Lying Makes The Brain Work Harder 364
Ant writes "This Wired News article says it seems to take more brain effort to tell a lie than to tell the truth according to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. Lying caused activity in the frontal part of the brain -- the medial inferior and pre-central areas, as well as the hippocampus and middle temporal regions and the limbic areas. Some of these are involved in emotional responses. During a truthful response, the fMRI showed activation of parts of the brain's frontal lobe, temporal lobe and cingulate gyrus."
Err, of course? (Score:2, Insightful)
Didn't they take the Lying Module? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, terrorists aren't trained at lying, only FBI agents are.
Well, DUH (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't say? (Score:3, Insightful)
Good to see it confirmed, I guess, and I do believe in pure research for research's sake, but even I am moved to say "well, duh!".
Makes Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
- dshaw
Then you must... (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep your lies consistent too.
Re:Thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Things to ponder (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, I wonder what differences would be observed if you tested somebody who is more used to lying in a convincing manner, such as a a politician or undercover cop.
Yes my son. (Score:1, Insightful)
"Silence is often the best thing to say." Bene Gesserit Axiom
Re:Then you must... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not possible to catch intelligent liars using machine detection. This is the crux of my problem with the use of technology to catch criminals.
Good, They need something better than polygraphs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Err, of course? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thinking (Score:1, Insightful)
Obligitory Star Trek Quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep your lies consistent too.
I thought this reminded me of something, along with a quick Google search here it is:
(Bashir tells the story of the boy who cried "Wolf")
Bashir: If you lie all the time, no one is going to believe you, even when you're telling the truth.
Garak: Are you sure that's the point, Doctor?
Bashir: Of course. What else would it be?
Garak: That you should never tell the same lie twice.
Re:Well, DUH (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree, but I don't think your subject line is a very fair one, unless you're aiming it at the journalist instead of the scientists. Otherwise it sounds as if you're bashing the scientists for doing this properly and making sure that it's correct.
It's likely quite intuitive to most people, including psychologists, that lying takes more effort. The problem is that intuition isn't good enough for science. This is an actual study that scientifically demonstrates that it takes more effort to lie. It can be reliably cited and criticised by anyone who wants to base further research on it. If it didn't exist, then anyone who wanted that formal verification would need to conduct their own study anyway.
It's not really a huge thing or a very counterintuitive thing. Chances are it was only picked up by the media because a journalist somewhere thought they could make it sound interesting... and slashdot picked it up because it's slashdot.
Re:Err, of course? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's called a catechism [catholic.net] or a creed [mit.edu].
Re:Thinking (Score:1, Insightful)
Once you know how to beat a lie detector you could apply it to this machine too and, with the same probability of success, beat this fMRI just as easily as a polygraph.
My theory on how to beat a polygraph?
What color is the sky? Green x1000
Mr. Smith, What color is the sky? "Green"
Repeated repetition is a simple and effective way of creating a mental connection between two thoughts (classical conditioning) whether that connection is false or true is irrelevant, however, a polygraph, and this fMRI are scanning for the person having above average thinking, in other words, preparing an answer, if you have the answer stored, right or wrong, you don't need to prepare it, you can spit it out and the machine will read it as true. If you realize how horribly ineffective this makes the polygraph, you'll realize why it's totally useless, and why scanning for the preparation of an unorthodox answer, is as equally, totally useless. It also means that if your not focusing solely on the questions being asked, your not worrying about your kids, or your job or your homework, it's going to screw with the answers even more.
Both of these systems are equally flawed. Personally I think we're better off with having an Emperor give the whole thumbs up campaign to divine truth and lie.
Re:On the contrary (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind that when you lie, your brain will be more active, weighing the impact the deception might/would have regarding other memories and any possible future situations involved with those memories.
I'm going to go out on a limb and attempt some sort of comparison...
when you tell the truth, it's almost like the answer is cached, no thought is really required other than recalling that direct memory which holds the data.
when you attempt to deceive, the answer is no longer cached; the brain must actively retrieve the data and then worry about dependencies, children, etc.
It's no surprise that to lie or deceive requires more brain power than simply reciting truth.
Duh.
Re:On the contrary (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:On the contrary (Score:5, Insightful)
All that can be true when you tell the truth too. For instance, imagine your wife asking "Are you cheating on me?"
You're starting with the assumption that the truth can't hurt, and that assumption seems quite obviously false.
Re:Then you must... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lying is just another form of information processing. I'd guess that an accomplished liar -- a master liar if you will, is going to have a number of well learned strategies for deception, and thus work much less hard than a truthful person.
Of course, very few people are wholly truthful. I wouldn't be surprised if each person were a master liar in some topical area, such as why my term paper is late.
Re:On the contrary (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems likely that recall of action versus observation would have at least as much impact as lying versus truth-telling. To be good science, the study would have to be repeated with just the people who fired the gun or with just the people who watched someone fire the gun: It must vary only one variable at a time.