CCTV footage of the traitors meeting. The traitors do not personally deliver the murder note. There are no reliable pieces of information that the faithful could discover. They have little to work from other than their observations of people’s behaviour. </p>
<p>And while some of the players in the new series have mentioned plans to look out for eye contact and watch people’s faces, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0033-2909.129.1.74">research shows</a> that nonverbal behaviour is not a reliable indicator of deception. </p>
<p>According to Alied, when there is no reliable information, people rely on their understanding of the situation. The situation in The Traitors, known to all the players, is that there are many more faithful players than traitors. And so, while suspicions may run wild, most people are being honest in this situation.</p>
<p>Alied would predict that contestants on The Traitors will believe most others around the round table. And while we are seeing lots of the faithful accusing others, each individual faithful player tends to accuse only a small number of people, often only one person. If Alied is correct, the faithful are continuing to believe most of the others around them.</p>
<p>Spotting liars is a difficult task. But the traitors still run the risk of presenting behaviours that the faithful may interpret as deceptive. To quote Harry, one of the traitors of the new season: “If you can’t be good, be careful”.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris N. H. Street does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research has found that people are only marginally more accurate than chance at judging whether someone is lying or telling the truth.Chris N. H. Street, Senior lecturer in in Cognitive Psychology, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2148152023-10-26T12:30:52Z2023-10-26T12:30:52ZHow often do you lie? Deception researchers investigate how the recipient and the medium affect telling the truth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555683/original/file-20231024-17-ua983q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=292%2C0%2C5903%2C3935&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hunter Biden has been charged with making a false claim on a federal firearms application.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/APTOPIXHunterBiden/8a209c980515489694a4607e62e4b782/photo">AP Photo/Julio Cortez</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Prominent cases of purported lying continue to dominate the news cycle. Hunter Biden was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-indictment-gun-charges.html">charged with lying on a government form</a> while purchasing a handgun. Republican Representative George Santos <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/guide-george-santos-lies.html">allegedly lied in many ways</a>, including to donors through a third party in order to misuse the funds raised. The rapper Offset <a href="https://people.com/offset-says-cardi-b-didnt-cheat-he-was-just-drunk-7568020">admitted to lying on Instagram</a> about his wife, Cardi B, being unfaithful.</p>
<p>There are a number of variables that distinguish these cases. One is the audience: the faceless government, particular donors and millions of online followers, respectively. Another is the medium used to convey the alleged lie: on a bureaucratic form, through intermediaries and via social media.</p>
<p>Differences like these lead researchers like me to wonder what factors influence the telling of lies. Does a personal connection increase or decrease the likelihood of sticking to the truth? Are lies more prevalent on text or email than on the phone or in person?</p>
<p>An emerging body of empirical research is trying to answer these questions, and some of the findings are surprising. They hold lessons, too - for how to think about the areas of your life where you might be more prone to tell lies, and also about where to be most cautious in trusting what others are saying. As the recent director of <a href="https://honestyproject.philosophy.wfu.edu/">The Honesty Project</a> and author of “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/honesty-9780197696040">Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue</a>,” I am especially interested in whether most people tend to be honest or not.</p>
<h2>Figuring out the frequency of lies</h2>
<p>Most research on lying asks participants to self-report their lying behavior, say during the past day or week. (Whether you can trust liars to tell the truth about lying is another question.)</p>
<p>The classic study on lying frequency was conducted by psychologist <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=kCGIDeQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Bella DePaulo</a> in the mid-1990s. It focused on face-to-face interactions and used a group of student participants and another group of volunteers from the community around the University of Virginia. The community members <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.5.979">averaged one lie per day</a>, while the students averaged two lies per day. This result became the benchmark finding in the field of honesty research and helped lead to an assumption among many researchers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01366.x">that lying is commonplace</a>.</p>
<p>But averages do not describe individuals. It could be that each person in the group tells one or two lies per day. But it’s also possible that there are some people who lie voraciously and others who lie very rarely.</p>
<p>In an influential 2010 study, this second scenario is indeed what Michigan State University communication researcher <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=TIqSMJoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">Kim Serota</a> and his colleagues found. Out of 1,000 American participants, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01366.x">59.9% claimed not to have told a single lie</a> in the past 24 hours. Of those who admitted they did lie, most said they’d told very few lies. Participants reported 1,646 lies in total, but half of them came from just 5.3% of the participants.</p>
<p>This general pattern in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqab019">data has been replicated</a> several times. Lying tends to be rare, except in the case of a small group of frequent liars.</p>
<h2>Does the medium make a difference?</h2>
<p>Might lying become more frequent under various conditions? What if you don’t just consider face-to-face interactions, but introduce some distance by communicating via text, email or the phone?</p>
<p>Research suggests the medium doesn’t matter much. For instance, a 2014 study by Northwestern University communication researcher <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=s8zROxUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Madeline Smith</a> and her colleagues found that when participants were asked to look at their 30 most recent text messages, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.05.032">23% said there were no deceptive texts</a>. For the rest of the group, the vast majority said that 10% or fewer of their texts contained lies.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/are-people-lying-more-since-the-rise-of-social-media-and-smartphones-170609">Recent research by David Markowitz</a> at the University of Oregon successfully replicated earlier findings that had compared the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/985692.985709">rates of lying using different technologies</a>. Are lies more common on text, the phone or on email? Based on survey data from 205 participants, Markowitz found that on average, people <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqab019">told 1.08 lies per day</a>, but once again with the distribution of lies skewed by some frequent liars.</p>
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<p>Not only were the percentages fairly low, but the differences between the frequency with which lies were told via different media were not large. Still, it might be surprising to find that, say, lying on video chat was more common than lying face-to-face, with lying on email being least likely.</p>
<p>A couple of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/985692.985709">factors could be playing a role</a>. Recordability seems to rein in the lies – perhaps knowing that the communication leaves a record raises worries about detection and makes lying less appealing. Synchronicity seems to matter too. Many lies occur in the heat of the moment, so it makes sense that when there’s a delay in communication, as with email, lying would decrease.</p>
<h2>Does the audience change things?</h2>
<p>In addition to the medium, does the intended receiver of a potential lie make any difference?</p>
<p>Initially you might think that people are more inclined to lie to strangers than to friends and family, given the impersonality of the interaction in the one case and the bonds of care and concern in the other. But matters are a bit more complicated.</p>
<p>In her classic work, DePaulo found that people tend to tell what she called “everyday lies” <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.74.1.63">more often to strangers than family members</a>. To use her examples, these are smaller lies like “told her (that) her muffins were the best ever” and “exaggerated how sorry I was to be late.” For instance, DePaulo and her colleague Deborah Kashy reported that participants in one of their studies lied <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.74.1.63">less than once per 10 social interactions</a> with spouses and children.</p>
<p>However, when it came to serious lies about things like affairs or injuries, for instance, the pattern flipped. Now, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2004.9646402">53% of serious lies were to close partners</a> in the study’s community participants, and the proportion jumped up to 72.7% among student volunteers. Perhaps not surprisingly, in these situations people might value not damaging their relationships more than they value the truth. Other data also finds participants tell <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01366.x">more lies to friends and family members</a> than to strangers.</p>
<h2>Investigating the truth about lies</h2>
<p>It is worth emphasizing that these are all initial findings. Further replication is needed, and cross-cultural studies using non-Western participants are scarce. Additionally, there are many other variables that could be examined, such as age, gender, religion and political affiliation.</p>
<p>When it comes to honesty, though, I find the results, in general, promising. Lying seems to happen rarely for many people, even toward strangers and even via social media and texting. Where people need to be especially discerning, though, is in identifying – and avoiding – the small number of rampant liars out there. If you’re one of them yourself, maybe you never realized that you’re actually in a small minority.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214815/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>From 2020-2023, Christian B. Miller received funding from the John Templeton Foundation for the Honesty Project, which advancd research on the psychology and philosophy of honesty. </span></em></p>Researchers are interested in whether who you’re communicating with and how you’re interacting affect how likely you are to lie.Christian B. Miller, A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy, Wake Forest UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2054382023-05-10T17:53:48Z2023-05-10T17:53:48ZGeorge Santos indicted on fraud, money laundering and other criminal charges – 3 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525470/original/file-20230510-16225-9rlqre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1311%2C161%2C4679%2C3826&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Republican U.S. Rep. George Santos of New York is followed by reporters as he walks in the U.S. Capitol.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rep-george-santos-is-followed-by-members-of-the-media-as-he-news-photo/1485443677?adppopup=true">Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Even by today’s low ethical standards for politicians, George Santos is quite exceptional.</p>
<p>The U.S. representative for New York’s 3rd Congressional District has been <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/the-everything-guide-to-george-santoss-lies.html">accused of lying</a> about his education, work history, charitable activity, athletic prowess and even where he lives, among other things.</p>
<p>Now some of his alleged lies, the ones the public had not previously heard about, are the subject of a federal indictment as the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/congressman-george-santos-charged-fraud-money-laundering-theft-public-funds-and-false">U.S. Department of Justice</a> has charged Santos with 13 counts of criminal wrongdoing, including fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements.</p>
<p>Santos <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/05/10/1175179042/ny-rep-santos-surrenders-on-federal-fraud-charges">surrendered to federal authorities</a> at a courthouse in suburban Long Island on May 10.</p>
<p>“Taken together, the allegations in the indictment charge Santos with relying on repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.</p>
<p>Several scholars have written for The Conversation U.S. about Santos, his ability to lie when the truth was readily available and the resentment such lies breed in voters.</p>
<p>Here we spotlight three examples from our archives.</p>
<h2>1. Lies, lies and more lies</h2>
<p>Professor Sarah Webber is a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=FJ9Y6QMAAAAJ">nonprofit accounting scholar</a>, and what drew her attention to Santos were reports that he fabricated a charity. </p>
<p>On an <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200811235634/https://georgeforny.com/about/">early version of his campaign website</a>, the freshman lawmaker claimed to have founded and run what has been alleged to be a fake nonprofit animal rescue group called <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3791375-list-of-george-santos-falsehoods-continues-to-grow-amid-apology-tour/">Friends of Pets United</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1613537251904094213"}"></div></p>
<p>Regardless of what the stakes are in Santos’ case, Webber <a href="https://theconversation.com/allegations-that-the-charity-george-santos-claims-to-have-run-was-fake-highlight-how-scams-divert-money-from-worthy-causes-192983">wrote</a> that fake charities are a serious problem. </p>
<p>“Their scams divert donations that would probably otherwise support legitimate causes that benefit society in one way or another,” Webber wrote.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/allegations-that-the-charity-george-santos-claims-to-have-run-was-fake-highlight-how-scams-divert-money-from-worthy-causes-192983">Allegations that the charity George Santos claims to have run was fake highlight how scams divert money from worthy causes</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>2. Are lies told by politicians illegal?</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aIWyIH8AAAAJ&hl=en">scholar of constitutional law, comparative constitutionalism, democracy and authoritarianism</a>, Miguel Schor <a href="https://theconversation.com/george-santos-a-democracy-cant-easily-penalize-lies-by-politicians-197267">wrote</a> that the bulk of Santos’ misrepresentations may be protected by the <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/">First Amendment</a>. </p>
<p>Santos’ lies may have gotten him into hot water with the voters who put him in the House, including members of the <a href="https://people.com/politics/new-york-republicans-call-on-george-santos-to-resign/">New York GOP</a> who wanted him to resign.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505664/original/file-20230120-12-33u2r3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large, columned white building at the top of a grand, white set of stairs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505664/original/file-20230120-12-33u2r3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505664/original/file-20230120-12-33u2r3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505664/original/file-20230120-12-33u2r3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505664/original/file-20230120-12-33u2r3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505664/original/file-20230120-12-33u2r3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505664/original/file-20230120-12-33u2r3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505664/original/file-20230120-12-33u2r3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that some false statements are ‘inevitable if there is to be open and vigorous expression of views.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SupremeCourtDisabilitiesEducation/c46b6b0bf6ab45a4b6600360efe3083c/photo?Query=U.S.%20Supreme%20Court&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=8325&currentItemNo=19">AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But until the indictment, Santos has been able to escape legal accountability. </p>
<p>“The U.S. Supreme Court has concluded that lies enjoy First Amendment protection,” Schor observed, “not because of their value, but because the government cannot be trusted with the power to regulate lies.” </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/george-santos-a-democracy-cant-easily-penalize-lies-by-politicians-197267">George Santos: A democracy can't easily penalize lies by politicians</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>3. Voters resent unnecessary lying by politicians</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://phil.washington.edu/people/michael-blake">political philosopher</a>, Michael Blake focuses in his work on the moral foundations of democratic politics.</p>
<p>Lying to voters is not necessarily morally wrong, Blake <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-politicians-must-lie-from-time-to-time-so-why-is-there-so-much-outrage-about-george-santos-a-political-philosopher-explains-197877">wrote</a>, as politicians seeking election have incentives to tell voters what they want to hear. </p>
<p>But unlike the usual forms of deceptive practices during political campaigns, Santos’ lies have provoked <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/29/1146096826/rep-elect-george-santos-faces-growing-anger-from-new-york-voters">resentment and outrage</a>, which suggests that “voters do not accept being lied to unnecessarily – nor about matters subject to easy empirical proof or disproof.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/all-politicians-must-lie-from-time-to-time-so-why-is-there-so-much-outrage-about-george-santos-a-political-philosopher-explains-197877">All politicians must lie from time to time, so why is there so much outrage about George Santos? A political philosopher explains</a>
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</p>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205438/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
George Santos has admitted to having said some stupid things. But his lying became the subject of a federal probe that has resulted in criminal charges.Howard Manly, Race + Equity Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2014182023-03-28T16:38:09Z2023-03-28T16:38:09ZBody language books get it wrong: the truth about reading nonverbal cues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516674/original/file-20230321-26-yxltlq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=48%2C48%2C3546%2C2656&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Defensive, uncertain, confident, confrontational: can your body language reveal what you're thinking?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-wearing-teal-dress-sitting-on-chair-talking-to-man-2422280/">Pexels/Jopwell</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most of us have heard the one about if you <a href="https://www.scienceofpeople.com/arm-body-language/">cross your arms</a> over your chest you’re feeling defensive or if you’re <a href="https://www.elitedaily.com/lifestyle/hair-twirling-playing-touching-psychologist">fiddling with your hair</a> while talking you feel nervous – but is there <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=yqx1j8ynGfwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=body+language+research&ots=UgEWIy3m6l&sig=MCo0kkz0X0t4DOFafsMquERFYOo#v=onepage&q=body%20language%20research&f=false">really any truth</a> to some of these <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/spycatcher/202207/debunking-body-language-myths">body language stereotypes</a>?</p>
<p>Reading <a href="https://www.popsci.com/story/science/body-language-analysis/">body language</a> can be a <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110302028/html">useful skill</a> in <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED077060">understanding</a> how someone is feeling or what they might be thinking. But it’s important to remember that it’s <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-body-language/">not an exact science</a> and there can be <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/body-language-around-the-world-2015-3?r=US&IR=T">cultural or individual variations</a> in how <a href="https://neuroclastic.com/autistic-body-language/">people express themselves</a> through body language. For example, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4340785/#:%7E:text=In%20fact%2C%20in%20Japanese%20culture,their%20peripheral%20vision%20%5B28%5D.">eye contact in Japan</a> can be considered an act of aggression or rudeness.</p>
<p>Indeed, you can’t trust everything you read in body language guides. For example, in a <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1977-05780-000">book published in 1970</a>, author Ray Birdwhistell claimed that humans have 20,000 different facial expressions. But in the <a href="https://e-edu.nbu.bg/pluginfile.php/331752/mod_resource/content/0/Allan_and_Barbara_Pease_-_Body_Language_The_Definitive_Book.pdf">Definitive Book of Body Language</a> published in 2004 by Allan and Barbara Pease, that number suddenly increased to 250,000.</p>
<p>A quarter of a million different facial expressions – no wonder you need to read a guide on body language to decode those. More recent <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1322355111">scientific research</a> suggests that the real number of facial expressions is actually closer to 21.</p>
<p>There are body language books that promise success in the boardroom, the bedroom, bars and restaurants. They promise success at work and at home along with how to read the “tells” of your friends and neighbours. These popular books have two main aims (apart from making money) – they explain how to “expertly” read body language but also how to fake it for maximum effect.</p>
<h2>Dominant displays</h2>
<p>The Definitive Book of Body Language, for example, tells us that the crotch display (legs open, crotch slightly thrust forward, hand on the belt) is used by “macho men and tough guys”. It’s a powerful sexual signal the authors say and they claim it works. They write: “This gesture tells others, ‘I am virile – I can dominate’ which is why it’s a regular for men on the prowl.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man standing with hands on hips." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516675/original/file-20230321-2285-d4qgd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516675/original/file-20230321-2285-d4qgd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516675/original/file-20230321-2285-d4qgd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516675/original/file-20230321-2285-d4qgd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516675/original/file-20230321-2285-d4qgd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516675/original/file-20230321-2285-d4qgd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516675/original/file-20230321-2285-d4qgd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A dominant crotch display or just posing with hands on hips? And is his smile even real?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/full-length-body-size-view-nice-1934401475">Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Millions of people buy these books and try to recreate the crotch display or the “catapult” – the seated version of the hands-on-hip pose, with the hands behind the head and the elbows “menacingly pointed out”. The authors say this is an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/books/chapters/0924-1st-peas.html">almost exclusively male gesture</a> “used to intimidate others”.</p>
<p>It’s hard not to find either display a little comical partly because these “secret” meanings have been so widely shared in these bestselling books and partly because they are just inherently ridiculous. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517706/original/file-20230327-14-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man sitting on an orange beanbag doing the catapult body language position." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517706/original/file-20230327-14-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517706/original/file-20230327-14-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517706/original/file-20230327-14-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517706/original/file-20230327-14-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517706/original/file-20230327-14-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517706/original/file-20230327-14-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517706/original/file-20230327-14-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Is this the catapult or just a shoulder stretch?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/full-size-body-length-happy-elderly-2113243046">ViDI Studio/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These books are full of static images of the body language of effective “communicators” – and that’s one fundamental issue because body language is dynamic: the body is in motion. You can’t stand in a crotch display or sit in the catapult all day.</p>
<p>But that’s not to say body language isn’t important. Its significance is immense, although it’s not 12 times more powerful than verbal communication – <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781351308724/nonverbal-communication-albert-mehrabian">as some have claimed</a>. </p>
<h2>Fake vs real</h2>
<p>In my book <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Rethinking-Body-Language-How-Hand-Movements-Reveal-Hidden-Thoughts/Beattie/p/book/9780415538893">Rethinking Body Language</a>, I argue that to read body language accurately you need to know where to look. There may not be 20,000 different facial expressions, but the face can still be very revealing of underlying emotional states. That is until the person starts to try to control it, for example, by masking emotions with a smile. </p>
<p>So how can you tell a fake smile from a genuine smile? A genuine one involves the muscles around the eyes and fades slowly from the face. A fake masking smile leaves the face abruptly, as the US psychologist, Paul Ekman, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00332747.1969.11023575?">has shown</a> in his pioneering experiments linking emotions and facial expressions. So to decode facial expressions more accurately, you need to focus on what’s going on when the fake smile disappears. It’s very brief but it can be very revealing.</p>
<p>Another problem with the static nature of these body language books is that speech and body language are intimately connected, as US psychologist and expert in psycholinguistics (the psychology of language), David McNeill argued in his 2000 book <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=DRBcMQuSrf8C&oi=fnd&pg=PP11&dq=David+McNeill&ots=jEGX5yuqlm&sig=NLWoRpApXoRDC6P-RYkYDuBHXlc&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=David%20McNeill&f=false">Language and Gesture</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman with fake smile." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516678/original/file-20230321-16-qgwbd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516678/original/file-20230321-16-qgwbd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516678/original/file-20230321-16-qgwbd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516678/original/file-20230321-16-qgwbd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516678/original/file-20230321-16-qgwbd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516678/original/file-20230321-16-qgwbd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516678/original/file-20230321-16-qgwbd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘I’m happy, honest!’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/put-on-your-smile-young-girl-1344659774">Shutterstock/RomarioIen</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When people talk they often make spontaneous and unconscious hand movements that illustrate the content of what they’re saying. There’s no dictionary for these movements but they’re generated alongside speech itself. My own research <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/semi.1999.123.1-2.1/html">has shown</a> that meanings are expressed in these movements – and when people can’t see these gestures they miss important information. </p>
<p>Sometimes the gestural movement and the speech do not match. A speaker might say “my partner and I are very close” but their hands indicate a significant gap, rather than closeness. Another person says “I have very high ambitions” but their hand doesn’t rise that far, which you would expect if a person really felt that way. </p>
<p>I have argued in Rethinking Body Language that, in cases like this, the unconscious gesture is often the more reliable indicator of the underlying thought. But you need to know what they’re talking about to read the gestural movements.</p>
<p>It’s much easier to lie effectively in speech than in the accompanying gesture because these movements have intricate timings linked to the speech itself. The hand movement starts just before the speech and then the meaningful part of the gesture coincides exactly with the relevant word. It’s hard to get these timings right when lying. Again it’s all in the movement and the timing – and the close and unconscious connection between speech and body language.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoff Beattie has received funding from the ESRC for his work on gesture.</span></em></p>Why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover: the limitations of reading body language.Geoff Beattie, Professor of Psychology, Edge Hill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2024052023-03-27T12:42:25Z2023-03-27T12:42:25ZLie detectors: body language tells us surprisingly little about whether someone is being honest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517218/original/file-20230323-26-kvkctu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C44%2C7360%2C4858&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/male-hands-crossed-fingers-277073900">B-D-S Piotr Marcinski/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Do you ever wonder if you could pass a lie detection test or imagine what it would be like to read people’s body language? Reading body language may be great for adding tension to action movie interrogation scenes, however, the truth is, there isn’t much evidence you can detect lies by watching someone’s body language.</p>
<p>When you try to discover whether someone is lying in an interview, your sources are the behaviour the person displays or the information they provide. Nonverbal lie detection (body language) is more popular than <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2022.2035842">verbal lie detection</a> as people think that lie tellers can control their speech but not their behaviour. But verbal cues for deceit are far more telling. </p>
<p>People often assume lie tellers will be anxious. For example, that a lie teller might look away from the interviewer, fidget with their hands, sweat or swallow frequently. There is <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-103135">no scientific evidence for this belief</a>. The problem is truth tellers also get nervous during interviews and may display the same behaviour as lie tellers.</p>
<p>Lie tellers are more concerned about their credibility, whereas truth tellers are more likely to think that the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10683160701645181">truth will shine through</a>. However, if lie tellers and truthful people opt for body language strategies, they will do the same thing: avoid displaying signs of nervousness. </p>
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<p>But the spoken tactics truth tellers and lie tellers use differ. Truth tellers are forthcoming and <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/12/12/1644">willing to provide information</a>. They typically do not provide all the information they know at first, because they don’t know how much they are expected to offer. They may also lack the motivation to provide a lot of information. Truth tellers think their honesty is obvious to observers. Why put so much effort into providing details they think are irrelevant when the truth is clear? Plus, at first, they may be unable to retrieve <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/12/12/1644">everything that is stored in their memory</a>. </p>
<h2>Talking the talk</h2>
<p>Lie tellers try to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10683160701645181">keep their stories simple</a>. They are afraid what they say may give leads to investigators that they can check. They fear they won’t be able to repeat all they said when interviewed again later, or that an elaborate lie will require too much thinking time.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man with doubtful expression facing woman" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517219/original/file-20230323-2062-qy50xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517219/original/file-20230323-2062-qy50xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517219/original/file-20230323-2062-qy50xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517219/original/file-20230323-2062-qy50xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517219/original/file-20230323-2062-qy50xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517219/original/file-20230323-2062-qy50xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517219/original/file-20230323-2062-qy50xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Don’t waste your time reading someone’s body language if you feel unconvinced.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/doubting-dissatisfied-man-looking-woman-bad-1395298583">fizkes/Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Studies <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12555795/">analysing deception research</a> have shown that not only are verbal cues more revealing than nonverbal cues about deceit but also people are better at lie detection when they listen to speech than when they observe behaviour.</p>
<p>Interview protocols in most professions, such as border control and police, have been developed by deception researchers aimed at exploiting the different verbal strategies truth tellers and lie tellers use in interviews. The protocol interviewers choose normally depends on the evidence. </p>
<p>If the interviewer has independent evidence (for example, an email showing that someone attended an event) the <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-06150-010">strategic use of evidence (SUE)</a> is the best choice. This is when interviewers ask questions about the event without revealing the evidence they have. Truth tellers who have nothing to hide will speak freely and provide details, whereas lie tellers will deny they attended the event, will be reluctant to give specifics and may deflect questions. Lie tellers are more likely than truth tellers to contradict the evidence.</p>
<h2>The professional approach</h2>
<p>Sometimes interviewers do not have evidence, but it is possible the interviewee can provide it. When using a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211368120300772">verifiability approach (VA) interview technique</a>, interviewers ask interviewees whether they can provide evidence the interviewer can check. VA research has found truth tellers are more likely to volunteer such evidence (for example, mentioning other people who were at the event) than lie tellers.</p>
<p>Suppose that the topic of investigation is not whether the interviewee attended an event but whether the interviewee tells the truth or not about what they discussed with someone at the event. SUE and VA are not appropriate for this situation. An email showing someone attended the event will not reveal what happened there. If the interviewee did not record the conversation, the interviewee won’t be able to offer verifiable information. In that situation, <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/12/12/1644">cognitive credibility assessment (CCA)</a> can be used, an interview protocol that only considers the quality of a statement. </p>
<p>In a CCA interview, an interviewee is initially asked to report what happened during a narrow time period. The interviewee is then given prompts that raise expectations about what to say (let them listen to an example recording of someone giving the amount of detail you would like to hear), increases motivation to talk (by giving the impression that you listen to the best story you have heard in your life) or facilitates memory recall (by asking people to sketch out details of what they experienced while reporting their experiences). </p>
<p>In a CCA interview, interviewees are asked to tell their story several times over. CCA research has shown that truth tellers volunteer more extra information during these successive recalls than lie tellers who keep their stories simple. </p>
<p>It’s impossible to tell what information is inside someone’s head. For now, people’s thoughts are private as we simply don’t have the technology to unravel what someone is thinking. It may be less glamorous than a lie detector machine, but simply listening to the words someone says can reveal more about the state of their mind than they’d like.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202405/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aldert Vrij receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, present) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, present).
He also received many grants in the past including from:
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council;
Dutch Government;
Singapore Government;
Leverhulme Trust</span></em></p>But there are other techniques professional investigators use to test the plausibility of people’s stories.Aldert Vrij, Professor of Social Psychology, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1933732023-02-08T23:26:20Z2023-02-08T23:26:20ZAdults judge children who tell blunt polite truths more harshly than they do liars<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508497/original/file-20230206-25-syz9b1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C5013%2C3713&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In practice, adults don't always value truth above all else.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/mother-scolding-girl-hand-on-hip-pointing-finger-royalty-free-image/571750775">Ashley Corbin-Teich/Image Source via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Despite the common lesson that it’s paramount to tell the truth, adults <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2022.2109606">judged children who told blunt polite truths more negatively</a> than they did liars in a recent study <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-Ikvxa4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">my colleague</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dN8HVHEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">and I conducted</a>.</p>
<p>We asked 171 adults to watch videos of children between the ages of 6 and 15. Participants got a bit of written background identifying which children were lying and which were telling the truth.</p>
<p>The lies were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-386491-8.00004-9">what psychologists call prosocial</a>, meaning they benefited someone other than the child him- or herself. For instance, they might have been trying to protect a sibling who had destroyed their bike or to be polite and tell their parent they enjoyed the birthday party organized for them.</p>
<p>On the other hand, when they told the truth, the children were betraying a sibling to tell on them to the parent, or they were being rude and telling the parent the party they organized was boring.</p>
<p>All children made both kinds of statements, both in either a blunt, obvious manner or in a subtle, less apparent way.</p>
<p>As you might expect, adults rated the children who told the truth in a polite but subtle way most positively. And they judged the liars as more untrustworthy than when those same kids told the truth.</p>
<p>However, when we asked the adult participants more broadly about the children, they rated the liars as having a generally more positive disposition when they lied to be polite than when they told the blunt truth. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508498/original/file-20230206-26-laxjzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="back of a child's head with man stooping to look at kid's face" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508498/original/file-20230206-26-laxjzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508498/original/file-20230206-26-laxjzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508498/original/file-20230206-26-laxjzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508498/original/file-20230206-26-laxjzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508498/original/file-20230206-26-laxjzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508498/original/file-20230206-26-laxjzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508498/original/file-20230206-26-laxjzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Learning to tell socially acceptable lies is part of growing up – but adults might not make it clear which lies are good and which aren’t.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/germany-leipzig-father-angry-with-son-while-going-royalty-free-image/163250798">Westend61 via Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.46.4.409">Lying is typically viewed negatively</a>. In fact, being judged a liar is often seen as one of the worst characteristics you can ascribe to someone. At the same time, many smooth social interactions rely on little white lies and lies of omission.</p>
<p>So we were interested in understanding how children might learn how to lie and, in turn, how adults might judge kids when they tell socially acceptable lies.</p>
<p>Prosocial lying is more complex than lying for self-serving reasons. Parents have difficult choices to make when it comes to helping children understand this landscape.</p>
<p>Given our findings, it seems that adults might provide inconsistent messages in response to children’s lies. They seem to respond positively to polite liars while at the same time judging them as less trustworthy.</p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>The adults in our study knew when the children were lying. But much other research has shown that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1003_2">people are generally poor lie detectors</a>. Our participants might have judged the liars and truth-tellers differently if they didn’t know for sure when they were watching a lie.</p>
<p>The kind of socialization we were interested in depends on a person’s culture and individual situation. We have yet to examine how people from different backgrounds and with various personalities would respond to lying children and in turn help them understand what is socially acceptable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Support for this project was provided by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York #TRADA-45-492</span></em></p>Kids need to learn when little lies are the right choice. But research suggests parents may not be clear in the messages they send about how they value the truth.Laure Brimbal, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Texas State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1978772023-01-20T13:37:12Z2023-01-20T13:37:12ZAll politicians must lie from time to time, so why is there so much outrage about George Santos? A political philosopher explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505395/original/file-20230119-21-2g8xoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C49%2C8215%2C5436&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rep. George Santos stands during the voting for speaker in the House chamber in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Congress/e1fa5af411b547e38518f188d6d654ea/photo?Query=george%20santos&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=104&currentItemNo=27">AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea that politicians are dishonest is, at this point, something of a cliché – although few have taken their dishonesty as far as George Santos, U.S. representative for New York’s 3rd Congressional District, who <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/01/the-everything-guide-to-george-santoss-lies.html">seems to have lied about</a> his education, work history, charitable activity, athletic prowess and even his place of residence. </p>
<p>Santos may be exceptional in how many lies he has told, but politicians seeking election have incentives to tell voters what they want to hear – and there is some empirical evidence that a willingness to lie may be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008144117">helpful in the process of getting elected</a>.</p>
<p>If this is true, though, then why should voters care that they have been lied to? </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://phil.washington.edu/people/michael-blake">political philosopher</a> whose work focuses on the moral foundations of democratic politics, I am interested in the moral reasons voters in general have a right to feel resentment when they discover that their elected representatives have lied to them. Political philosophers offer four distinct responses to this question – although none of these responses suggest that all lies are necessarily morally wrong.</p>
<h2>1. Lying is manipulative</h2>
<p>The first reason to resent being lied to is that it is a form of disrespect. When you lie to me, you treat me as a thing to be manipulated and used for your purposes. In the terms used by philosopher Immanuel Kant, when you lie to me you treat me as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2010.01507.x">a means or a tool</a>, rather than a person with a moral status equal to your own. </p>
<p>Kant himself took this principle as a reason to condemn all lies, however useful – but other philosophers have thought that some lies were so important that they might be compatible with, or even express, respect for citizens. </p>
<p>Plato, notably, argues in “The Republic” that when the public good requires a leader to lie, the citizens should be <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D3%3Apage%3D389">grateful for the deceptions of their leaders</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ias.edu/scholars/walzer">Michael Walzer</a>, a modern political philosopher, echoes this idea. Politics requires the building of coalitions and the making of deals – which, in a world full of moral compromise, may entail being deceptive about what one is planning and why. As Walzer puts it, no one succeeds in politics without <a href="http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Philosophers/Walzer/PoliticaAction_TheProblemofDirtyHabnds.pdf">being willing to dirty their hands</a> – and voters should prefer politicians to get their hands dirty, if that is the cost of effective political agency. </p>
<h2>2. Abuse of trust</h2>
<p>A second reason to resent lies begins with the idea of predictability. If our candidates lie to us, we cannot know what they really plan to do – and, hence, cannot trust that we are voting for the candidate who will best represent our interests.</p>
<p>Modern political philosopher <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/beerbohm/home">Eric Beerbohm</a> argues that when politicians speak to us, they invite us to trust them – and a politician who lies to us <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/beerbohm/files/beerbohm_the_ethics_of_electioneering_jpp.pdf">abuses that trust</a>, in a way that we may rightly resent. </p>
<p>These ideas are powerful, but they also seem to have some limits. Voters may not need to believe candidates’ words in order to understand their intentions and thereby come to accurate beliefs about what they plan to do. </p>
<p>To take one recent example: The majority of those who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, when he was trumpeting the idea of making Mexico pay for a border wall, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/14/even-trump-voters-think-mexico-paying-for-the-wall-is-kind-of-a-joke/">did not believe that it was actually possible</a> to build a wall that would be paid for by Mexico. They did not take Trump to be describing a literal truth, but expressing an untruth that was indicative of Trump’s overall attitude toward migration and toward Mexico – and voted for him on the basis of that attitude. </p>
<h2>3. Electoral mandate</h2>
<p>The third reason we might resent lies told on the campaign trail stems from the idea of an electoral mandate. Philosopher John Locke, whose writings influenced the Declaration of Independence, regarded political authority as stemming from the <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/7370-h/7370-h.htm#CHAPTER_VII">consent of the governed</a>; this consent might be illegitimate were it to be obtained by means of deception.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white engraving of a man with shoulder-length hair" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Philosopher John Locke championed the idea of the consent of the governed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/john-locke-english-philosopher-undated-engraving-news-photo/517391868?phrase=Philosopher%20John%20Locke&adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This idea, too, has power – but it also runs up against the sophistication of both modern elections and modern voters. Campaigns do not pretend to give a dispassionate description of political ideals, after all. They are closer to rhetorical forms of combat and involve considerable amounts of <a href="https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/02/09/the-history-of-political-spin-in-washington-dc-and-why-its-not-so-bad-for-us-as-youd-think/">deliberate ambiguity, rhetorical presentation and self-interested spin</a>. </p>
<p>More to the point, though, voters understand this context and rarely regard any candidate’s presentation as stemming solely from a concern for the unalloyed truth.</p>
<h2>4. Unnecessary and disprovable</h2>
<p>The lies of George Santos, however, do seem to have provoked something like <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/29/1146096826/rep-elect-george-santos-faces-growing-anger-from-new-york-voters">resentment and outrage</a>, which suggests that they are somehow unlike the usual forms of deceptive practice undertaken during political campaigns. And this fact leads to the final reason to resent deception, which is that voters do not accept being lied to unnecessarily – nor about matters subject to easy empirical proof or disproof. </p>
<p>It seems clear that voters may sometimes be willing to accept deceptive and dissembling political candidates, given the fact that effective political agency may involve the use of deceptive means. Santos, however, lied about matters as tangential to politics as his nonexistent history as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/11/santos-lies-volleyball/">star player for Baruch College’s volleyball team</a>. This lie was unnecessary, given its tenuous relationship to his candidacy for the House of Representatives – and easily disproved, given the fact that he did not actually attend Baruch.</p>
<p>I believe voters may have made their peace with some deceptive campaign practices. If Walzer is right, they should expect that an effective candidate will be imperfectly honest at best. But candidates who are both liars and bad at lying can find no such justification, since they are unlikely to be believed and thus incapable of achieving those goods that justify their deception. </p>
<p>If voters have made their peace with some degree of lying, in short, they are nonetheless still capable of resenting candidates who are unskilled at the craft of political deception.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197877/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Blake receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>Constituents’ willingness to overlook deception may depend, in part, on whether politicians lie well and with a good purpose.Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1977782023-01-13T20:38:07Z2023-01-13T20:38:07ZVoters have few options to remove George Santos from Congress – aside from waiting until the next election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504483/original/file-20230113-14-zq62bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rep. George Santos leaves the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 12, 2023, followed by reporters. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1456010393/photo/embattled-newly-elected-rep-george-santos-is-sought-after-by-reporters-on-capitol-hill.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=5qWU_1KtaUqMVDo7LvMqkWfmL8qHJmVE7XwbaG2rkn8=">Win McNamee/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/now/congressman-george-santos-resists-growing-173207994.html">mounting calls</a> from both politicians and voters to force the newly elected apparent fabulist U.S. Rep. George Santos from Congress following revelations he fabricated his background and other details of his life. </p>
<p>But New York’s 3rd Congressional District voters, who elected Santos as their representative in November 2022, cannot directly force him out of office until the next election, in November 2024. </p>
<p>It appears that Santos, who beat Democrat Robert Zimmerman during the 2022 midterm election, has woven a web of lies about his personal and professional background, some of them touching on on major historical and tragic events. <a href="https://forward.com/news/529130/george-santos-jewish-lie-genealogy-records/">Santos falsely claimed</a>, for example, to have Jewish ancestry and said that his maternal grandparents fled to Brazil during the Holocaust. He also said that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks seemingly “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/29/george-santos-mother-911-death/">claimed” the life</a> of his mother – who actually died in 2016.</p>
<p>Santos said he graduated from Baruch College in the top 1% of his class and from NYU’s Stern School of Business – but <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/26/nyregion/george-santos-interview.html?searchResultPosition=3">he never attended</a> either institution, nor did he graduate from college. </p>
<p>He also lied about his work experience, <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/12/27/george-santos-admits-lies-college-graduation-citigroup-goldman-sachs-jewish-long-island-queens/">falsely claiming</a> Citigroup and Goldman Sachs as former employers. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/26/nyregion/george-santos-interview.html">Santos has since admitted</a> to embellishing parts of his résumé and said that he has not worked for CitiGroup or Goldman Sachs – and does not have a college degree. </p>
<p>Although a <a href="https://dankennedy.net/2022/12/23/a-long-island-weekly-had-the-goods-on-santos-several-weeks-before-election-day/">local weekly newspaper</a> raised questions about his background in September, the story did not gain traction until <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/29/north-shore-leader-santos-scoop/">The New York Times published its</a> own story in December 2022. If the voters had known about these lies before the election, Santos might have lost. </p>
<p>As a scholar of <a href="https://case.edu/law/our-school/faculty-directory/jonathan-l-entin-0">constitutional law</a> and public policy, I think it is important to understand that voters have limited options at this point. Forty states provide for <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Laws_governing_recall">the recall of state and local elected officials</a>. But there is no <a href="https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL30016.html">federal recall law</a> that could lead to the removal of someone like Santos from Congress.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504484/original/file-20230113-19-61gavq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men in suits raise their hands, surrounded by other men and one women in formal clothing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504484/original/file-20230113-19-61gavq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504484/original/file-20230113-19-61gavq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504484/original/file-20230113-19-61gavq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504484/original/file-20230113-19-61gavq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504484/original/file-20230113-19-61gavq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504484/original/file-20230113-19-61gavq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504484/original/file-20230113-19-61gavq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Santos and other members of Congress are sworn into office on Jan. 7, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1246172509/photo/fourth-day-of-118th-congress.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=VZpuLG0oZTTghKfdWqOBYoM59EJ6k8tiiCECK5mYY9c=">Elizabeth Frantz/For The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>There are few federal options to remove Santos</h2>
<p>The Nassau County Republican Committee and other local offices in Santos’ Long Island district <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/11/local-ny-republicans-call-on-disgraced-congressman-santos-to-quit">are calling for</a> him to step down. Several Republican House members have joined the chorus.</p>
<p>Santos, meanwhile, has said that he will not resign. </p>
<p>“I was elected by 142,000 people. Until those same 142,000 people tell me they don’t want me, we’ll find out in two years,” <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-rep-santos-opens-door-resignation-if-142-people-ask-2023-01-12/">Santos recently said</a>. </p>
<p>He may be right.</p>
<p>The Constitution says that members of Congress can <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-2/section-4/">be impeached and removed</a> for treason, bribery or other offenses. <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-5/clause-2/">The Constitution does not</a> specify grounds for expulsion – or actually removing someone from office – leaving that to each chamber of Congress to determine. </p>
<p>The Constitution also says nothing about recall elections. </p>
<p>The Supreme Court has also never specifically addressed the legality of a federal recall, but two other rulings suggest that such a law would be unconstitutional. The court first <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/138">determined in 1969</a> that Congress may not refuse to seat a duly elected member who meets the constitutional qualifications for office. And it also <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1994/93-14565">ruled in 1995</a> that states may not impose term limits on members of Congress, because that would add an additional qualification for membership beyond the citizenship, age and residency requirements mentioned in the Constitution. </p>
<p>Even if a federal law authorizing the recall of members of Congress were adopted and survived a legal challenge, the legislative and legal processes would consume virtually all of Santos’ two-year term. So recalling Santos is not a promising option, even if it were legal.</p>
<p>Critics might also try to get the House to expel Santos. But expulsion is exceedingly rare. The House has expelled only five members in its entire history, most for joining the Confederacy <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/01/02/fact-check-14-congressmen-expelled-1861-supporting-confederacy/4107713001/">during the Civil War</a>. </p>
<h2>Ethics concerns are at play, though</h2>
<p>Santos would not be committing any crime simply by telling lies. Maybe he did other things that violated the law – state, federal and Brazilian authorities <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/nyregion/george-santos-long-island-investigation.html?searchResultPosition=8">are currently investigating</a> whether he used campaign funds for personal expenses, and whether he committed fraud in Brazil by using someone else’s checkbook to pay his bills. </p>
<p>But Santos will not automatically lose his office even if he is convicted of any crime. The House does not require members to forfeit their office in those circumstances – or even if they go to prison. </p>
<p>Santos’ case, however, does raise ethics concerns that members of Congress can address. Two House Democrats from New York <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/01/10/george-santos-ethics-committee-complaint">have filed ethics complaints</a> against Santos with the House Ethics Committee regarding incomplete financial disclosure forms. </p>
<p>This bipartisan committee investigates alleged law violations by Congress members and makes recommendations to <a href="https://ethics.house.gov/about">the full House</a>. Ethics Committee recommendations are not legally binding. The House itself must consider them, though. In any event, this process probably would extend far into or beyond Santos’ term. </p>
<p>Santos might also resign if the Ethics Committee recommended his expulsion. That has happened on several occasions. In 1986, Sen. <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/expulsion_cases/140HarrisonWilliams_expulsion.htm">Harrison Williams</a> resigned when facing an Ethics Committee’s recommendations that he be expelled because of corruption. In 1995, Sen. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/08/us/packwood-case-overview-packwood-says-he-quitting-ethics-panel-gives-evidence.html">Robert Packwood</a> left his post for the same reason. </p>
<p>Rep. Mario Biaggi of New York also stepped down before an expulsion vote <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/06/nyregion/biaggi-quits-will-not-seek-an-11th-term.html">in 1988</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504485/original/file-20230113-20-7p0nn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A person stands and leans into a voting box in a gymnasium." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504485/original/file-20230113-20-7p0nn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504485/original/file-20230113-20-7p0nn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504485/original/file-20230113-20-7p0nn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504485/original/file-20230113-20-7p0nn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504485/original/file-20230113-20-7p0nn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504485/original/file-20230113-20-7p0nn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504485/original/file-20230113-20-7p0nn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Voters in Garden City, New York, vote in October 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1284810362/photo/early-voting-booth-in-nassau-county-new-york.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=u6UksNYbIqqwN8dQxcsXn00wqi7f2czC53Zb79jhBJ0=">Chris Ware/Newsday via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>No clear exit ahead</h2>
<p>In short, Santos would be able to serve most or all of his term even if the House did ultimately vote to expel him. But there are additional complications. <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript">The Constitution requires</a> a two-thirds vote to expel a member of Congress. Such a supermajority is unlikely, especially in a House with <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/31/1146453695/republicans-turn-to-2023-with-narrow-house-majority">a narrow majority</a> in which every vote counts and when Republicans might be hard-pressed to win a special election to fill Santos’ vacancy.</p>
<p>Voters who are appalled by George Santos’ apparent lies have little direct leverage to force him out of office quickly. Their first and best opportunity will come in 2024 if Santos decides to seek another term. Voters could defeat him in the Republican primary, where he surely would face opposition. And if he somehow survived the primary, he would still have to face a Democrat in the general election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197778/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Entin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is no federal recall law that could lead to another election for Santos’ seat. But Santos’ case presents ethics concerns that the House may review.Jonathan Entin, Professor Emeritus of Law and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1962472022-12-14T12:27:33Z2022-12-14T12:27:33ZUnderstanding dishonesty in children – when, how and why do kids lie?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500010/original/file-20221209-22427-9f9cod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C68%2C9188%2C5932&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It takes a lot of self control not to peek</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/adorable-latin-toddler-wearing-casual-clothes-1856365738">Krakenimages.com/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When asked if they peeked at a toy, 40% of children falsely confessed to peeking, even though they did not do so, in a <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278099">recent study</a> of lying in toddlers. When so many children made up falsehoods with no benefit, there is more to it than cheeky fibs.</p>
<p>The researchers, from Poland and Canada, tested children’s self-control at the age of 18 months by asking them not to peek at a toy. The same 252 children were tested again at age two and then again six months later. Only 35% of the young participants disobeyed the request not to look, but 27% of the peekers falsely claimed they had done as they were told. </p>
<p>From an early age, children are taught lying is a moral failing. Yet, in some social contexts, children might also be encouraged to lie. Many parents <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/chso.12139">explicitly tell their children not to distort the truth</a>, emphasising the importance of being honest. However, they also give nuanced messages about honesty. For example, they might claim it is sometimes acceptable to tell white lies to protect other people’s feelings.</p>
<p>There are many reasons the children in the study may have made false confessions. They were so young they may have had trouble understanding the question. We know children tend to <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20438461/">say yes more readily</a> than adults when asked yes-no questions. </p>
<p>Research shows children need to <a href="https://www.lancsngfl.ac.uk/curriculum/pshe/download/file/SEAD.pdf">explore and test the boundaries of a new concept</a> before they understand it. Play and learning are intertwined, especially for children. </p>
<p>Fibbing emerges in the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3788848/pdf/nihms489244.pdf">pre-school years</a>. Children as young as two know how to do it. Lying goes hand in hand with the progression of children’s <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21887961/">social skills</a>. While lying is considered a problem behaviour, it also indicates healthy brain development in children and is a cognitive milestone. </p>
<p>Children’s initial lies are only a few words long. As their cognitive skills develop, <a href="https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/cdep.12023?casa_token=q2BUOjE4rCAAAAAA:-K-GEqsjvMR_eTDXCEmHulE4DbQ-VvRGWjV3lzAq1jSP5HxLtwNe-dak67qT5rYLBvI_htuzMEtdddp8">their lies become more complex</a>. The falsehoods involve more words and can be maintained over a longer period. </p>
<h2>Don’t tell tales</h2>
<p>To lie, children <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/desc.13096?casa_token=2GlkpXCd-k0AAAAA%3A-7e4qK7LDVl5pna1EQGPfYxncGReSAg6jcWyqk3JWfKl3phFwZP9LkT1vPjomFVfaz9V3R0Obw55-6Td">need to do three things</a>. One, they need to have enough self-restraint to overcome their tendency to tell the truth. In psychology, we call this inhibitory control. </p>
<p>Two, they need to access short-term memory, as well as simultaneously create alternative scenarios. And three, children need to be able to change back and forth between acting according to the truth and behaving in line with the falsehood they are constructing (cognitive flexibility).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Little girl wearing a floppy hat peers over a table, hold a coffee mug with a cheeky expression" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500066/original/file-20221209-34427-t8ib8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500066/original/file-20221209-34427-t8ib8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500066/original/file-20221209-34427-t8ib8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500066/original/file-20221209-34427-t8ib8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500066/original/file-20221209-34427-t8ib8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500066/original/file-20221209-34427-t8ib8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500066/original/file-20221209-34427-t8ib8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Plotting? Or just playing?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cute-little-girl-drinking-attractive-female-295052069">Photography Cornwall/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Children are more likely to tell white lies when they have <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022096520304999">high emotional understanding</a>: skills that help them understand the nature, causes and consequences of emotions related to themselves and to others. </p>
<p>Parenting styles play a role in the development of white lies. Children who lie to protect other people’s feelings are more likely to be raised by parents with an <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022096511001317">authoritative style</a> who are nurturing, supportive and responsive to their children’s needs. In contrast, children who are exposed to a <a href="https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01663.x">punitive environment</a> are more likely to lie and stick with the lie, perhaps as self-protection against harsh punishment.</p>
<h2>Setting the example</h2>
<p><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/desc.12883">Adults’ behaviour</a> can influence whether or not children tell lies. Children who observe another person either <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022096517306811">receive a reward for telling the truth</a> or punishment for telling a lie are more likely to tell the truth. </p>
<p>Similarly, children who observe their peers rewarded for confessing a wrongdoing are more likely to tell the truth. So adults should be aware children are paying attention to actions as much as words. </p>
<p>Encouraging children to tell the truth by not lying in front of them and rewarding them for telling the truth, even when they acted in an undesirable way, can encourage them to be honest in the future.</p>
<p>As adults, many of us struggle to acknowledge how the shades of grey between honesty and dishonesty are the social lubricant of life. The 2009 comedy <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1058017/">The Invention of Lying</a>, starring Ricky Gervais and Jennifer Garner, is set in an alternative reality in which lying does not exist. The first character to learn how to lie in this film, Gervais’s Mark, initially lies for his own gain but realises dishonesty can be used to help others such as to comfort his dying mother. </p>
<p>Towards the end of The Invention of Lying, Garner’s character Anna asks Mark why he didn’t use his power to lie to manipulate her into marrying him. He responds that “it wouldn’t count”. If we can be honest with ourselves about our relationship with lying, we can help our children learn to tell the truth when it matters most.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gadda Salhab does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Children get a hard time for being dishonest but it’s a sign of healthy brain development.Gadda Salhab, PhD Candidate, Forensic Psychology, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1873262022-09-14T12:21:25Z2022-09-14T12:21:25ZLies are more common on laptops than on phones – how devices may shape our behavior when bargaining with strangers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482528/original/file-20220902-12-14z84h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=160%2C185%2C8082%2C5302&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A deceptive device? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/cropped-shot-of-womans-hand-typing-on-computer-royalty-free-image/1309760275">d3sign/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em> </p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>People appear to be more willing to lie for personal gain when they use a laptop versus a smartphone, our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCMA-10-2021-0157">new peer-reviewed research</a> shows. Given that the two devices have nearly identical technical capabilities – they’re both boxes with electronic brains – this surprised us and highlights the psychological impact of technology.</p>
<p>Our first in a planned series of studies was a version of what economists call the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/ultimatum-game">ultimatum game</a>. In the take-it-or-leave-it exercise, one player is told they’ll receive a certain sum of money, some of which they must split with a partner. But they can tell their partner whatever they choose about the total sum and how much of it they’re willing to offer – allowing them to lie and keep more of the kitty for themselves. However, the partner must agree to the offered sum for either of them to get any money. </p>
<p>In our version, we told 137 graduate students to imagine they’d share US$125 with a fellow student, if their randomly assigned partner agreed to the deal. Half of them used a laptop; the rest participated with their smartphone. </p>
<p>While the vast majority of participants fibbed at least a little, laptop users were much more likely to lie – and by a lot more. Eighty-two percent of laptop participants were deceptive, compared with 62% of phone users, and on average claimed the pot was $20 less. </p>
<p>Although this was hypothetical and didn’t involve real money, previous <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1037/a0018627">research by us</a> and <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1177/002200277802200102">other</a> <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.6.833">scholars</a> shows that these scenarios are good at predicting actual behavior. </p>
<p>To see if our finding held up in a more real-world scenario, we devised a negotiation experiment in which two people were told to barter over the purchase price of an imaginary semiconductor factory one of them owned. We split 222 students into buyers and sellers. Buyers were confidentially told that the market value of the property was estimated at $21 million. </p>
<p>We then asked buyers to tell sellers what they thought was the fair market value of the property and make an initial offer. Like in the first experiment, about half of the students used their phones and the others negotiated on laptops. </p>
<p>Again, laptop users were more deceptive. On average, they told sellers the fair value was $16.7 million – lowballing it by over $4 million – compared with $18.1 million for phone participants. In both cases, their actual offers were only slightly higher than what they said was the market value.</p>
<p>To find out what’s going on, we asked participants of a separate study about their associations with each device and found a consistent pattern. Phones triggered associations of friends and family, and laptops led to thoughts of work, success and accomplishments – which <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04729-5">previous research</a> has shown can trigger unethical behavior.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>People’s use of technology in decision-making can subtly yet fundamentally shift the way our brains work. </p>
<p>In past work, we found that people <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018627">lie more frequently</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-008-0084-x">cooperate less</a> and <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.07.001">evaluate others more negatively</a> when they conduct tasks virtually as opposed to in person, with physical tools like pens and paper. </p>
<p>While studies like ours can’t perfectly predict how behavior will play out in real life, these experiments do offer more evidence of the subtle ways technology can alter human behavior. </p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>We don’t know whether our findings would hold for other tasks and within the context of existing relationships. Even within our experiments, other factors may be affecting people’s choice to lie, such as different screen sizes or locations.</p>
<p>Our research shows the continued need to assess how technological tools are used in real settings, including the unconscious changes these devices might have on daily decisions and ethical standards.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187326/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Terri R. Kurtzberg receives funding from Rutgers University. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Naquin receives funding from DePaul University. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mason Ameri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new study found that the device people used to communicate in a negotiation made a big difference in how likely they were to deceive for personal gain.Terri R. Kurtzberg, Associate Professor of Management and Global Business, Rutgers University - NewarkCharles Naquin, Associate Professor of Management, DePaul UniversityMason Ameri, Associate Professor of Professional Practice, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1886012022-08-18T01:20:30Z2022-08-18T01:20:30ZLying down, sitting, leaning over? What science says about the best way to take your medicine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479516/original/file-20220817-18222-qj3sxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C2%2C997%2C772&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-senior-man-taking-medicines-horizontal-62995330">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When pharmacists dispense tablets or capsules they commonly advise when and how often to take them, and if this needs to be with or without food. </p>
<p>You generally don’t hear them tell you to lean to one side when swallowing. But preliminary research from Johns Hopkins University in the United States <a href="https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0096877">suggests</a> this might improve how fast your medicine is absorbed and gets to work.</p>
<p>The results are based on a computer simulation, rather than in actual patients, and may not equate to the real world. So it’s too early to suggest you strike a yoga pose when taking your medicine. </p>
<p>But your posture can be important when taking pills or capsules, for comfort or safety.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-time-of-day-should-i-take-my-medicine-125809">What time of day should I take my medicine?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What happens when you swallow your medicine?</h2>
<p>Once you swallow a tablet or capsule, it moves down the throat to the stomach. There, a tablet swells and disintegrates, or a capsule breaks open. The drug can then dissolve and your body can absorb it.</p>
<p>Most drugs do not start being absorbed until they reach the small intestine. However, some drugs, such as aspirin, are likely to be absorbed in the stomach because of its acidic environment.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"726886205082595328"}"></div></p>
<p>A number of other factors can also affect where and how a drug is absorbed. </p>
<p>These include how fast the tablet disintegrates to release the drug, how fast the swallowed contents move from the stomach to the small intestine, the amount of food and drink consumed before taking the medicine, and how easily the drug is absorbed across the gut lining.</p>
<h2>How about this latest study?</h2>
<p>The US researchers <a href="https://publishing.aip.org/publications/latest-content/body-posture-affects-how-oral-drugs-absorbed-by-stomach/">used computer simulations</a> to investigate how posture affects how drugs <a href="https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0096877">are absorbed</a>. </p>
<p>The researchers used software they developed to simulate several ways of taking a pill: staying upright, leaning to the left or right, or leaning backwards.</p>
<p>They showed leaning 45 degrees to the right favoured a faster movement of stomach contents into the duodenum (the first part of the small intestine). This would allow the pill to be absorbed more quickly and start to take effect.</p>
<p>The results could be important for medicines that you’d want to act quickly, such as pain medicines, or ones used to treat a heart attack. </p>
<p>There is already some <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18936930/">earlier evidence</a> from real patients suggesting posture may influence how medicines are absorbed. This includes the option of leaning to the right. But the authors acknowledge many factors influence absorption, not just posture.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/health-check-is-it-ok-to-chew-or-crush-your-medicine-39630">Health Check: is it OK to chew or crush your medicine?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>When is it best to sit or stand?</h2>
<p>Sometimes your pharmacist may advise you to swallow your medicine sitting, standing, or lying down for reasons other than speeding up absorption. </p>
<p>For example, certain drugs are more likely to cause side effects such as <a href="https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/gord-reflux">heartburn</a>, where stomach acid leaks from the stomach and moves up into the oesophagus (food pipe).</p>
<p>These include non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as <a href="https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/ibuprofen">ibuprofen</a> (Nurofen), <a href="https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/medicines/medicinal-product/aht,20761/diclofenac">diclofenac</a> (Voltaren), and iron supplements. </p>
<p>So if this is a problem for you, it may help to take these medicines sitting or standing, and not lying down straight away afterwards. That’s because your stomach acid is less likely to leak back up into your oesophagus. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479518/original/file-20220817-1490-bjhdxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Elderly woman sitting down at table with pill and cup" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479518/original/file-20220817-1490-bjhdxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479518/original/file-20220817-1490-bjhdxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479518/original/file-20220817-1490-bjhdxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479518/original/file-20220817-1490-bjhdxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479518/original/file-20220817-1490-bjhdxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479518/original/file-20220817-1490-bjhdxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479518/original/file-20220817-1490-bjhdxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some medicines can irritate the throat or cause heartburn. So it’s best to take these upright.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/old-woman-taking-pills-her-country-218558989">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some medicines can irritate the throat if they become stuck. This is because they damage the protective mucosal barrier that lines your oesophagus and stomach, causing irritation and inflammation. </p>
<p>For these medicines it is important to take these sitting up or standing, and remaining upright for 30 minutes afterwards.</p>
<p>These include the antibiotic <a href="https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/doxycycline">doxycycline</a>, and drugs known as bisphosphonates (for osteoporosis), such as <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/drugs/risedronate-oral-tablet">risedronate</a> (Actonel) and <a href="https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/medicines/brand/amt,39580011000036106/alendronate-sandoz">alendronate</a> (Fosamax).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-older-people-get-osteoporosis-and-have-falls-68145">Why older people get osteoporosis and have falls</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How about lying down?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/medicines/brand/amt,3285011000036105/nitrolingual">Glyceryl trinitrate</a> (Nitrolingual) is an under-the-tongue spray. It’s prescribed to people with <a href="https://www.heartfoundation.org.au/bundles/your-heart/angina">angina</a>, a type of chest pain caused by an underlying heart problem. </p>
<p>Pharmacists advise patients to sit or lie down before using this spray as it can cause a sudden drop in blood pressure, making you feel very dizzy. </p>
<p>Other heart medicines, such as diuretics, are also known to cause dizziness. Although you don’t usually need to take these medications lying down, if you do become dizzy it is best to sit or lie down, and ensure you stand up slowly afterwards.</p>
<p>There are also <a href="https://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/puarticles/march2017/medicineinducedvertigo.htm">medications</a> that can cause drowsiness or make you feel “woozy”. These can include strong pain killers (such as opiates), sleeping tablets, some epilepsy medications, or drugs for certain mental health conditions, such as anxiety or schizophrenia. </p>
<p>These don’t need to be swallowed while lying down, but lying down can help if you become dizzy or drowsy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479519/original/file-20220817-18377-wztyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman lying on side in bed holding glass of water and a pill" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479519/original/file-20220817-18377-wztyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479519/original/file-20220817-18377-wztyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479519/original/file-20220817-18377-wztyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479519/original/file-20220817-18377-wztyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479519/original/file-20220817-18377-wztyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479519/original/file-20220817-18377-wztyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479519/original/file-20220817-18377-wztyfz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some medicines can make you dizzy. So you can lie down after taking them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mature-woman-taking-medicine-home-closeup-776225686">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What if I’m not sure?</h2>
<p>Next time your pharmacist dispenses your medicine, unless they provide specific guidance about sitting, standing or lying down, you are generally safe to take it whichever way is most comfortable.</p>
<p>So how about this latest evidence suggesting leaning to the right might help? At this stage, you likely won’t hear your doctor or pharmacist recommend you should lean over to take your medicines until further research is done. </p>
<p>But next time you need to take a medicine for pain, as long as it is not uncomfortable, feel free to try this to see if your pain is relieved faster.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188601/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elise Schubert is a registered pharmacist and a PhD Candidate receiving scholarship from the University of Sydney and Canngea Pty Ltd.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Associate Professor Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, a member of the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association, and member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Nial is the science director of Canngea Pty Ltd, chief scientific officer of Vairea Skincare LLC, and a Standards Australia panel member for sunscreen agents.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Associate Professor Tina Hinton has previously received funding from the Schizophrenia Research Institute (formerly Neuroscience Institute of Schizophrenia and Allied Disorders). She is currently a Board member of the Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists. </span></em></p>Sometimes, it’s best to take your medicine sitting up. Other times, lying down is safer. Here’s what we know so far.Elise Schubert, Pharmacist and PhD Candidate, University of SydneyNial Wheate, Associate Professor of the Sydney Pharmacy School, University of SydneyTina Hinton, Associate Professor of Pharmacology, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1774492022-04-20T19:54:33Z2022-04-20T19:54:33Z‘This worked much better than I thought.’ Why you need to watch out for strategic lies in the federal election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457874/original/file-20220413-24-jqdror.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Ross/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During the federal election, politicians of all persuasions will use a range of campaigning and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-vomit-principle-the-dead-bat-the-freeze-how-political-spin-doctors-tactics-aim-to-shape-the-news-106453">spin tactics</a>. But there is a difference between “gilding the lily” and lying with strategic intent, a trend that is growing in western democracies. </p>
<p>The February 2022 <a href="https://www.edelman.com.au/trust-barometer-2022-australia">Edelman global trust survey</a> finds citizens increasingly expect government leaders will “purposefully mislead them by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations”. In Australia, that expectation has risen three percentage points to 61% since last year. </p>
<p>In a “<a href="https://oxfordre.com/communication/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-757">post truth</a>” world, we are seeing lies proliferate online. Recent election campaigns in the United States and United Kingdom suggest lying is now a successful strategic campaign tool.</p>
<p>Australian voters need to be on high alert. </p>
<h2>The ‘strategic lie’</h2>
<p>As we argue in our recent journal article, “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1940161221994100">strategic lying</a>” has evolved from political spin tactics, intensified by the growing ranks of political communication professionals and the rise of social media. </p>
<p>It is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/strategic-lies-deliberate-untruths-used-as-a-political-tactic-new-study-159723">campaign device</a> used to shape what issues are discussed in the media and how they are framed. It is designed to grab media attention with an initial, deliberate lie. This shifts the news agenda onto a politician’s preferred territory.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if the lie is easily corrected because the subject of the lie is then amplified and kept on the news agenda. The distribution of the lie is further increased by social media and amplified by the mainstream media. </p>
<p>The more outlandish the lie, the better.</p>
<h2>The Trump approach</h2>
<p>Former US president Donald Trump used strategic lies before, during, and after his time in office. </p>
<p>His first most obvious strategic lie came in 2011 when he claimed to have “proof” Barack Obama was not born in the United States, making him ineligible to occupy the White House (the so-called “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37391652">birther controversy</a>”). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Former US president Donald Trump." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457855/original/file-20220413-16-w7n5iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457855/original/file-20220413-16-w7n5iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457855/original/file-20220413-16-w7n5iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457855/original/file-20220413-16-w7n5iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457855/original/file-20220413-16-w7n5iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457855/original/file-20220413-16-w7n5iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457855/original/file-20220413-16-w7n5iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former US president Donald Trump has a track record of using strategic lies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Seward/AP/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over the next three years, Trump continued to raise the issue, despite the lie being <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/sep/16/donald-trump/donald-trumps-pants-fire-claim-he-finished-obama-b/">comprehensively rebutted</a>. He did so not because he expected people to believe it but, as a strategic lie, it kept the issue of Obama’s origins and his “otherness” on the mainstream news agenda. </p>
<p>More recently, Trump’s baseless claims of the “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-courts-election-idUSKBN2AF1G1">election steal</a>” have fuelled riots and generated support for a possible presidential re-election campaign, while distracting attention from the simple fact that he legitimately lost the election. </p>
<h2>Brexit lies</h2>
<p>In the UK, lies about the cost of staying in the European Union featured heavily in the Brexit campaign. The false <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2016/may/23/does-the-eu-really-cost-the-uk-350m-a-week">claim</a> “we send the EU £350 million a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead” was central to the “Leave” campaign and ensured the “cost” of EU membership dominated the referendum. </p>
<p>Its architect, political adviser <a href="https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the-referendum-21-branching-histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before-the-storm-2/">Dominic Cummings</a>, subsequently gloated the falsehood was designed “to provoke people into argument. This worked much better than I thought it would”. He also described it as “a brilliant communications ploy”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Former political strategist and special adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457856/original/file-20220413-28-7kcn63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457856/original/file-20220413-28-7kcn63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457856/original/file-20220413-28-7kcn63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457856/original/file-20220413-28-7kcn63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457856/original/file-20220413-28-7kcn63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457856/original/file-20220413-28-7kcn63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457856/original/file-20220413-28-7kcn63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former political strategist and special adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alastair Grant/AP/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Australian federal election</h2>
<p>The issue of truth and lies is at the core of the 2022 federal election. </p>
<p>Labor <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/breaking-news/deputy-opposition-leader-richard-marles-describes-liberal-party-as-bin-fire-as-election-campaign-begins/news-story/8e67a53f9182cdd12c42010282e9982">argues</a> it goes to the heart of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s character, who has already been criticised for <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-morrison-gaining-a-reputation-for-untrustworthiness-the-answer-could-have-serious-implications-for-the-election-171816">being loose with the truth</a> by members of the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-05/barnaby-joyce-mean-text-is-the-least-of-scott-morrison-problems/100807836">Coalition</a> and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-02/why-macron-is-calling-scott-morrison-a-liar-over-submarines/100587732">French President Emmanuel Macron</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1454867866734432257"}"></div></p>
<p>The Labor party also has form when it comes to political dishonesty. It’s “Mediscare” campaign in 2016 paved the way for the Coalition’s “Death Tax” scare campaign in 2019. Both campaigns were <a href="https://theconversation.com/lies-obfuscation-and-fake-news-make-for-a-dispiriting-and-dangerous-election-campaign-115845">gross misrepresentations</a> of the truth, the latter arguably a local example of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/08/it-felt-like-a-big-tide-how-the-death-tax-lie-infected-australias-election-campaign">strategic lying</a>. </p>
<p>A brief search of the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_type=political_and_issue_ads&country=AU&view_all_page_id=13561467463&sort_data%5Bdirection%5D=desc&sort_data%5Bmode%5D=relevancy_monthly_grouped&search_type=page&media_type=all">Facebook Ad library</a> shows signs both parties are running similar scare ads in the 2022 election about the Coalition making cuts to Medicare and Labor increasing taxes.</p>
<p>Labor is also arguing the Coalition wants to put all pensioners on a cashless debit card, while the Liberal Party has alleged Labor wants a “retiree tax”. Neither claim <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/18/factcheck-is-there-any-truth-to-scare-campaigns-about-the-cashless-debit-card-and-retiree-tax">is true</a>. </p>
<p>In the lead up to the election, the Morrison government alleged Labor leader Anthony Albanese was China’s preferred choice as prime minister and his deputy Richard Marles was a “Manchurian candidate”. This was roundly rejected by <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-17/china-scare-campaign-morrison-play-national-interest-australia/100837080">leaders of the intelligence community</a>. </p>
<h2>What can be done?</h2>
<p>There is <a href="https://www.zalisteggall.com.au/commonwealth_electoral_amendment_stop_the_lying_bill">renewed debate</a> about the need for federal laws about truth in political advertising. </p>
<p>The Hawke government <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/RP9697/97rp13">introduced provisions</a> in 1983 but they were deemed “unworkable” and scrapped the following year partly because </p>
<blockquote>
<p>political advertising involves ‘intangibles, ideas, policies and images’ which cannot be subjected to a test of truth, truth itself being inherently difficult to define. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite this, <a href="https://www.ecsa.sa.gov.au/parties-and-candidates/electoral-advertising">South Australia</a> has had laws prohibiting political ads that are “inaccurate and misleading to a material extent” since 1985. These are generally seen to <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/sites/constitution-unit/files/184_-_doing_democracy_better.pdf">set positive boundaries</a>, even though adjudication of complaints is time consuming. New provisions came into force in the <a href="https://www.elections.act.gov.au/news/2021/changes-to-campaign-finance-and-truth-in-political-advertising-laws-to-commence-from-1-july-2021">ACT in 2021</a> but are yet to be tested.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Voters line up on election day." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457877/original/file-20220413-10273-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457877/original/file-20220413-10273-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457877/original/file-20220413-10273-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457877/original/file-20220413-10273-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457877/original/file-20220413-10273-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457877/original/file-20220413-10273-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457877/original/file-20220413-10273-hvp86m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A federal government attempt to enforce truthfulness in political advertising was abandoned in the 1980s as ‘unworkable’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Wainwright/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/media/2022/03-07.htm">Australian Electoral Commission</a> has launched a campaign to combat misinformation, but its aim is to “debunk mistruths about federal electoral processes”, not the veracity of political claims made by candidates. </p>
<p>Twitter <a href="https://business.twitter.com/en/help/ads-policies/ads-content-policies/political-content.html">banned</a> political advertising in 2019, and <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/how-google-is-supporting-the-upcoming-australian-federal-election-731314">Google</a> and <a href="https://about.facebook.com/actions/preparing-for-elections-on-facebook/">Facebook</a> have increased transparency around spending on political ads. Facebook is also fact-checking misinformation from third parties such as unions and advocacy groups. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-checking-can-actually-harm-trust-in-media-new-research-176032">Fact-checking can actually harm trust in media: new research</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The real solution is in the hands of politicians and political parties. As the <a href="https://www.edelman.com/trust/2022-trust-barometer">Edelman trust suvey</a> finds, improving the quality of information would help lift trust across institutions. If politicians care about the quality of debate, the integrity of the election result, and public trust, then they can’t give in to the temptation of strategic lies. </p>
<p>In the meantime, media outlets need to be very careful about how they refer to these claims once they have been proven to be false.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177449/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline Fisher was a ministerial media advisor in the Beattie Labor government 1998-2001.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ivor Gaber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A strategic lie is designed to grab media attention with an initial, deliberate lie. This shifts the news agenda onto a politician’s preferred territory.Caroline Fisher, Associate Professor of Communication, University of CanberraIvor Gaber, Professor of Journalism, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1811002022-04-12T14:55:06Z2022-04-12T14:55:06ZUkraine war: ‘vranyo’ – Russian for when you lie and everyone knows it, but you don’t care<p>The bloody and terrible war in Ukraine has been accompanied by a war of words. One of the more frequent words heard in the Russian media is <em>vranyo</em>, which means a “lie”. The Russian government and media have hurled it at Ukraine and its allies, accusing them of exaggerating the devastating effects of its “special military operation” while Ukraine’s Russian speakers have used it to describe Russia’s apparently <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-atrocities-in-bucha-not-staged/a-61366129">ad-libbed alternative explanations</a> for the destruction wrought in Bucha, Mariupol and elsewhere. <em>Vranyo</em>, though, is not as simple as just a “lie” – it means more than that. </p>
<p>Russian has two words for truth, <em>istina</em> and <em>pravda</em>, and it also has two words for lies: <em>lozh</em> (ложь) and <em>vranyo</em> (враньё). Look them up in a dictionary, and you’ll find them cross-referencing each other, which isn’t much help. The English press has sometimes translated the former just as a “lie” and the latter as a “bald-faced lie”. That starts to get at the difference but isn’t quite there. </p>
<p><em>Lozh</em> originates with the verb <em>lgat’</em>, the act of lying – the noun describes an untruth. <em>Lozh</em> is the word the <a href="https://www.state.gov/%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5-%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%84%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%B8/">US government used</a> to translate <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/01/20/inaugural-address-by-president-joseph-r-biden-jr/">Biden’s inaugural pronouncement</a> that: “There is truth and there are lies,” and to connect it to the “stream of lies” coming out of Russia about Ukraine. </p>
<p><em>Vranyo</em> is a noun formed from a different verb, <em>vrat’</em>. That verb also means “to lie”, but it has a more colloquial, pejorative flavour. <em>Vranyo</em> has a dismissive feel: it is a lie that no one would take seriously, an excuse or a ducking of responsibility. It can be a mindless fib, like the story of how the dog ate your homework, or a tall tale. </p>
<p>So <em>vranyo</em> starts with <em>lozh</em>, the negation of truth, and goes from there. <em>Vranyo</em> is not about the proposition itself – it focuses attention on the lie-tellers and why they are lying. As <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineInvasionVideos/comments/tw29wc/russian_foreign_minister_sergey_lavrov_called_the/">one wag put it on Reddit</a>, <em>vranyo</em> means: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You know I’m lying, and I know that you know, and you know that I know that you know, but I go ahead with a straight face, and you nod seriously and take notes.</p>
</blockquote>
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<h2>Claim, counter-claim</h2>
<p>The word has spewed consistently from the Russian side in this meaning. Following the lead of Russia’s foreign and defence ministries, Russian media have united to pooh-pooh almost anything in Ukrainian and western sources as blatant invention, whether that’s <a href="https://newizv.ru/article/general/25-02-2022/voyna-bez-poter-pochemu-my-nikogda-ne-uznaem-o-pogibshih-i-ranenyh-v-ukraine">estimates of Russian losses</a> (“<a href="https://news.ru/world/propagandistskoe-vranyo-v-mo-ocenili-dannye-kieva-o-rossijskih-poteryah/">propagandistic <em>vranyo</em></a>”) or details of how the Russian army levelled the Kievan suburb of <a href="https://www.kp.ru/daily/27374.5/4567342/">Bucha</a> (“<a href="https://iz.ru/1315996/ekaterina-tiunina/nad-propastiu-vo-lzhi-s-chego-nachinalas-bucha">the amount of <em>vranyo</em> from Kiev</a>”) and bombed the train station in <a href="https://www.mk.ru/politics/2022/04/08/ukrainskie-raketchiki-udarili-po-kramatorsku-a-vinu-popytalis-svalit-na-drugikh.html">Kramatorsk</a> (“<a href="https://ura.news/news/1052544670">they’re steeped in <em>vranyo</em></a>”), among the many atrocities already documented.</p>
<p>But when a government does <em>vranyo</em>, the nature of the fabrication can change. We may well be talking about “the big lie”, and the reason for <em>vranyo</em> might not be evasiveness, but contempt. Western and liberal Russian sources have called <em>vranyo</em> a characteristic tactic of the Russian state, even coining a new compound <em>gosvranyo</em>, literally “government-<em>vranyo</em>”. </p>
<p>Ukraine certainly uses it this way about Russia. The <a href="https://telegraf.com.ua/novosti-rossii/2022-04-01/5701154-minoborony-rossii-opyat-opozorilos-na-vrane-o-poteryakh-ukrainy">Russian-language Ukrainian media</a> have <a href="https://tsn.ua/ru/exclusive/raketa-letit-strogo-po-zadannym-koordinatam-voennyy-ekspert-ob-obstrele-rossiyanami-vokzala-kramatorska-2032093.html">hit back</a>, implying that Russia is formulating an <a href="https://telegraf.com.ua/mestnyiy/2022-04-03/5701377-reznya-v-buche-minoborony-rf-snova-oshelomilo-tsinizmom">alternative reality</a> in which they do no wrong (“<a href="https://zn.ua/UKRAINE/wp-ot-pobedy-ukrainy-v-vojne-zavisit-vyzhivanie-kultury-rossii.html">a war based on a great <em>vranyo</em></a>”, as one commentator saw it, or “straightforward <em>vranyo</em> dressed up as propagandistic cliches”, <a href="https://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/datsuk/548046b10ca2d/">in the words of another</a>). </p>
<h2>Vranyo in the cathedral</h2>
<p>Encounters with a high-profile word, though, don’t just connect with abstract meanings and uses; they also evoke associations and echoes of other places we’ve heard and seen them. And <em>vranyo</em> has been a constant in recent years with Russia in the news. </p>
<p>For example, when UK police fingered two foreigners as FSB (Russian state security) agents who they said had carried out the novichok poisonings in Salisbury in 2018, the pair were interviewed on Russian state television. They explained that, quite to the contrary, they were simple tourists who had made a special trip to Salisbury to see the fabled cathedral with its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/russian-television-channel-rt-says-it-is-to-air-interview-with-skripal-salisbury-attack-suspects">123-metre-high spire</a>. </p>
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<p>The explanation was so far-fetched that it seemed they had barely put any effort into making it sound credible – liberal Russian commentators said the British were letting the Kremlin “<a href="https://www.svoboda.org/a/29515002.html">drown itself in <em>vranyo</em></a>”. The government’s stance itself – denial without plausibility – can be seen as a display of strength, an indifference to the conventions of explanation. </p>
<p>But try to look up <em>vranyo</em> and mentions of the Skripal poisoning in Russian, and most of what jumps out is Russian media accounts dismissing the UK government’s accusations. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova immediately fired back about “<a href="https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3619996">London’s <em>vranyo</em></a>”, which was widely reported across the Russian web. The same has now happened with the invasion of Ukraine. </p>
<p><em>Vranyo</em> is thus both more specific and more multifaceted than “lying”. It’s a technique of the current Russian regime, and a trope the regime uses against its enemies. <em>Vranyo</em> is not of course unique to Russia; to take just one example, Trump employed the same tactics in the US election with his “big steal” claims. But <em>vranyo</em> does neatly encapsulate, in a single word, the paradox of truth-telling in the current conflict.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181100/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Bermel receives funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and has in the past received funding from the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy. Neil wishes to gratefully acknowledge the use of the Araneum Russicum Russicum Maius corpus and the Czech National Corpus infrastructure.
</span></em></p>‘Vranyo’ is the Russian word for a lie that you tell to make yourself look good, whether people believe it or not.Neil Bermel, Professor of Russian and Slavonic Studies, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1766632022-02-16T20:15:34Z2022-02-16T20:15:34ZAll American presidents have lied – the question is why and when<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446325/original/file-20220214-138710-1elarsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C12%2C2874%2C1942&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Critics of President Joe Biden have accused him of lying. Most American presidents have been accused of deception.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-joe-biden-speaks-during-an-event-at-germanna-news-photo/1369802125?adppopup=true">Win McNamee/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Those who dislike a president tend to emphasize the frequency or skill with which he lies. </p>
<p>During the Trump administration, for instance, The Washington Post kept a running database of the president’s lies and deceptions – with the final tally running to over <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/">30,000 falsehoods</a>. President Joe Biden’s critics have insisted that he, too, is a <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/11/22/bidens-obsessive-lies-small-and-large-are-big-trouble-for-america/">liar</a> – and that the media is complicit in ignoring his supposed frequent <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/572189-why-isnt-it-a-lie-when-joe-biden-says-something-false-or-dishonest">deception of the American people</a>. </p>
<p>The frequency of these criticisms would seem to indicate that most people do not want a president who lies. And yet a recent <a href="https://progressive.org/dispatches/lies-more-lies-presidential-history-lueders-200810/">study of presidential deception</a> found that all American presidents – from Washington to Trump – have told lies, and knowingly so, in their public statements. The most effective of presidents have sometimes been effective precisely because they were skilled at <a href="https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/paradoxes-of-the-american-presidency-9780190648503?cc=us&lang=en&">manipulation and deception</a>.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://phil.washington.edu/people/michael-blake">political philosopher</a> with a focus on how people try to reason together through political disagreement, I argue that what matters most is not whether a president lies, but when and why he does so. </p>
<p>Presidents who lie to save their own public image or career are unlikely to be forgiven. However, those who appear to lie in the service of the public are often celebrated.</p>
<h2>The morality of deception</h2>
<p>Why, though, are lies thought so wrongful in the first instance?</p>
<p>Philosopher Immanuel Kant, in the 18th century, provided one powerful account of <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577415.001.0001/acprof-9780199577415-chapter-4">the wrongness of lying</a>. For Kant, lying was wrong in much the same way that threats and coercion are wrong. All of these override the autonomous will of another person, and treat that person as a mere tool. When a gunman uses threats to coerce a person to do a particular act, he disrespects that person’s rational agency. Lies are similarly disrespectful to rational agency: One’s decision has been manipulated, so that the act is no longer one’s own.</p>
<p>Kant regarded any lie as immoral – even one told to <a href="https://experts.illinois.edu/en/publications/kant-and-lying-to-the-murderer-at-the-door-one-more-time-kants-le">a murderer at the door</a>. </p>
<p>Modern-day philosophers have often endorsed versions of Kant’s account while seeking exceptions from its rigidness. One common theme is the necessity of the deception for achieving an important political goal. For example, a political leader who gives honest answers about a forthcoming military operation would likely imperil that operation – and most citizens of the state engaging in that military action would not want that. The key is that people might accept such deception, after the fact, because of what that deception made possible. </p>
<p>During World War II, the British government sought to deceive the Nazi command about its plans for invasion – which entailed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/06/d-day-would-be-nearly-impossible-pull-off-today-heres-why/">lying even to British allies</a>. The moral imperative of defeating Nazi Germany is generally thought to be important enough to justify this sort of deception.</p>
<p>This example also illustrates another theme: Deception might be permitted when it is in the context of an adversarial relationship in which truth-telling should not be expected. Lying to one’s own citizens may or may not be justifiable – but there seems to be very little wrong about lying to one’s <em>enemies</em> during wartime. </p>
<h2>Honorable lies?</h2>
<p>These ideas might be used in defense of some presidential lies. </p>
<p>During the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was convinced that Hitler’s expansionism in Europe was a threat to the liberal democratic project itself, but he faced an electorate without any will to intervene in a European war. Roosevelt chose to insist publicly that he was opposed to any intervention – while doing everything he could to prepare for war and to covertly help the <a href="https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2017/01/04/how-franklin-d-roosevelt-prepared-us-for-wwii/">British cause</a>. </p>
<p>As early as 1948, historian <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24911690">Thomas Bailey</a> noted that Roosevelt had made a calculated choice to both prepare for war and insist he was doing no such thing. To be open about his view of Hitler would have likely led to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CVqTXJjmtmUC&pg=PA298&lpg=PA298&dq=roosevelt+lying&source=bl&ots=0frUEvK02d&sig=ACfU3U3djJZzxplhbGcQwVXwPOAqWJaa2w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQ_cKC_evrAhUBip4KHUTjDqY4ChDoATAGegQICBAB#v=onepage&q=the%20man%20in%20the%20street&f=false">his defeat in the 1940 election</a>. </p>
<p>Before Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln made similar calculations. Lincoln’s lies regarding his negotiations with the Confederacy – described by <a href="https://www.megmott.com">Meg Mott</a>, a professor of political theory, as being “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/24/politics/presidents-lie/index.html">devious</a>” – may have been instrumental in preserving the United States as a single country.</p>
<p>Lincoln was willing to open peace negotiations with the Confederacy, knowing that much of his own party thought that only unconditional surrender by the South would settle the question of slavery. At one point, Lincoln wrote a note to his own party asserting – falsely – that there were “<a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0021.104/--hampton-roads-peace-conference-a-final-test-of-lincolns?rgn=main;view=fulltext">no peace commissioners</a>” being sent to a conference with the Confederacy. </p>
<p>A member of the Congress later noted that, in the absence of that note, the 13th Amendment – which ended the practice of chattel slavery – <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0021.104/--hampton-roads-peace-conference-a-final-test-of-lincolns?rgn=main;view=fulltext">would not have been passed</a>.</p>
<h2>Good lies and bad lies</h2>
<p>The problem, of course, is that a great many presidential lies cannot be so easily linked to important purposes. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446331/original/file-20220214-15-66fael.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a dark suit speaks into microphones, with flags in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446331/original/file-20220214-15-66fael.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446331/original/file-20220214-15-66fael.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446331/original/file-20220214-15-66fael.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446331/original/file-20220214-15-66fael.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446331/original/file-20220214-15-66fael.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446331/original/file-20220214-15-66fael.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446331/original/file-20220214-15-66fael.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Former U.S. President Bill Clinton addresses the nation to apologize for misleading the country about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-bill-clinton-addresses-the-nation-from-the-rose-news-photo/462731481?adppopup=true">William Philpott/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>President Bill Clinton’s lies about his sexual activities were either simply self-serving or told to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Fe88rwSW8ywC&pg=PT507&lpg=PT507&dq=bill+clinton+%22the+lie+saved+me%22&source=bl&ots=AJY7EQZHoq&sig=ACfU3U2uGl7_XXWvjxHXE5jYNH0XyzOZyA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjFsPGE0enrAhWTvJ4KHY_WB5MQ6AEwC3oECAIQAQ#v=onepage&q=bill%20clinton%20%22the%20lie%20saved%20me%22&f=false">preserve his presidency</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, President Richard Nixon’s insistence that he knew nothing about <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-insists-that-he-is-not-a-crook">the Watergate break-in</a> was most likely a lie. John Dean, Nixon’s legal counsel, confirmed years later that the president <a href="https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/08/07/john-dean-uncovers-what-nixon-knew-about-watergate">knew about, and approved of</a>, the plan to rob the Democratic National Committee headquarters. This scandal eventually ended Nixon’s presidency. </p>
<p>In both cases, these presidents faced a significant threat to their presidencies – and chose deception to save not the nation, but their own power. </p>
<h2>President Biden, President Trump and truth</h2>
<p>It is likely that President Trump lied <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/podcast-glenn-kessler-david-corn-lies-washington-post-fact-checker/">more than most presidents</a>. What is striking about his lies, however, is that they have tended to be told to defend his own <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/04/trump-male-ego-merkel-schroeder/">self-image or political viability</a> rather than in service of some central political good.</p>
<p>Indeed, some of President Trump’s more implausible lies seemed best understood as tests of loyalty; those in his circle who repeated his most obvious lies <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/26/14386068/why-does-trump-lie">demonstrated their loyalty to President Trump in doing so</a>. Most recently, he has attacked as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/24/donald-trump-big-lie-american-democracy">disloyal</a> those members of the Republican Party who have not repeated his false claims about electoral fraud.</p>
<p>Recent studies indicate that President Biden, thus far, has not shown himself equal to President Trump <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarkowitz/2021/04/30/who-lied-more-during-their-first-100-days-biden-trump-or-obama/?sh=56acaa81a89d">in his deceptiveness</a>. He has, however, made deceptive and misleading claims on a number of topics, ranging from the costs of particular policies to his <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?page=1&category=&ruling=false&speaker=joe-biden">own history and early life</a>. These lies seem somewhat unlike those told by Lincoln and by Roosevelt; they seem generally told in the interests of making a rhetorical point more powerful rather than as necessary means to an otherwise unobtainable political goal. They seem, in that respect, less morally justifiable than these earlier falsehoods.</p>
<p>A justification for these lies might be found with reference to practices which – like warfare or politics – necessarily involve conflict and gamesmanship. No one would expect honesty from the enemy side during warfare, and perhaps one should not from opponents in politics either. Some political philosophers have thought that, when politics becomes <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691057392/ethics-for-adversaries">an adversarial game</a>, politicians might be forgiven when they seek to deceive the other party. President Biden might rely upon this idea, and could note that the Republican Party is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/10/bipartisanship-is-out-biden-its-about-time/">less open to bipartisan negotiation than at any time in its history</a>. </p>
<p>Even this last justification, however, may not be enough. Lying to one’s political opponents might be permitted in an adversarial context. The lies told by presidents are often addressed to constituents, and such deception seems harder to justify. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 140,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-140ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>And finally, even the most important of lies must be believed for it to be justifiable; a lie that is immediately recognized as such is unlikely to achieve the goal justifying that lie. This is an increasingly difficult burden. Modern presidents find it more <a href="https://www.issuelab.org/resources/15318/15318.pdf">challenging to lie</a> without having their lies recognized as untrue than presidents serving before the advent of social media and dedicated <a href="https://www.factcheck.org">fact-checking</a>. </p>
<p>If presidents must sometimes lie to defend important political values, then, it seems as though the good president must be both able to lie and able to lie well. </p>
<p><em>This is updated version of an article <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-washington-to-trump-all-presidents-have-told-lies-but-only-some-have-told-them-for-the-right-reasons-145995">first published on September 17, 2020</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176663/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Blake receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>A political philosopher argues that while all American presidents may lie, those who appear to lie for the public good are often celebrated.Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1735422021-12-15T17:38:25Z2021-12-15T17:38:25ZWhy we still fall for influencers, salesmen and politicians who lie<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437812/original/file-20211215-21-xx58o0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Capturing the public's attention is about standing out in a crowd of influencers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/businessman-standing-on-podium-closes-outbreaks-154420913">Peshkova | Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Our society is driven by social influence. The salesman who wants to sell you a car, the politician who wants your vote and the Tiktok influencer who wants you to “like” their videos have one thing in common: they are vying for your attention. </p>
<p>For scientists – in psychology, politics and computer sciences – understanding quite how we attract people’s attention is a challenge. In a recent study, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.103505">we found</a> that social influence is best understood as a competition.</p>
<p>People often think of social influence as a one-to-one relationship between the influencer and their target. But every election has at least two candidates. Similarly, thousands of videos are uploaded on TikTok every day, each hoping to be the one that goes viral. And, every time a salesman sells a car, his competing colleagues lose a customer. </p>
<p>Influencing is a zero-sum game. More than how to influence people, the question is how to be more influential than others. </p>
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<img alt="An overhead shot of women sitting in a row and looking at their phones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437815/original/file-20211215-23-1vs198m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437815/original/file-20211215-23-1vs198m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437815/original/file-20211215-23-1vs198m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437815/original/file-20211215-23-1vs198m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437815/original/file-20211215-23-1vs198m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437815/original/file-20211215-23-1vs198m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437815/original/file-20211215-23-1vs198m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Going viral is a zero-sum game.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/happy-millennials-friends-surfing-online-mobile-1181376727">DisobeyArt | Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Game theory</h2>
<p>We designed a laboratory model of social influence in the form of a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02314-5">game</a> to be played by three people: one client and two advisers. The client has to buy one of two lottery tickets but has no information about which is better. The advisers, who have private access to such information, and compete for being hired by the client. </p>
<p>Our model, much like social influence in real life, is a zero-sum game: one adviser’s success is the other’s failure. This allowed us to use <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195300574.001.0001/acprof-9780195300574">game theory </a> to find an optimal strategy for the adviser. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.103505">analysis</a> of game theory showed that a clear strategy can be formulated: if you already have influence (if you are hired), be vague and stay close to the truth. If, conversely, you are ignored, be loud, exaggerate and, if necessary, just lie to stand out. </p>
<p>We conducted seven experiments with more than 800 participants who played the role of the client. We found that strategic distortion of the truth outperformed honest advising in winning over and retaining individual clients in up to 80% of the time. When advisers were <a href="https://theconversation.com/strategic-lies-deliberate-untruths-used-as-a-political-tactic-new-study-159723">strategically dishonest</a>, they also succeeded in swaying groups of clients who elected their adviser democratically in each round.</p>
<p>This strategy, of course, is familiar to anyone who lived through <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1940161221994100">the Brexit campaign</a>, as former UK prime minister David Cameron clearly describes in his book, For the Record. According to Cameron, Boris Johnson played precisely the card we would expect the disadvantaged candidate (the one challenging the incumbent) to play. Cameron advocated remaining in the EU, so Johnson embraced the leave campaign.</p>
<p>Cameron writes that Johnson was making a strategic choice to differentiate himself from the incumbents. Johnson, he says, “risked an outcome he didn’t believe in because it would help his political career”. And, he adds, because Johnson was certain the leave side would lose, backing it brought little risk of breaking up the government he wanted to lead one day. “It would be a risk-free bet on himself,” Cameron writes. </p>
<h2>Competition characteristics</h2>
<p>Central to this model were the three hallmarks of competition for social influence: information asymmetry, delegation of future decisions and intractable uncertainty. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165410101000180">Information asymmetry</a> occurs when influence seekers (politicians or advisers) know more about an issue than the people they seek to influence (voters or clients). In the political arena, the issues at stake are often multidimensional and too complex for people to be fully informed about. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00343404.2017.1287350?journalCode=cres20">In the Brexit vote</a>, for example, the regions most strongly favouring Leave were also —- to the surprise of many voters —- the most dependent on European Union markets for their local development. </p>
<p>Competition for social influence also often involves <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-6261.1980.tb02199.x">a delegation of power</a>: voters or clients granting politicians or fund managers the power to make future decisions on their behalf. </p>
<p>Finally, predicting the future is hard. Political science writer Philip Tetlock, in his 2017 book, Expert Political Judgement shows how pundits who are regularly tasked to predict uncertain future events in finance, politics, or sports often turn out to be wrong. Competition for social influence thus tends to take place under <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335004212_The_Robust_Beauty_of_Heuristics_in_Choice_under_Uncertainty">high outcome uncertainty</a>. Evaluating advice accuracy is difficult under high uncertainty. This creates opportunities for competing advisers to seek influence strategically because few would remember the failure of their radical but dishonest predictions.</p>
<h2>Public support</h2>
<p>Our findings suggest that the success of dishonesty is due to our willingness to jump to conclusions in hindsight. This chimes with what research shows on how we <a href="https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007089">assess the choices we have made</a>. </p>
<p>If an adviser was the only one to predict a bad outcome before it happened, we tend to think that they must have known something that others did not. While this may sometimes be true, often it is just pure luck. A strategic adviser takes advantage of this willingness we have to trust our hindsight to inflate their confidence or even, dishonestly advise against the available evidence simply to stand out. </p>
<p>An honest adviser, when ignored, is less effective (than their dishonest rival) in persuading the client to shift: commitment to honesty stops them from positioning themselves as a radical alternative if there is no evidence to justify it. </p>
<p>These kinds of strategies are repeatedly and ruthlessly employed by attention-hungry influencers because they work. Our analysis helps explain why politicians who are repeatedly found out to have lied could continue to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-people-vote-for-politicians-they-know-are-liars-128953">enjoy public support</a>. We hope that our work will generate awareness in the public and help us all to see through such manipulative and dishonest strategies and protect the citizens against them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173542/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was done in collaboration with Ralf Kurvers, Jurgis Karpus, Uri Hertz, Marta Bolade, Bertrand Jayles and Ken Binmore. We acknowledge financial support by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development to R.K. Support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (819040; acronym: rid-O) to B.B. and J.K. is acknowledged. BB was also supported by the NOMIS foundation and the Humboldt Foundation . J.K. was supported by LMUexcellent, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Free State of Bavaria under the Excellence Strategy of the Federal Government and the Länder. U.H. was supported by the National Institute of Psychobiology in Israel ( 211-19-20 ) and the Israel Science Foundation ( 1532/20 ).</span></em></p>Social influencers vie for public attention in a crowded market place. This makes the bold and the ruthless even more likely to opt for strategic dishonesty if it will further their interests.Bahador Bahrami, Group Leader and Senior Scientist , Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1718162021-11-16T03:22:35Z2021-11-16T03:22:35ZIs Morrison gaining a reputation for untrustworthiness? The answer could have serious implications for the election<p>For good legal and ethical reasons, the media are generally wary of calling someone a liar.</p>
<p>It is a serious slur on a person’s reputation, implying that he or she is untrustworthy, unreliable, duplicitous and deceitful.</p>
<p>These are the kinds of meanings lawyers draw from the word “liar” when preparing a writ for defamation. Unless a media outlet is confident it can defend these meanings, it is foolhardy to make the accusation.</p>
<p>From an ethical standpoint, such a serious slur on a person’s reputation ought not be made without solid evidence and good reason.</p>
<p>Up to the point when French President Emmanuel Macron accused him of lying over the submarine contract, the media had generally avoided calling Morrison a liar, while many times accusing him of playing fast and loose with the truth.</p>
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<p>Sean Kelly, in his recent book <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/game">The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison</a>, gives several examples.</p>
<p>One was a statement about the risk that asylum seekers would bring diseases such as typhoid to Australia, followed by a denial that he had said anything about the risk. Another was perpetuating the lie that the Uluru Statement from the Heart included a proposal for a third chamber of parliament. A third was when he declared Australia was “at the front of the queue” for COVID-19 vaccines when it clearly was not.</p>
<p>The significance of the Macron accusation is that it gave the media legal cover to call Morrison a liar by quoting the French president. Then Morrison’s predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, said Morrison had lied to him often. This is all useful evidence.</p>
<p>“Oh, he’s lied to me on many occasions,” <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/he-s-lied-to-me-turnbull-joins-macron-in-rebuking-pm-on-subs-deal-20211103-p595g2.html">Turnbull was reported</a> as saying. “Scott has always had a reputation for telling lies.” </p>
<p>Then Neil Mitchell on Melbourne radio 3AW put the accusation of lying directly to Morrison. Mitchell asked him whether he had ever told a lie in public life. Morrison replied: “I don’t believe I have, no.”</p>
<p>This was a very interesting answer.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-scott-morrison-caught-in-catch-22-over-the-issue-of-his-integrity-171750">View from The Hill: Scott Morrison caught in catch-22 over the issue of his integrity</a>
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<p>No one is in a position to refute Morrison’s belief. If he says he believes he has never lied, then that’s that. But it is not conclusive.</p>
<p>Morrison’s belief is subjective: it comes from within the person concerned.</p>
<p>The public, however, is entitled to an objective response – what his words convey to the ordinary reasonable person. The media are entitled to hold Morrison to account for the objective meaning, regardless of what he might have believed he was saying.</p>
<p>The media and the public are under no obligation to accept his beliefs. They can look at the facts, at the words he used, and ask: what would an ordinary reasonable person think Morrison was saying?</p>
<p>Take the submarine deal. Morrison’s <a href="https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/defence-and-foreign-affairs/scott-morrisons-private-text-message-after-emmanuel-macron-accused-him-of-lying-about-scrapped-submarine-deal/news-story/da6d9ceaf9fd134e78107e8daf72477b">office leaked</a> a text message from Macron in which Macron asked: “Should I expect good or bad news for our joint submarines ambitions?” </p>
<p>Morrison, when asked about it, said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Macron] made it pretty clear he was concerned that this would be a phone call that could result in a decision by Australia not to proceed.</p>
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<p>Morrison’s subjective interpretation is that this amounted to telling the French the deal was off. Objectively, it is nothing of the kind. It is obvious Macron did not know what the government’s decision was.</p>
<p>Now, under the legal cover provided by Macron and Turnbull, there has been a cascade of media stories about Morrison’s alleged lying.</p>
<p>The Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/12/scott-morrison-says-he-believes-he-has-never-told-a-lie-in-public-life-was-that-a-lie">has listed five topics</a> on which it says Morrison has made false or incorrect statements: electric vehicles, the submarines, the vaccination roll-out, Australia’s policy on Taiwan, and his calling the former Labor senator, Sam Dastyari, “Shanghai Sam”.</p>
<p>The Australian Financial Review’s Phil Coorey <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/desperate-pm-driven-to-can-do-capitalism-scare-20211111-p597xy">commented</a> that there were now questions about Morrison’s integrity and this meant he was carrying baggage into the election that he had not had to carry in 2019. </p>
<p>Even Morrison’s media allies on Sky News are joining in. After Morrison’s about-face on electric vehicles, Andrew Bolt said Morrison was exacerbating exactly the criticism he has been getting, “of being a fake, of being untrustworthy, of not telling the truth”. Bolt went on to call Morrison a fake and a fool.</p>
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<p>At a time when democracies are being weakened by disinformation and misinformation, the conduct that Morrison is accused of is pernicious. The world saw what happened to the American democracy when the big lie about a stolen election took hold.</p>
<p>This places an extra responsibility on journalists not only to be sure they tell the truth themselves but to call out lies and falsehoods when they see them.</p>
<p>There is a vast literature stretching back to Machiavelli’s The Prince on the subject of truth and lying in public life. Machiavelli argued that a lie was justified if it succeeded in accomplishing a political goal, wrong if it failed. Morality did not enter the calculation.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-dont-think-i-know-what-makes-macrons-comments-about-morrison-so-extraordinary-and-so-worrying-170947">'I don't think, I know' – what makes Macron's comments about Morrison so extraordinary and so worrying</a>
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<p>The contemporary ethicist Sissela Bok takes a radically different view. She begins by asking under what circumstances does lying in public life undermine trust most grievously?</p>
<p>She also argues for a broad definition of what constitutes lying. She rejects a definition that requires both that a statement be made with the intention to deceive others and that the statement itself be false.</p>
<p>It is sufficient, in her view, that there be an intention to deceive – for example, by making a statement that might not be entirely false but which is couched in such terms as to mislead.</p>
<p>The risk Morrison takes is that if the media continue to focus on his integrity, as they have for the past couple of weeks, a stereotype will develop of him as untrustworthy. In the run-up to an election, that would be bad news for him.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171816/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since the French president accused the prime minister of lying, his trustworthiness has been increasingly under the media spotlight. If the tag sticks, it could wound him at next year’s poll.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1706092021-11-08T19:10:31Z2021-11-08T19:10:31ZAre people lying more since the rise of social media and smartphones?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430554/original/file-20211105-16752-1hf2une.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C1595%2C1420&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some forms of technology seem to facilitate lying more than others.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/lies-concept-royalty-free-image/465104450?adppopup=true">solitude72/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Technology has given people more ways to connect, but has it also given them more opportunities to lie?</p>
<p>You might text your friend a white lie to <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1518701.1518782">get out of going to dinner</a>, exaggerate your height on a dating profile <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01619.x">to appear more attractive</a> or invent an excuse to your boss over email to <a href="https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/6098/KJSV11N1A6.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y">save face</a>. </p>
<p>Social psychologists and communication scholars have long wondered not just who lies the most, but where people tend to lie the most – that is, in person or through some other communication medium. </p>
<p>A seminal <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/985692.985709">2004 study</a> was among the first to investigate the connection between deception rates and technology. Since then, the ways we communicate have shifted – fewer phone calls and more social media messaging, for example – and I wanted to see how well earlier results held up. </p>
<h2>The link between deception and technology</h2>
<p>Back in 2004, communication researcher <a href="https://comm.stanford.edu/faculty-hancock/">Jeff Hancock</a> and his colleagues had 28 students report the number of social interactions they had via face-to-face communication, the phone, instant messaging and email over seven days. Students also reported the number of times they lied in each social interaction.</p>
<p>The results suggested people told the most lies per social interaction on the phone. The fewest were told via email. </p>
<p>The findings aligned with a framework Hancock called the “<a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/985692.985709">feature-based model</a>.” According to this model, specific aspects of a technology – whether people can communicate back and forth seamlessly, whether the messages are fleeting and whether communicators are distant – predict where people tend to lie the most.</p>
<p>In Hancock’s study, the most lies per social interaction occurred via the technology with all of these features: the phone. The fewest occurred on email, where people couldn’t communicate synchronously and the messages were recorded.</p>
<h2>The Hancock Study, revisited</h2>
<p>When Hancock conducted his study, <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/facebook-launches-mark-zuckerberg">only students at a few select universities</a> could create a Facebook account. The iPhone was in its early stages of development, a highly confidential project nicknamed “<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/13/15782200/one-device-secret-history-iphone-brian-merchant-book-excerpt">Project Purple</a>.” </p>
<p>What would his results look like nearly 20 years later?</p>
<p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/hcr/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/hcr/hqab019/6423102">In a new study</a>, I recruited a larger group of participants and studied interactions from more forms of technology. A total of 250 people recorded their social interactions and number of interactions with a lie over seven days, across face-to-face communication, social media, the phone, texting, video chat and email.</p>
<p>As in Hancock’s study, people told the most lies per social interaction over media that were synchronous and recordless and when communicators were distant: over the phone or on video chat. They told the fewest lies per social interaction via email. Interestingly, though, the differences across the forms of communication were small. Differences among participants – how much people varied in their lying tendencies – were more predictive of deception rates than differences among media.</p>
<p><iframe id="zcjE1" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/zcjE1/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Despite changes in the way people communicate over the past two decades – along with ways the COVID-19 pandemic changed <a href="https://time.com/5835818/socializing-coronavirus-social-distancing/">how people socialize</a> – people seem to lie systematically and in alignment with the feature-based model.</p>
<p>There are several possible explanations for these results, though more work is needed to understand exactly why different media lead to different lying rates. It’s possible that certain media are better <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-96334-1_31">facilitators of deception</a> than others. Some media – the phone, video chat – might make deception feel easier or less costly to a social relationship if caught. </p>
<p>Deception rates might also differ across technology because people use some forms of technology for certain social relationships. For example, people might only email their professional colleagues, while video chat might be a better fit for more personal relationships.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 115,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<h2>Technology misunderstood</h2>
<p>To me, there are two key takeaways.</p>
<p>First, there are, overall, small differences in lying rates across media. An individual’s tendency to lie matters more than whether someone is emailing or talking on the phone.</p>
<p>Second, there’s a low rate of lying across the board. Most people are honest – a premise consistent with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X14535916">truth-default theory</a>, which suggests most people report being honest most of the time and there are only a few <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X14528804">prolific liars</a> in a population.</p>
<p>Since 2004, social media have become a primary place for <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/">interacting with other people</a>. Yet a common misperception persists that communicating online or via technology, as opposed to in person, leads to social interactions that are <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/313732/reclaiming-conversation-by-sherry-turkle/">lower in quantity and quality</a>.</p>
<p>People often believe that just because we use technology to interact, honesty is harder to come by and users aren’t well served. </p>
<p>Not only is this perception misguided, but it is also unsupported by empirical evidence. The <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563216304800">belief that lying is rampant</a> in the digital age just doesn’t match the data.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170609/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Markowitz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Communication scholars have long wondered not just who lies the most, but also whether people tend to lie more online, in person or over the phone.David Markowitz, Assistant Professor of Social Media Data Analytics, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1609152021-06-08T17:23:15Z2021-06-08T17:23:15ZWhy it’s difficult for children to understand sarcasm<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404898/original/file-20210607-10178-1fd47p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C112%2C4992%2C2462&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When children first begin to understand that a speaker doesn’t mean what they say at face value, they may think the speaker is lying. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sarcasm is simple! <em>Yeah, right</em>. Although sarcasm is widespread, found across languages and in the various ways we communicate, it is not simple. For most children, learning to understand sarcasm is challenging. </p>
<p>Sarcasm can be defined as “<a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sarcasm">the use of remarks that clearly mean the opposite of what they say, made in order to hurt someone’s feelings or to criticize something in a humorous way</a>.”</p>
<p>Difficulties with understanding sarcasm can have negative consequences such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168816675521">misunderstandings and social exclusion</a>. Psychology researchers study why sarcasm is difficult for children so we can learn more about child development — and so we can help children understand this kind of language. </p>
<p>Our research has found that differences in <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-56049-001">children’s experiences of sarcasm cause differences in how they can detect it</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Listen to Penny Pexman talking about her research on <a href="https://theconversation.com/judge-jury-and-executioner-why-holding-militaries-to-account-for-alleged-war-crimes-is-so-hard-podcast-164117">The Conversation Weekly podcast</a>.</em> </p>
<iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/60087127b9687759d637bade/60e5bd88c956280012218054" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay" width="100%" height="110"></iframe>
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<h2>Is the speaker lying?</h2>
<p>As noted, when a speaker uses sarcasm, they say something different from, and often opposite to, what they really mean. Commonly, they say something that sounds positive but is meant to be negative, as in “nice going,” or “oh, great.” In saying the opposite of what they mean, the sarcastic speaker risks being misunderstood — but they do it for potential payoffs. </p>
<p>Sarcasm can be used to criticize while using humour, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326950DP3303_1">in order for the negative comment to appear less harsh</a>. Speakers may use it to comment on the fact that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00591.x">things haven’t gone as expected</a> or to strengthen <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms1902_3">social bonds</a>.</p>
<p>Children may <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms1902_3">hear sarcasm from a young age</a>, but they will probably not begin to understand it until <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326950DP3603_1">five or six years of age</a>. Before that age, children tend to interpret sarcasm literally: for instance, if a child hears “nice going” spoken in what adults may recognize as a sarcastic tone, the child might respond with a positive “thanks!‘</p>
<p>When children do begin to understand that the speaker doesn’t actually mean what they said, they may think the <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1130022">speaker is lying</a> — perhaps saying "nice going” to make someone feel better — rather than criticizing sarcastically. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/childrens-lies-are-deceptively-complex-121093">Children's lies are deceptively complex</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It usually takes until children are older – around seven to 10 years of age — for them to appreciate that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326950dp4003_5">speakers can use sarcasm with the intention of teasing or being funny</a>. </p>
<h2>Meaning what one says</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A happy face emoji shown upside down." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404896/original/file-20210607-21-cj9zwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404896/original/file-20210607-21-cj9zwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404896/original/file-20210607-21-cj9zwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404896/original/file-20210607-21-cj9zwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404896/original/file-20210607-21-cj9zwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404896/original/file-20210607-21-cj9zwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404896/original/file-20210607-21-cj9zwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When speakers use sarcasm, there is usually both a positive and negative meaning to consider.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Children get better at understanding sarcasm through the early school years and into adolescence. This progress is related to developmental changes in children’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/cep0000011">language</a>, thinking and skills related to processing, understanding and communicating about emotion. </p>
<p>For instance, when children understand that the sarcastic speaker doesn’t actually mean what they said simply on face value, this is related to their ability to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27563471">think about the perspective of another person</a>, and to their <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00691">ability to empathize</a>. </p>
<p>Children tend to improve in their ability to recognize the thoughts and emotions of others between about four and six years of age, and this is likely why they also begin to show improvement in detecting sarcasm.</p>
<p>One of the challenges in understanding sarcasm is that it involves conflicting ideas and goals: there is usually both a positive and a negative meaning to consider, and with sarcasm, the speaker means to be both critical and funny. The gap between what is said and what is meant creates the opportunity for sarcastic humour. </p>
<p>Most children develop the ability to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/cep0000016">hold two conflicting ideas or emotions in mind around seven years of age</a>. This is probably why studies find that although children can start to detect sarcasm at age five or six, they <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/2007/01/25/do-young-children-understand-irony/">take longer to develop appreciation for why people use sarcasm</a>.</p>
<h2>Knowledge about why people use sarcasm</h2>
<p>Research shows that even when children have strong language and thinking skills, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17405629.2013.821407">they still might not be able to detect sarcastic speech</a>. These developmental skills are important to understanding sarcasm but they may not be sufficient. Something else is required. </p>
<p>One possibility is that through experience children need to build knowledge about what sarcasm is and why people use it, in order to recognize it themselves. There is correlational evidence that social experience might indeed be important to children’s capacities to detect sarcasm: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10926480903310286">some families are more sarcastic</a> than others, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228538">children’s sarcasm detection may be related to their parents’ use of sarcasm</a>. </p>
<p>Until now, however, there hasn’t been direct evidence that differences in children’s experiences cause differences in their detection of sarcasm.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Illustrated book cover showing a little girl smiling and pensively holding up a finger." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401754/original/file-20210519-19-cfdys8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401754/original/file-20210519-19-cfdys8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401754/original/file-20210519-19-cfdys8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401754/original/file-20210519-19-cfdys8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401754/original/file-20210519-19-cfdys8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401754/original/file-20210519-19-cfdys8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401754/original/file-20210519-19-cfdys8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The storybook ‘Sydney Gets Sarcastic,’ by Penny Pexman and illustrated by Lauryn Bitterman, can spark conversations with children about sarcasm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Penny Pexman)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Saying what you don’t mean</h2>
<p>With colleagues Kate Lee and David Sidhu, I tested causal effects of children’s sarcasm knowledge and experience on their detection of sarcastic speech in a <a href="http://doi.org/10.1037/cep0000228">new study</a> published in the <em>Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology</em> that is part of a special issue on the psychology of saying what you don’t mean. </p>
<p>Together, we randomly assigned 111 five- to six-year-old children to two groups. One group received training about sarcasm and the other, a control group, did not. </p>
<p>We provided sarcasm training to children with a short storybook that we read and discussed with each child. The training described what sarcasm is and why people use it, and gave examples of sarcastic and non-sarcastic speech. With the control group we simply read a non-sarcastic storybook. </p>
<p>We found that some of the children were able to detect sarcasm even before training, but the majority were not. For those children who weren’t able to detect sarcasm before the training, their ability to detect sarcasm improved in the training group but not in the control group. </p>
<p>This shows that social experience can build children’s knowledge of sarcasm and help them shift towards understanding sarcastic speech. Student illustrator Lauryn Bitterman and I converted the training storybook into a colouring book: <a href="http://www.childresearchgroup.ca/"><em>Sydney Gets Sarcastic</em></a> is free to download, as a way to spark conversations with children about sarcasm.</p>
<p>Sarcasm still isn’t simple, but we now have a clearer understanding of what makes it difficult.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Penny Pexman receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. </span></em></p>Understanding sarcasm is related to the ability to recognize the thoughts and emotions of others, to empathize and to consider two things being simultaneously true.Penny Pexman, Professor of Psychology, University of CalgaryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1510352020-12-03T14:57:14Z2020-12-03T14:57:14ZSpotting liars is hard – but our new method is effective and ethical<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372830/original/file-20201203-19-sm2eg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=126%2C45%2C3684%2C2063&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Guilty? The length of your answer may give it away.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/investigation-officer-showing-murder-suspect-victim-1169300518">Motortion Films/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most people lie occasionally. The lies are often trivial and essentially inconsequential – such as pretending to like a tasteless gift. But in other contexts, deception is more serious and can have harmful effects on criminal justice. From a societal perspective, such lying is better detected than ignored and tolerated.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it is difficult to detect lies accurately. Lie detectors, such as polygraphs, which work by measuring the level of anxiety in a subject while they answer questions, <a href="https://theconversation.com/polygraph-lie-detector-tests-can-they-really-stop-criminals-reoffending-130477">are considered “theoretically weak”</a> and of dubious reliability. This is because, as any traveller who has been questioned by customs officials knows, it’s possible to be anxious without being guilty.</p>
<p>We have developed a new approach to spot liars based on interviewing technique and psychological manipulation, with <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221136812030005X">results just published</a> in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. </p>
<p>Our technique is part of a new generation of <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00014/full">cognitive-based lie-detection methods</a> that are being increasingly researched and developed. These approaches postulate that the mental and strategic processes adopted by truth-tellers during interviews differ significantly from those of liars. By using specific techniques, these differences can be amplified and detected. </p>
<p>One such approach is the <a href="https://osf.io/j43kr/">Asymmetric Information Management (AIM) technique</a>. At its core, it is designed to provide suspects with a clear means to demonstrate their innocence or guilt to investigators by providing detailed information. Small details are the lifeblood of forensic investigations and can provide investigators with facts to check and witnesses to question. Importantly, longer, more detailed statements <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-006-9066-4">typically contain more clues</a> to a deception than short statements.</p>
<p>Essentially, the AIM method involves informing suspects of these facts. Specifically, interviewers make it clear to interviewees that if they provide longer, more detailed statements about the event of interest, then the investigator will be better able to detect if they are telling the truth or lying. For truth-tellers, this is good news. For liars, this is less good news.</p>
<p>Indeed, research shows that when suspects are provided with these instructions, they behave differently depending on whether they are telling the truth or not. Truth-tellers typically seek to demonstrate their innocence and commonly provide more detailed information in response to such instructions. </p>
<p>In contrast, liars wish to conceal their guilt. This means they are more likely to strategically withhold information in response to the AIM instructions. Their (totally correct) assumption here is that providing more information will make it easier for the investigator to detect their lie, so instead, they provide less information.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Picture of a police interrogation." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372658/original/file-20201202-21-ror8kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=133%2C8%2C5441%2C3661&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372658/original/file-20201202-21-ror8kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372658/original/file-20201202-21-ror8kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372658/original/file-20201202-21-ror8kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372658/original/file-20201202-21-ror8kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372658/original/file-20201202-21-ror8kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372658/original/file-20201202-21-ror8kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Liars tend to withhold information.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/junkie-man-interrogated-by-policewoman-dark-306850145">Photographee.eu/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This asymmetry in responses from liars and truth-tellers - from which the AIM technique derives its name - suggests two conclusions. When using the AIM instructions, if the investigator is presented with a potential suspect who is providing lots of detailed information, they are likely to be telling the truth. In contrast, if the potential suspect is lying then the investigator would typically be presented with shorter statements.</p>
<h2>The experiment</h2>
<p>But how effective is this approach? Preliminary research on the AIM technique has been promising. For our study, we recruited 104 people who were sent on one of two covert missions to different locations in a university to retrieve and/or deposit intelligence material. </p>
<p>All interviewees were then told there had been a data breach in their absence. They were, therefore, a suspect and faced an interview with an independent analyst. Half were told to tell the truth about their mission to convince the interviewer of their innocence. The other half were told that they could not disclose any information about their mission, and that they should come up with a cover story about where they had been at the time and place of the breach to convince the analyst of their innocence. </p>
<p>They were then interviewed, and the AIM technique was used in half of the cases. We found that when the AIM technique was used, it was easier for the interviewer to spot liars. In fact, lie-detection accuracy rates increased from 48% (no AIM) to 81% – with truth-tellers providing more information. </p>
<p>Research is also exploring methods for enhancing the AIM technique using cues which may support truth-tellers to provide even more information. Recalling information can be difficult, and truth-tellers often struggle with their recall.</p>
<p>Memory tools known as “<a href="https://www.psychologistworld.com/memory/mnemonics">mnemonics</a>” may be able to enhance this process. For example, if a witness of a robbery has provided an initial statement and cannot recall additional information, investigators could use a “change perspective” mnemonic – asking the witness to think about the events from the perspective of someone else (“what would a police officer have seen if they were there”). This can elicit new - previously unreported - information from memory. </p>
<p>If this is the case, our new technique could become even more accurate at being able to detect verbal differences between truth-tellers and liars.</p>
<p>Either way, our method is an ethical, non-accusatory and information-gathering approach to interviewing. The AIM instructions are simple to understand, easy to implement and appear promising. While initially tested for use in police suspect interviews, such instructions could be implemented in a variety of settings, such as insurance-claim settings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151035/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cody Porter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It turns out liars and truth-tellers behave very differently when questioned.Cody Porter, Senior Teaching Fellow in Psychology and Offending Behaviour, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1488742020-11-23T16:18:23Z2020-11-23T16:18:23Z‘I won the election’ – how powerful people use lousy lies to twist reality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370827/original/file-20201123-15-yhy24s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wilkesbarre-pa-august-2-2018-president-1157861293">Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When was the last time you told a lie? If you can’t remember, I’ll give you a clue. Chances are it was sometime today – based on the fact research shows the average person lies at <a href="https://msu.edu/%7Elevinet/Serota_etal2010.pdf">least once a day</a>.</p>
<p>The point of most lies or false claims seems reasonably straightforward: to deceive others (or oneself) into believing what’s false is true. But there is one puzzling (and often misunderstood) type of lie that doesn’t seem to follow this logic. This is what I call the “lousy lie”. </p>
<p>These are the types of lies or false truths that seem so obviously implausible that they don’t seem designed to deceive, but rather, to signal something else. </p>
<p>Such examples would include the Italian nationalist leader, Matteo Salvini’s, recent claim that the Chinese <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/52299689">created COVID-19 in a lab</a> – when there is <a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-how-scientists-know-the-coronavirus-came-from-bats-and-wasnt-made-in-a-lab-141850">scientific consensus</a> that it moved from animals to humans. </p>
<p>Or <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/news/525661-russian-foreign-minister-suggests-navalny-could-have-been-poisoned-in-germany">the claims</a> by Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, that Moscow has “reasons to assume” the recent <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43377698">Novichok nerve agent</a> poisoning of <a href="https://theconversation.com/alexei-navalny-poisoning-what-theatrical-assassination-attempts-reveal-about-vladimir-putins-grip-on-power-in-russia-145664">Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny</a> was done by Germans. Novichok was developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s and is the same substance found in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/sergei-skripal-and-the-long-history-of-assassination-attempts-abroad-93021">2018 poisoning</a> of Russian double-agent <a href="https://theconversation.com/sergei-skripal-attack-russian-embassy-is-fuelling-tensions-with-some-very-undiplomatic-tweets-93407">Sergei Skripal</a> and his daughter.</p>
<p>Then there is of course <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-trump-uses-twitter-to-distract-the-media-new-research-149847">Donald Trump</a> and his many number of false statements. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1328200072987893762"}"></div></p>
<p>When academics have, in recent years, written about <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250107817">false claims</a>, two opposing storylines emerge. On the one hand, there’s the suggestion that people are quite easily deceived - particularly those <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-57821-001">less educated</a> or with <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-19239-015">extreme ideologies and convictions</a>. On the other hand, certain academics – such as the French cognitive scientist, Hugo Mercier, in his book
,<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45358676-not-born-yesterday">Not Born Yesterday</a> – believe people are not as gullible as is usually assumed. </p>
<p>But even if we accept that most people aren’t very gullible, there’s still the issue of why there’s so much low-quality, easily detectable lying in the public sphere. And given that many cultures have social norms against lying, how then are these lies able to exist and flourish? </p>
<h2>Power and status</h2>
<p>For my <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526151742/">recent book</a>, Knowledge Resistance: How We Avoid Insight from Others, I interviewed numerous social, economic and evolutionary academics in the UK who work on knowledge-based conflicts. I found that some lying - by being so obviously false - is used primarily as a way of bonding and forming loyalty within groups. And in the same way, it can also be used to gain or signal distance from another group.
In this sense, then, these false claims act as a display of power – of not having to submit to truth and facts like the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7427600/">rest of us</a>. </p>
<p>Lousy lying can also be used to communicate social status and make the person appear highly knowledgeable. One <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1547">study</a> of climate change sceptics, for example, found that the most scientifically literate people in the group were most likely to strongly endorse climate scepticism. The study also found that, for these “scientific sceptics”, this strong loyalty with their community, through their seemingly sophisticated reasoning, led to them having a high reputation and liking among their peers. Being liked and respected is something humans have <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199586073.001.0001/acprof-9780199586073-chapter-0010">evolved genetically to prioritise</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Close up of female kid hand crossing fingers behind her back" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370572/original/file-20201120-19-1awbu6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C16%2C3583%2C2376&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370572/original/file-20201120-19-1awbu6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370572/original/file-20201120-19-1awbu6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370572/original/file-20201120-19-1awbu6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370572/original/file-20201120-19-1awbu6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370572/original/file-20201120-19-1awbu6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370572/original/file-20201120-19-1awbu6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More than just telling a few fibs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/april-fools-day-female-kid-hand-500339272">BlurryMe/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s also the fact that even the lousy lie, if told many times, can become part of <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/01/15/dont-think-of-a-rampaging-elephant-linguist-george-lakoff-explains-how-the-democrats-helped-elect-trump/">people’s view of reality</a>. The propaganda minister of Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels famously <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-the-quot-big-lie-quot">pointed this out</a>. </p>
<p>This gradual transformation leads to “obvious lies” becoming an uncertainty - echoing the old adage “there’s no smoke without fire”. On the internet in particular, no lie is lousy enough that it won’t be picked up by someone and shared by any number of people.</p>
<h2>Managing misinformation</h2>
<p>Studies also show that false claims have a <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146">higher chance of being spread</a> compared to mainstream beliefs. And that for people sharing such untruths, it can lead to a <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526151742/">tighter social bond</a> with others who also believe the false claim. This is most likely because it requires blind commitment and loyalty to truly believe what others perceive as a lie. And with the speed with which things can spread online, such views can become normalised very quickly.</p>
<p>For all these reasons, it would be misguided to treat lousy lying as a “cognitive failure”, as it clearly serves several social functions. To deal with this type of lying, then, fact checking would ideally be combined with efforts to have prominently respected figures from the outsider groups that help perpetuate lousy lies to educate and myth bust false claims. Though, of course, this wouldn’t be easy.</p>
<p>This is important given that, as Twitter and Facebook have intensified their fact checking, millions of social media users have moved to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/technology/parler-rumble-newsmax.html">alternative platforms</a> – like Newsmax, Parler and Rumble. And in these online spaces the lies of public leaders can flow freely and disappear into acceptance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mikael Klintman is professor of sociology at Lund University, Sweden. He receives funding from the Swedish Research Foundation (VR) and MISTRA. </span></em></p>Lying can be more than just telling a few fibs. It can also be used to communicate social status and make a person appear loyal to a particular group.Mikael Klintman, Professor of Sociology, Lund UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1472552020-10-05T14:31:22Z2020-10-05T14:31:22ZWhy Donald Trump’s words work, and what to do about it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361492/original/file-20201004-18-qh6ao5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C40%2C5019%2C3338&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With the American flag reflected in the teleprompter, President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Duluth International Airport on Sept. 30, 2020, in Duluth, Minn. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As America chaotically careens toward election day with President Donald Trump fighting a COVID-19 infection, we should stop and ask: Just why and how do Trump’s words work? And how does the recent confusion sown by his doctors at Walter Reed Medical Center amplify that work?</p>
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<p>Perhaps more importantly: What can we do about it?</p>
<p>These questions strike at the core of a deep and persistent misunderstanding about communication. Too often people assume that communication is a matter of transmitting information from one place to another and that words simply carry meaning. </p>
<p>From this perspective, the president’s words function as a conduit from his head to everyone listening. With this president, we have all become accustomed to the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-46175024">concept of “misinformation</a>,” whereby we recognize that intentionally false or misleading information is transmitted to the listener, and how it’s had <a href="https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/10/what-drove-the-covid-misinformation-infodemic/">a devastating impact during the COVID-19 pandemic.</a></p>
<p>We’ve also been awed by <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/26/donald-trump-twitter-addiction-216530">his use of Twitter</a> to communicate that misinformation.</p>
<h2>Trump rhetoric</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://open.lib.umn.edu/communication/chapter/1-2-the-communication-process/#:%7E:text=The%20transmission%20model%20of%20communication%20describes%20communication%20as%20a%20one,by%20environmental%20or%20semantic%20noise.">transmission model</a> of communications describes the technical movement of a signal over a channel and across a distance. But this is a poor description of presidential rhetoric. </p>
<p>Too often we think that the complex, human task of communication is the same as the technical process of transmission. We worry whether someone “gets” our suggestions. When the president’s doctors update us on his health status, we assume that they’re just “giving” us information. “Giving” and “getting” are verbs of transmission. </p>
<p>Parsing the information transmitted by a president, determining whether it’s true or false or what’s really going on, is an ineffective way to understand what Trump’s words actually achieve. It doesn’t matter whether the information he transmits is accurate or inaccurate, and we make a mistake when we focus too much on accuracy and inaccuracy.</p>
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<p>Then what to focus on? </p>
<p>What I and many others call the “rhetorical model of communication” suggests that words have impact, and that meaning is an outcome of the effects words produce. About 2,400 years ago, <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/gorgias/">Gorgias</a>, the famous <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sophists/">sophist</a> and democratic theorist, argued that words had a similar effect as drugs on the body. <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Greek_Medicine/">Ancient Athenian soothsayers would speak to the wounds of soldiers in battle</a> in hopes that their words would heal. </p>
<p>So instead of asking whether a president’s rhetoric is true or false, instead of trying to interpret the information presented in order to receive an accurate sense of what Trump is really saying, we ought to start asking: What effect do the president’s words have on us? For example, what is the impact of his anti-mask mockery on his followers and on public health efforts to keep citizens safe?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QiN-wANjTrc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trump mocks a reporter for wearing a mask during a news conference, courtesy of The Independent.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Evoke strong reactions</h2>
<p>Trump’s words are aimed at producing strong reactions. When he mocks mask-wearing, he knows that he’ll evoke a strong reaction from both the media and his followers, and he doesn’t seem to care about the accuracy of the information he’s transmitting. He knows that elections are not won or lost on policy ideas or rational voters making informed choices. They are won or lost on the basis of the effects produced by the candidate’s words. </p>
<p>Those effects drive us to the polls and motivate us to act and reason in specific ways. </p>
<p>I’ve taught rhetoric and communication classes for 20 years, and in almost every class, I begin by telling my students to pay more attention to the effects their words have on others and not the information they wish to convey. This president has surely mastered that lesson. He speaks with the intent of producing the strongest possible impact and cares not at all about the information transmitted.</p>
<p>There is no mistaking the intended effects of this president’s rhetoric. He aims to create feelings of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0002716218811309">resentment, distrust and suspicion</a>. Mapping the world in terms of “us” and “them” creates conflict (and is perhaps the cornerstone of fascist rhetoric). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Trump points at a supporter while speaking." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361493/original/file-20201004-22-w60rvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361493/original/file-20201004-22-w60rvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361493/original/file-20201004-22-w60rvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361493/original/file-20201004-22-w60rvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361493/original/file-20201004-22-w60rvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361493/original/file-20201004-22-w60rvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361493/original/file-20201004-22-w60rvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump gestures to supporters as he arrives at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport on Sept. 30, 2020, in Minneapolis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Conflict with those we resent and distrust drives attention — this is the ethos of the entertainment industry, reality television and thousands of years of theatre. Making us feel uncertain, anxious, fearful — this is what Trump’s words do, regardless of the information they transmit. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-04/trump-coronavirus-diagnosis-trust">The uncertainty created by his doctors at Walter Reed</a> served this same function — they attracted attention via uncertainty.</p>
<p>The feelings Trump targets draw us in, make us pay attention to all of his transgressions and affect our relations with others who share our space. Attention is persuasion, because meaning is in the way we react to his words, not in the information he transmits. </p>
<h2>Amplifying Trump’s rhetoric</h2>
<p>Every time CNN or Fox News broadcasts <a href="https://deadline.com/2020/03/coronavirus-chris-hayes-don-lemon-1202896531/">the president’s news conferences</a>, they amplify the effects by spreading them to larger audiences. Trump knows this, and yet our news outlets continue to let it happen. </p>
<p>Why? </p>
<p>Because dramatic tension fuels attention, and Trump’s words work to generate tension, anxiety, conflict and therefore attention. We could parse the rhetorical tactics that typically generate the strongest reactions and easily see them in Trump’s words (hyperbole, <a href="https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/reification#:%7E:text=Reification%20is%20when%20you%20think,evil%20%E2%80%94%20as%20a%20material%20thing.">reification</a>, ad hominem attacks, ambiguity). But we ought to focus more on how we react in order to limit his ability to persuade.</p>
<p>The president’s words right now are affecting all of us; they are driving us from one another and creating battle lines like the plot of a good drama. </p>
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<p>Where are our soothsayers? Who will speak to our wounds in hopes of having the same affects as drugs on our bodies, like Gorgias believed? </p>
<p>Resistance to Trump requires changes in the way we react to his words. Like a parent who does not react to their children’s tantrums (which are designed to generate attention), we must react with neutrality and objectivity, not more insults or hyperbole. </p>
<p>To put it more succinctly: Saving democracy requires defying Trump’s words by reacting differently from what they typically prescribe or intend. We need to react with civility, care and calm to undo the cycle of attention and persuasion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147255/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Danisch receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>Because dramatic tension fuels attention, Trump’s words work to generate tension, anxiety and conflict. We need to react with civility, care and calm to undo the cycle of attention and persuasion.Robert Danisch, Associate Professor, Communications & Chair of Department of Communication Arts, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1356612020-04-16T15:03:02Z2020-04-16T15:03:02ZBullshit is everywhere. Here’s how to deal with it at work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328417/original/file-20200416-192725-11oj5rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5330%2C2998&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. President Donald Trump has often been documented bullshitting. In a business setting, however, bullshitters can be harder to identify.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What’s colloquially known as “bullshit” occurs when people make statements with no regard for the truth, and unfortunately, it is more prevalent than ever. </p>
<p>Thankfully, we can all stem the production and spread of bullshit in our workplaces by applying the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2020.01.001">CRAP framework from our recent academic paper, “Confronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit</a>.” The framework consists of four steps: <em><strong>C</strong>omprehend</em> why bullshit exists; <em><strong>R</strong>ecognize</em> when it is produced; know how to <em><strong>A</strong>ct</em> against it; and <em><strong>P</strong>revent</em> it from occurring.</p>
<h2>Comprehending bullshit</h2>
<p>In his 1985 essay “On Bullshit,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D9Y-1Jcov4">philosopher Harry Frankfurt</a> distinguished between bullshit and lying. Lying occurs when individuals know the truth and misrepresent it. Bullshitters don’t care what the truth is. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2018/03/14/in-fundraising-speech-trump-says-he-made-up-facts-in-meeting-with-justin-trudeau/">in 2018</a>, U.S. President Donald Trump erroneously told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the United States had a trade deficit with Canada, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/147504/worse-liar-trump-lies-trudeau">but later admitted</a> that he had no idea if there was a deficit. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328069/original/file-20200415-153326-4qpyn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328069/original/file-20200415-153326-4qpyn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328069/original/file-20200415-153326-4qpyn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328069/original/file-20200415-153326-4qpyn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328069/original/file-20200415-153326-4qpyn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328069/original/file-20200415-153326-4qpyn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328069/original/file-20200415-153326-4qpyn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump admitted he bullshitted Trudeau.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trump’s admission revealed that he was bullshitting, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/31/politics/fact-check-donald-trump-top-lies-of-2019-daniel-dale/index.html">a practice he evidently often engages in</a>. This freedom from truth means that <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-leaders-who-bullshit-are-more-dangerous-than-those-who-lie-125109">leaders who bullshit are more dangerous than those who lie</a>, because they say whatever it takes to further their agenda.</p>
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<p>Understanding this distinction between bullshit and lying is essential. We can reveal a lie by uncovering the truth, but dealing effectively with workplace bullshit is more complicated.</p>
<h2>Recognizing bullshit</h2>
<p>Bullshit is designed to appeal to an audience — and to hide that it is not supported by evidence or logic. It often appears in the form of cliches, platitudes or <a href="https://hbr.org/2018/02/if-we-all-hate-business-jargon-why-do-we-keep-using-it">business jargon</a> that seem meaningful but upon closer examination are empty. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328068/original/file-20200415-153302-7ezsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328068/original/file-20200415-153302-7ezsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328068/original/file-20200415-153302-7ezsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328068/original/file-20200415-153302-7ezsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328068/original/file-20200415-153302-7ezsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328068/original/file-20200415-153302-7ezsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328068/original/file-20200415-153302-7ezsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328068/original/file-20200415-153302-7ezsba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Schultz was accused of being a champion bullshitter after describing a ‘coffee-forward’ experience at his coffee chain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, in 2017, Howard Schultz, <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2017/07/19/news/starbucks-lucy-kellaway-ft-jargon-coffee/index.html">the executive chairman of Starbucks, announced that the coffee chain’s new roasteries would provide “an immersive, ultra-premium, coffee-forward experience.”</a> <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/cec8d2ca-66e9-11e7-9a66-93fb352ba1fe"><em>Financial Times</em> writer Lucy Kellaway</a> responded by describing Schultz as “a champion in the bullshit space.”</p>
<p>Bullshit can also be enhanced by using data and visualization techniques <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Howard_Wainer/publication/236736151_Visual_Revelations_Graphical_Tales_of_Fate_and_Deception_from_Napoleon_Bonaparte_to_Ross_Perot/links/00b4952de858ce73b4000000.pdf">that conceal, distort or obfuscate the truth.</a> Technological advances such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/deepfakes-five-ways-in-which-they-are-brilliant-business-opportunities-131591">deepfakes</a>, where a fake image of a person can be created and manipulated, can make bullshit seem more convincing. Unfortunately, when it comes to recognizing bullshit, we can’t always believe what we see and hear.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/deepfakes-informed-digital-citizens-are-the-best-defence-against-online-manipulation-129164">Deepfakes: Informed digital citizens are the best defence against online manipulation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Some workplace bullshitters will have a discernible personal agenda, and uncovering that agenda will help us see through their efforts. However, others are passing on bullshit unknowingly because they naively trust what they have been told. In the words of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/41.2.381a">Ted Sorensen</a>, a lawyer and onetime adviser to late president John F. Kennedy, many employees “develop a confidence in [their own] competence which outruns the fact.”</p>
<h2>Acting on bullshit</h2>
<p>When you recognize bullshit in your workplace, what should you do about it? We draw on renowned researcher <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-sponsors-may-be-the-only-ones-who-can-reform-fifa-42507">Albert Hirschman’s</a> ideas to propose four possible responses: “voice,” “loyalty,” “neglect” or “exit.”</p>
<p>Voice is when employees speak up. They ask to see evidence that supports the suspected bullshit, or offer counter-evidence or logic to challenge it. When employees feel <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/08/high-performing-teams-need-psychological-safety-heres-how-to-create-it">that they won’t be punished</a> for speaking up against bullshit, they are more likely to do so.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328071/original/file-20200415-153313-1hhpei3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328071/original/file-20200415-153313-1hhpei3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328071/original/file-20200415-153313-1hhpei3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328071/original/file-20200415-153313-1hhpei3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328071/original/file-20200415-153313-1hhpei3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328071/original/file-20200415-153313-1hhpei3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328071/original/file-20200415-153313-1hhpei3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Employees might speak out against workplace bullshit if they don’t fear they’ll face some bullshit punishment for doing so.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pixabay)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, employees may also react in ways that allow and even enable bullshit. Some may react with loyalty, perhaps out of allegiance to the bullshitter, or because they find the bullshit personally appealing. On the other hand, other employees may react to bullshit by neglecting their work, withholding effort and disengaging from their jobs.</p>
<p>Finally, employees may become so frustrated with bullshit that they exit their organizations, or at least change jobs to escape a bullshitting boss.</p>
<h2>Preventing bullshit</h2>
<p>Business leaders can deter bullshit directly by requiring communication that is clear, evidence-based and jargon-free.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328072/original/file-20200415-153330-1x4ygzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328072/original/file-20200415-153330-1x4ygzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328072/original/file-20200415-153330-1x4ygzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328072/original/file-20200415-153330-1x4ygzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328072/original/file-20200415-153330-1x4ygzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328072/original/file-20200415-153330-1x4ygzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328072/original/file-20200415-153330-1x4ygzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328072/original/file-20200415-153330-1x4ygzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Musk railed against manufactured acronyms at SpaceX, suggesting they were bullshit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2010, <a href="https://www.verdict.co.uk/jargon-business-workplace-musk/">Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk</a> sent an email to employees, warning of “… a creeping tendency to use made-up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made-up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication.”</p>
<p>Critical thinking can stifle bullshit production and proliferation. It values evidence over opinions and expertise over egalitarianism, so that decisions are based on fact rather than hunches, myths or anecdotes. Business leaders should practise and expect careful analysis and presentation of information.</p>
<p>Business leaders should also stamp out useless committees and meetings. Bullshitters can exploit meetings that are poorly organized and run by using them to promote or legitimize their bullshit. Leaders should only establish committees and have meetings with clear terms of reference and agendas, and appoint members who have critical thinking mindsets and the appropriate expertise.</p>
<p>We opened this article by stating that bullshit is more prevalent than ever. However, this was bullshit, because we don’t have evidence to support this claim. But we have heard many employees are unhappy with the amount and impact of bullshit in their workplaces, and we are watching public figures bullshit every day.</p>
<p>So by applying the CRAP framework, we can all deal more effectively with workplace bullshit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Understanding the distinction between bullshit and lying is essential. We can reveal a lie by uncovering the truth, but dealing effectively with bullshit is more complicated.Ian McCarthy, W.J. VanDusen Professor of Innovation & Operations Management, Simon Fraser UniversityDavid R Hannah, Associate Professor of Management, Simon Fraser UniversityJane McCarthy, Instructor and Researcher, Manufacturing Management, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1304772020-01-24T10:49:22Z2020-01-24T10:49:22ZPolygraph lie detector tests: can they really stop criminals reoffending?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311803/original/file-20200124-81346-1djzqpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/computer-shows-physiological-measures-man-undergoing-1506802802">Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The UK government <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/tougher-sentencing-and-monitoring-in-government-overhaul-of-terrorism-response">recently announced</a> it was planning to increase the use of polygraphs to monitor offenders on probation, specifically those convicted of terrorist offences.</p>
<p>This is one of several new measures to prevent a repeat of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/london-bridge-attack-why-longer-sentences-for-terrorist-offences-are-not-the-answer-128154">recent London Bridge attack</a>, which was <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50611788">committed by</a> an offender out in the community on license. One difficulty with deciding which offenders can be released this way is that offenders can lie about their actions, thoughts and intentions to convince probation officers that they pose a low risk.</p>
<p>The government hopes that an increased use of polygraphs will help identify terrorists planning to reoffend. But are polygraphs actually able to do this?</p>
<p>Polygraphs are already in use in the UK for probation purposes. Since 2014, high-risk sex offenders have had to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/compulsary-lie-detector-tests-for-serious-sex-offenders">undergo polygraphs testing</a> as part of their license conditions. Sex offenders are also routinely asked to undergo polygraphs <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09540261.2018.1561428">in the US</a>, but the practice is not common in other countries.</p>
<p>Although polygraphs are sometimes known as lie detectors, they <a href="https://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph">don’t actually detect lies directly</a>. Most modern polygraphs measure the interviewee’s heart rate, breathing rate and sweating while they are asked yes/no questions. These questions need to be simple and refer to a concrete event that is known by the interviewer. This makes it hard to use polygraphs to ask people what they plan to do in the future, because we don’t know enough to know the right questions to ask.</p>
<p>The polygraph picks up on any changes in breathing, heart or sweat rate during the interview. These changes can happen for many reasons. Sometimes a response is caused by the stress of lying. Sometimes they are an “<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-8986.00167.x">orienting response</a>”, people responding to something familiar or important to them.</p>
<p>This can be helpful to show that somebody knows something that they said they didn’t know (“<a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2003-04931-014?doi=1">guilty knowledge</a>”). However, strong polygraph responses may also be due to shock or upset at the question or nervousness about the polygraph itself.</p>
<h2>Better than average</h2>
<p>So how accurate are polygraphs in actually detecting lies? There have been <a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/10420/chapter/1">several</a> <a href="https://apoa.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/polygraph_404.pdf">reviews</a> of polygraph accuracy. They suggest that polygraphs are accurate between 80% and 90% of the time. This means polygraphs are far from foolproof, but better than the average person’s ability to spot lies, which <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-11509-006?doi=1">research suggests</a> they can do around 55% of the time.</p>
<p>However, many of these polygraph studies involved people lying about clearly defined events in controlled experiments. It is possible that polygraphs are less accurate in real life probation cases. One <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/288DEA187FE65B40A85FC0DEC5759305/S0007125000231607a.pdf/div-class-title-accuracy-and-utility-of-post-conviction-polygraph-testing-of-sex-offenders-div.pdf">study from 2006</a> attempted to estimate the accuracy of the polygraph with US sex offenders, but it relied on the offenders saying when the polygraph was wrong, which may not be entirely accurate.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311804/original/file-20200124-81336-z0jeas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311804/original/file-20200124-81336-z0jeas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311804/original/file-20200124-81336-z0jeas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311804/original/file-20200124-81336-z0jeas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311804/original/file-20200124-81336-z0jeas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311804/original/file-20200124-81336-z0jeas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311804/original/file-20200124-81336-z0jeas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Who’s telling the truth: the test or the subject?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/concept-lies-lie-detector-text-3d-245067355">Maxx Studio</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unfortunately, we don’t know how often probation officers suspect that offenders are lying and how good they are at identifying lies. So, we don’t know whether polygraphs are better than probation officers.</p>
<p>There are also concerns about when the polygraph is wrong. The test can be <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1985-13834-001?doi=1">beaten by liars</a> with knowledge of how polygraphs work and are used. These people may also be the ones that the probation officers are most interested in catching. They may have practised how to beat polygraphs precisely because they have very serious things to hide.</p>
<p><a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1989-26277-001">Some studies</a> show that polygraphs are worse at detecting that people are telling the truth than detecting they are lying, in some cases indicating deception for almost half of the people who are actually telling the truth. This can be especially difficult to deal with in probation situations, where an offender may have no opportunity to prove that they were not lying when the polygraph indicates they are. How do you prove that you weren’t planning to reoffend? </p>
<h2>Encouraging truth telling</h2>
<p>However, there is another use for polygraphs in probation. They encourage people to confess. Forensic psychologist Theresa Gannon and her colleagues studied this on <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1079063213486836">UK sex offenders in 2014</a>. They found that offenders were more likely to disclose something of interest when using the polygraph (75%, instead of 51% without). This disclosure often happened after the polygraph had indicated deception. It may be that offenders feel forced to make a confession after failing the polygraph. However, the study could not tell whether these confessions are true.</p>
<p>After failing a polygraph, offenders may feel that further denials won’t be believed and confessing is best, even when they were not lying. This research suggests that the polygraph can be used to psychologically pressure offenders into disclosing self-incriminating information. Information that may not even be true.</p>
<p>So, is it a good idea for the government to increase polygraph use to monitor offenders? Research shows that they are nowhere near foolproof, but they may have some usefulness as a potential indicator of deception and to encourage truth telling. </p>
<p>However, using them raises several ethical questions. For example, it is fair to use them to try and extract self-incriminating statements?</p>
<p>Some people may argue that something is better than nothing and polygraphs are the best we’ve got. But in instances where polygraphs are so inaccurate that they give probation officers more useless than useful information, nothing may be better than something.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130477/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lara Warmelink does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The UK government is introducing polygraph tests for convicted terrorists on probation.Lara Warmelink, Lecturer, Department of Psychology, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1289672020-01-14T13:47:53Z2020-01-14T13:47:53ZCan the Constitution stop the government from lying to the public?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308449/original/file-20200103-11904-29ocdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C6000%2C5973&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The old joke says you can tell a politician is lying if his lips are moving.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/politician-long-nose-lies-man-pop-1071460601">Alexander_P/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When regular people lie, sometimes their lies are detected, sometimes they’re not. Legally speaking, sometimes they’re protected by the First Amendment – and sometimes not, like when they commit fraud or perjury. </p>
<p>But what about when government officials lie?</p>
<p>I take up this question in my recent book, “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/governments-speech-and-the-constitution/BAE6367A698475ED9DBB328B5D9E40E5">The Government’s Speech and the Constitution</a>.” It’s not that surprising that public servants lie – they are human, after all. But when an agency or official backed by the power and resources of the government tells a lie, it sometimes causes harm that only the government can inflict.</p>
<p>My research found that lies by government officials can violate the Constitution in several different ways, especially when those lies deprive people of their rights.</p>
<h2>Clear violations</h2>
<p>Consider, for instance, police officers who <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/391/543/">falsely tell a suspect that they have a search warrant</a>, or <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/372/528/">falsely say that the government will take the suspect’s child away</a> if the suspect doesn’t waive his or her constitutional rights to a lawyer or against self-incrimination. These lies violate constitutional protections provided in the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment">Fourth</a>, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fifth_amendment">Fifth</a> and <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/sixth_amendment">Sixth</a> Amendments.</p>
<p>If the government jails, taxes or fines people because it disagrees with what they say, it violates the First Amendment. And under some circumstances, the government can silence dissent just as effectively through its lies that encourage employers and other third parties to punish the government’s critics. During the 1950s and 1960s, for example, the <a href="http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/243/mississippi-sovereignty-commission-an-agency-history">Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission</a> spread damaging falsehoods to the employers, friends and neighbors of citizens who spoke out against segregation. As a federal court found decades later, the agency “<a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/719/1345/1438234/">harassed individuals who assisted organizations</a> promoting desegregation or voter registration. In some instances, the commission would suggest job actions to employers, who would fire the targeted moderate or activist.”</p>
<p>And some lawsuits have accused government officials of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-noflylist/us-court-allows-no-fly-list-lawsuits-dissenters-warn-of-danger-idUSKCN1Q32JV">misrepresenting how dangerous a person was</a> when putting them on a no-fly list. Some judges have expressed <a href="https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20140630872">concern about whether the government’s no-fly listing procedures</a> are rigorous enough to justify restricting a person’s freedom to travel. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308390/original/file-20200102-11900-12qvggu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308390/original/file-20200102-11900-12qvggu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308390/original/file-20200102-11900-12qvggu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308390/original/file-20200102-11900-12qvggu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308390/original/file-20200102-11900-12qvggu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308390/original/file-20200102-11900-12qvggu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308390/original/file-20200102-11900-12qvggu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308390/original/file-20200102-11900-12qvggu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1971, The New York Times and The Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers, exposing officials’ lies about the war in Vietnam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-New-York-/61378866a8224e64be95556e7b29dcb5/137/0">AP Photo/Jim Wells</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Spreading distrust and uncertainty</h2>
<p>But in other situations, it can be difficult to find a direct connection between the government’s speech and the loss of an individual right. Think of government officials’ lies about their own misconduct, or their colleagues’, to avoid political and legal accountability – like the many lies about the Vietnam War by Lyndon Johnson’s administration, <a href="http://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/2011_PENTAGON_PAPERS.html?_r=1">as revealed by the Pentagon Papers</a>. </p>
<p>Those sorts of lies are part of what I’ve called “<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3097156">the government’s manufacture of doubt</a>.” These include the government’s falsehoods that seek to distract the public from efforts to discover the truth. For instance, in response to growing concerns about his campaign’s connections to Russia, President Donald Trump claimed that <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-obama/trump-claims-obama-wiretapped-him-during-campaign-obama-refutes-it-idUSKBN16B0CC">former President Barack Obama had wiretapped him</a> during the campaign, even though the Department of Justice confirmed that <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/trump-russia-investigation-wiretap-fbi-obama-658888">no evidence supported that claim</a>.</p>
<p>Decades earlier, in the 1950s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy sought both media attention and political gain through <a href="https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1286&context=californialawreview">outrageous and often unfounded claims</a> that contributed to a culture of fear in the country.</p>
<p>When public officials speak in these ways, they undermine public trust and frustrate the public’s ability to hold the government accountable for its performance. But they don’t necessarily violate any particular person’s constitutional rights, making lawsuits challenging at best. In other words, just because the government’s lies hurt us does not always mean that they violate the Constitution. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308393/original/file-20200102-11896-rl3ntn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308393/original/file-20200102-11896-rl3ntn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308393/original/file-20200102-11896-rl3ntn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308393/original/file-20200102-11896-rl3ntn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308393/original/file-20200102-11896-rl3ntn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308393/original/file-20200102-11896-rl3ntn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308393/original/file-20200102-11896-rl3ntn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308393/original/file-20200102-11896-rl3ntn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sen. Joe McCarthy, left, talks with his attorney, Roy Cohn, during Senate hearings in 1954.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:McCarthy_Cohn.jpg">United Press International/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<h2>What else can people do?</h2>
<p>There are other important options for protecting the public from the government’s lies. Whistleblowers can help uncover the government’s falsehoods and other misconduct. Recall FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2005/07/deepthroat200507">Watergate’s “Deep Throat”</a> source for The Washington Post’s investigation, and <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5651609">Army Sgt. Joseph Darby</a>, who revealed the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. And lawmakers can enact, and lawyers can help enforce, laws that protect whistleblowers who expose government lies. </p>
<p>Legislatures and agencies can exercise their oversight powers to hold other government officials accountable for their lies. For example, Senate hearings led Sen. McCarthy’s colleagues to <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/censure_cases/133Joseph_McCarthy.htm">formally condemn his conduct</a> as “<a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/1954McCarthyCensure.pdf">contrary to senatorial traditions and … ethics</a>.” </p>
<p>In addition, the press can seek documents and information to check the government’s claims, and the public can protest and vote against those in power who lie. Public outrage over the government’s lies about the war in Vietnam, for example, contributed to <a href="https://www.history.com/news/lbj-exit-1968-presidential-race">Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 decision not to seek reelection</a>. Similarly, the public’s disapproval of government officials’ lies to cover up the Watergate scandal helped lead to <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-resigns">Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation</a>.</p>
<p>It can be hard to prevent government officials from lying, and difficult to hold them accountable when they do. But the tools available for doing just that include not only the Constitution but also persistent pushback from other government officials, the press and the people themselves.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Norton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When a person or agency backed by the power and resources of the government tells a lie, it sometimes causes harm that only the government can inflict.Helen Norton, Rothgerber Chair in Constitutional Law, University of Colorado BoulderLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.