It seems intuitive that lying gets easier the more we do it, but that may actually be supported at the neurological level!

New research found that, when we lie frequently, our brain begins to adapt to the practice of deception, to the point that we no longer feel the emotional stress that normally comes with lying. These results are important both for informing on how we practice deception but also for shedding light on the ways in which our brains adapt to patterns of, perhaps immoral, behavior.

Typically, when we tell a lie, our brain’s amygdala produces a negative emotional state, essentially making us feel stressed or uncomfortable during the process. However, a new study in Nature Neuroscience contends that, the more people lie, the less their brain produces negative stimuli.

In this study, participants were given images of glass jars filled with pennies. They were asked to report the number of pennies but were often incentivized to exaggerate the amount. While they often told the truth, they often engaged in deception when given self-interested reasons to do so.

Over the course of repeated deceptions, the researchers tracked each participants’ amygdala’s functioning, finding that they became less intensely activated each time. This even remained the case when the magnitude of the lie increased.

This last point is especially troubling, as it suggests that minor lies can escalate into major acts of deception the more accustomed to them we become. Study author Dr. Tali Sharot emphasized this point saying, “[the amygdala] response fades as we continue to lie, and the more it falls the bigger our lies become. This may lead to a ‘slippery slope’ where small acts of dishonesty escalate into more significant lies.”

In fact, the study also found that, not only did people begin to feel better about lying the more they did it, but they also became more likely to do so.

While this experiment demonstrates how our brains react to deception, it may also reflect broader trends in our ability to adapt emotionally to other actions. The lead author, Dr. Neil Garrett, alluded to the possibility of these results being replicated during troublesome behaviors besides lying.

Dr. Garrett remarked “We only tested dishonesty in this experiment, but the same principle may also apply to escalations in other actions such as risk taking or violent behavior.”

What do the results of this study mean for efforts to detect deception? In fact, it bolsters many of the challenges with lie detection, namely that habitual liars can be incredibly good at it. Not only do they learn how to lie, but their brain actually adapts to the practice!

This is all a great reason to let Humintell train you to become a better lie detector! But in the meantime, check out some helpful tips here and here.

How can we learn how to spot deception?

It is a sad truth that lying is incredibly pervasive in our interactions with fellow humans. While people lie for a multitude of reasons, we are also quite bad at lie detection, creating a pretty bleak predicament for those of us who value honesty. In a recent article for NBC News, journalist Brianna Steinhilber has compiled an excellent and accessible list of helpful tips to make you a better lie detector.

As we have discussed in a previous blog, people lie all the time, primarily out of self-interest. Steinhilber manages to compile some troubling statistics showing just how frequent this really is. One 2012 study found that the average American lies about 11 times per week, while another claimed that a majority of people lie at least every 10 minutes!

One of the problems with this prevalence is that, according to a 2016 study, the more we lie about small things, the more accustomed our brain becomes to deception in general, fostering lying behavior in the future. This is perhaps unsurprising. As Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto explains, deception is deeply rooted in human behavior and development.

This might be manageable, if we could tell when people were lie. Unfortunately, we can’t, for the most part. One large meta-study by Dr. Charles Bond and Dr. Bella DePaulo in 2006 found that we can generally detect deception with a 54 percent success rate.

But that doesn’t mean that we are doomed to ignorance about other people’s lies! Steinhilber has helpfully compiled a list of five tips for strengthening your lie detection skills:

First, pay close attention to their baseline behavior. This is easiest with people you interact with most, such as coworkers, family members, and friends. From this baseline, you can notice when they practice anomalous behavior that indicates deception.

Second, watch their eyes. While maintaining or avoiding eye contact is not a reliable indicator of deception, the eyes are a great way to compare behavior against the baseline. Is the person blinking more than usual? Do they normally make eye contact but now don’t? These are the sort of indicators that an examination of the eyes can give you.

Third, look for their microexpressions, a favorite topic here at Humintell. Our faces can give us away in many minor ways, as muscles in the face twitch briefly to reveal one’s actual emotions. These can be quite difficult to notice, but reading microexpressions is a skill that can be learned and trained.

Fourth, analyze their smile. A fake smile, a good indicator of deception, looks quite different from a genuine one. In fake smiles, liars tend to press their lips more tightly together. Similarly, genuine smiles reach to the eyes and the rest of the face, while fake smiles tend to stop at the mouth.

Finally, Steinhilber recommends looking for signs of stress or discomfort. While lying, many people will fidget, shift around in their seat, or even yawn. Understanding how a given person acts when they are stressed can help us learn when that person is lying.

While it is certainly helpful to keep these tips in mind, nothing can compare with professional training in lie detection or in mastering the art of reading microexpressions.

Eyes are an incredibly important part of emotional recognition, but what role do they have in allowing us to detect deception?

While conventional opinion tends to hold that failure to maintain eye contact is a tell-tale sign of deception, this is actually just a pervasive myth. However, because eyes are so important in reading emotions, they can also help us assess another’s truthfulness, or lack thereof.

Our fixation on the importance of eyes has justification. As followers of this blog will know, recent research indicates that we display emotions most clearly in our eyes.

While this intuitive emphasis on eyes led to the notion that observing eye contact is a reliable method of lie detection, this is simply not true. As a previous blog explained, multiple studies have found no relationship between deception and the avoidance of eye contact, despite the fact that, across cultures, this myth continues to be widely held.

As Dr. Wendy Patrick explains, eye contact or its avoidance may be due to differing personalities or cultural backgrounds that determine one’s tendency to make eye contact. Just as she explained in last week’s blog, it is necessary to analyze a given individual’s level of eye contact against their personal baseline.

However, eye contact is still a helpful tool in correctly identifying deception. For example, one 2012 study found significant pupil changes in lying participants. In this study, researchers asked participants to steal small sums of money, while leaving other participants crime-free.

Then, each participant was asked to answer a series of questions about the theft, without letting the test examiner know if they were guilty. While they were filling out these questionnaires, cameras tracked pupil size, finding an increase in pupil diameter amongst the guilty parties. Upon concluding the study, the authors pointed out that such an increase was consistent with previous studies in deception.

Similarly, from the perspective of those detecting deception, a separate 2016 study found that focusing on eyes provided a very effective tool for lie detection. In this study, participants attempted to detect lies from both individuals with their faces covered by a hijab, leaving only the eyes revealed, and those without any form of veil.

Surprisingly, participants were more accurate in detecting deception amongst those with hijabs. This conclusion indicated that a focus on the eye alone significantly aided lie detection, as participants were forced to focus on the eyes, rather than being distracted by other facial features.

While focusing on the eyes may be an important tool for detecting deception, it is often hard for us to know exactly what gives away a lie. We certainly cannot measure pupil size with a ruler!

This requires specialized training, such as Humintell’s evaluating truthfulness workshop