⁣"Lying is a form of communication that involves two parties: the deceiver and the deceived. The deceiver intends to communicate false impressions or information. The deceived, however, must participate in the lie—at least on some level. This is either by virtue of learned apathy, ignorance, bias, or overconfidence (barring mental infirmity, of course).

Human beings are gullible for a number of reasons, including a general tendency to believe others are telling the truth and to be cognitively overwhelmed, and then irrationally convinced, by emotional arguments and displays. Consequently, allegations of crime laden with heavy emotion are more likely to believed (irrespective of the facts and evidence)—given the prevalence of Truth Bias and the Affect Heuristic, especially in the presence of other factors that tend to increase overall gullibility.

Lies generally manifest as one of the following constructs of dishonesty: Complete Deception; Half-Truths; Exaggerations; and Pertinent Omissions. Lies are told for one of two reasons: either the deceptive person believes they have more to gain from lying than from telling the truth; or the deceptive person is incapable of discerning what the truth is, either temporarily or owing to some permanent mental defect. Lies may be divided into two distinct motivational categories: prosocial lies that are constructed to benefit others; and antisocial lies that are selfish.

There is no technique or piece of technology that is capable of reliably determining whether someone is telling a lie. The scientific research demonstrates that most people do not detect lies with much greater accuracy than they would than chance (e.g., a coin toss); and the so-called “experts” in deception detection fair only slightly better. Pseudoscientific techniques of deception detection persist because they are subjective and open to interpretation. Subjective interpretations mean that analysts can shape the character of results in favor of prevailing political winds or to favor any preferred narrative."-Chapter 2 - The Psychology of Lying
Author links open overlay panelAurelio CoronadoMares1Brent E.Turvey2



(Thumbnail)-Source 1: https://youtu.be/bOHGMWn6Qus
Donald Trump interview 2 days after 9 11 at ground zero YouTube 360p; Der Lügendedektor - Polygraph; YouTube; Date posted: September 26, 2017; Date of website access: December 24, 2020.