Sometimes, we don't really praise others, so why do we tell these lies?
If you want to understand lying, you must first understand cheating.
Deception is an instinct that creatures have evolved to survive. For example, when hunting in ancient times, humans would use the environment to hide themselves and try not to make a sound, giving their prey the illusion that there is no danger. This is the earliest deception of mankind.
Later, people invented language, which is the origin of lying. Therefore, deception may be the use of tone, facial expressions or props, while lying is the use of language to fabricate something that does not exist.
For example, Jerry Andrews, an American magician, has an important principle all his life: never lie when performing magic. Although, like other magicians, he does magic by cheating, when he performs, he only uses the blindfold, does not tell lies, and even reminds the audience where the blindfold may be, which makes his performance very interesting and makes the audience feel more magical.
Crazy container
To understand the act of lying, we should also understand its subjectivity.
Simple explanation, that is, if the speaker thinks he is telling the truth, even if he is wrong, it doesn't mean he is lying; But if he pretends to be true when he knows he is wrong, he is lying. Therefore, actors, talk shows and novelists are not lying or cheating, because there are already rules that everyone knows.
For example, the famous actor Marlon Brando once filmed a video about performance teaching. In this video, Brando taught his acting skills to young Leonardo and Sean Penn, and said to them, "You should learn to deceive the audience and make them believe everything you do and act like a lie." Indeed, the better the actor, the more he will deceive the audience and even make the audience feel that this is not a performance. Actors are such people.
Marlon Brando's "Godfather" Stills
But lying is not necessarily saying the wrong thing or telling a lie, but trying to deceive. Maybe what you said is not a lie, or maybe you are lying.
For example, in the middle of19th century, an American museum held an exhibition about the circus. The exhibition is very popular, but it also brings trouble. The audience will stay in front of each exhibit for a long time, which makes the museum very crowded and makes the tickets sold every day particularly limited.
So the curator decided to find a way to solve this problem. He just changed the words on the exit sign, and the tickets sold were greatly improved. This is because the word he replaced is a pun, which means export in English, implying some strange creature. Naive audience thought there was a better exhibition ahead, but they were misled out of the museum. Therefore, lying is very special. Sometimes we lie, but we don't. Sometimes we are telling the truth, but we are deceiving others.
Animals can gain benefits by cheating. This is because by cheating, animals can predict and control the behavior of other animals, and the chances of survival will be greater. In other words, whoever is good at cheating will have the advantage of reproduction.
For example, cuckoos don't build nests or hatch to feed young birds. During the breeding season, they will lay eggs in other birds' nests. Once the little cuckoo is born, it will instinctively push other people's chicks out of the nest and pretend to be other people's chicks. This is how cuckoo feeds its offspring through other birds.
There is also a mimetic octopus off Bali, Indonesia, similar to the chameleon in Octopus. It can be disguised as at least 15 different marine life, just to deceive prey or avoid natural enemies.
Mimictic octopus
After talking about animal deception, let's talk about human beings.
Humans are much more complicated than other species. The necessary condition for our survival has changed from ancient food to money, and our threat has changed from a big beast to unemployment. When the problem to be solved becomes complicated, the most convenient and quick way is to lie.
For example, in order to get a job, we will exaggerate our abilities and even lie on our resumes. As long as our lies are not exposed, a few simple words will make it easier to get the results we want.
For example, an 8-year-old child accidentally broke his sister's favorite music box. For fear of punishment, he would say it was the cat at home.
Children's lies are usually selfish and simple, just to escape punishment quickly. Adults often lie for immediate gain.
Give another example. From 65438 to 0998, a young German scientist named Schon joined Bell Laboratories, which is the oldest heavyweight laboratory in the world.
In the past three years, Schon has published more than 65,438+000 papers in world-renowned academic journals such as Science and Nature. You know, it is usually very productive for a scientist to publish one or two important papers a year. Therefore, Schon's achievement is amazing, and he is even called "Einstein II".
In 2002, Schon became a hot topic again, but this time it was because of the scandal. Physics professors at Princeton University and Cornell University found him falsifying data, which is simply academic fraud. This scientific genius became the most notorious forger in history.
Not only to others, people sometimes lie to themselves.
People will be influenced by the environment and deceive themselves involuntarily. This view was put forward by Freud, who thought that some of our behaviors would be influenced by special environment, so that we didn't know what we were doing.
For example, two scientists in Sweden did a very interesting experiment. They asked a young female assistant to approach young men in the park with a questionnaire and asked them to fill out the questionnaire.
In fact, the content of the questionnaire is not important. What's important is that the female assistant left her phone number to them after they filled it out, on the grounds that it was convenient for a return visit. The researchers want to count the results: how many people will call her afterwards and ask her out.
Later, the researchers changed the location of the investigation, this time on a suspension bridge in an artificial canyon, and the same female assistant invited young men passing by to participate in the investigation. As a result, 65% of the men on the drawbridge called to make an appointment for a female assistant, while only 30% of the men in the park called.
This is because when a man meets a female assistant on the suspension bridge, he needs to keep his posture stable while answering the female assistant's questions because of the shaking of the suspension bridge. This environment will make the brain use extra enthusiasm, making their hearts beat faster, sweating and shortness of breath. They subconsciously attribute these reactions to "female assistants are so attractive". In fact, because of the different geographical location, they misjudged the charm of female assistants, and they themselves did not realize this influence.
People will lie because they seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, and they will also deceive themselves because of the influence of the environment. After being hurt, you will also deceive yourself because of the body's self-protection. At this time, people will be driven by the subconscious, have a protective reaction to the pressure, and find a reasonable excuse for themselves to get rid of it.
We have all heard of Stockholm syndrome, which refers to a strange complex, in which the victims have feelings for criminals and in turn help them.
Stockholm
1973, two gangsters robbed the largest bank in Stockholm. After a stalemate with the police 130 hours, the gangsters gave up their resistance and surrendered. However, a few months after the incident, four bank employees who were taken hostage at that time showed mercy to the kidnappers in court. They refused to accuse the kidnappers in court and even raised money for their legal defense. They all said they didn't hate gangsters and even thanked the kidnappers for not hurting them. More unexpectedly, one of the female employees fell in love with one of the kidnappers and got engaged to the kidnapper who was still serving his sentence.
In the case just mentioned, we lied for ourselves. But sometimes, we lie for others. For example, doctors will lie to patients, but their purpose is not to cheat, but to consider for patients and reduce the mental burden of each other, which is what we often call "white lies."
In the TV series "Emergency Doctor". A man believed that there was a cat in his stomach. He said that the cat was eating his intestines and it was very painful. The doctor certainly didn't believe him, but he couldn't get rid of his illness. So the doctor pretended to operate on him and took out a white cat from his stomach, and he recovered.
Emergency doctor stills
In fact, it is very common for doctors to deceive patients in good faith. According to the survey of Oregon Health Science University, about 35% ~ 45% of the prescriptions prescribed by doctors are placebos. What is a placebo? In other words, doctors choose a small amount of effective ingredients when formulating. They can make patients feel excited, but they will not directly affect the pain.
In 2003, a survey of 800 clinics in Denmark found that half of them used placebo at least 10 times a year.
David smith, an evolutionary psychologist, said: "In the world of liars, whoever has a polygraph has an advantage." Identifying liars is far from as easy as we thought, and skilled liars are even more difficult to expose.
There are mainly two schools of theory that tell us how to identify lies: one is to lock in the liar's facial expression; Another school thinks that the clue lies in the liar's language.
Let's talk about our expressionist theory first. No matter how clever a liar is, it is impossible to be exactly the same in subtle facial expressions as when telling the truth.
An example that we have quoted countless times, psychologist Paul ekman was entrusted by a psychologist in a hospital in California at 1967 to help doctors identify whether a suicidal patient was lying. The patient's name is Mary. She committed suicide three times. The first two times were not too serious, but the third time was very dangerous. She was sent to the hospital in time to save her life.
After three weeks of observation in the hospital, she looked happier, said that she would not commit suicide again, and proposed to go home and spend the weekend with her family. After interviewing Mary, the doctor carefully measured her current mental state and finally agreed to her request. Soon after, however, Mary proved that the real reason for leaving the hospital was suicide at home.
Ekman looked at Mary's pre-hospital videos frame by frame, and finally found the clue that she cheated the doctor: when the doctor asked Mary what her future plans were, a disappointed expression flashed on her face.
This expression betrayed her true inner thoughts, and I'm afraid even she didn't know that such an expression had ever appeared. Ekman believes that human expressions are hard to disguise and almost impossible to hide.
On the other hand, people who pay attention to language believe that lying needs the cooperation of cognition, emotion and social skills, and only by adding the burden of thinking to liars can they reveal flaws in language.
For example, the best way to expose lies is to let liars talk more, not less. Because lying takes time. Liars must come up with convincing answers when asked questions, not only to avoid contradictions, but also to avoid slips of the tongue. With so many tasks, it is still very difficult to control your body language. When we increase the cognitive load of swindlers, they will lose control and expose clues.
A professor at Portsmouth University has done a famous "sketch test". In the experiment, 365,438+0 policemen were assigned to participate in the same task, that is, to find an agent to connect and then come back to describe the connection scene. The agent put forward different requirements for the police. Half of the policemen were asked to tell the truth, and the other half were asked to keep it secret, that is, to cheat.
The professor found in the experimental results that liars will refer to other places they have been to, enrich the picture with various details as much as possible, and deliberately reduce the description of the agent; People who tell the truth tend to describe agents more, because in their minds, agents are the center of the scene. This experiment tells us that people who tell the truth often don't need so many details to prove themselves, but people who tell lies will deliberately make up many details to make the lies more true.
In addition to judging whether a person is lying by his facial expressions and language loopholes, we can also use a method to observe whether he is consistent with his usual words and deeds. If the other person behaves abnormally, it is often a clue to lie. For example, if your colleague shows you an item, she says she bought it herself, but it was actually given by someone else. After a while, you can suddenly ask her, hey, who sent that item? She will tell the truth or hesitate because she is not ready to lie.
Many polygraph experts use this method. They will test the normal response of the subjects in advance, record a series of parameters, and then ask a series of questions to see if these parameters fluctuate obviously, as a basis for judgment.
Of course, knowing the act of lying and knowing how to distinguish lies does not mean that we should doubt others everywhere. In fact, when it comes to doubt and trust, unlike our inherent cognition, people who always doubt others are more likely to be deceived than those who are willing to trust others.
Two psychologists from the University of Toronto did an experiment. They found a group of subjects. Before they participate in the experiment, they are standardized to judge whether they are high trusters or low trusters. People with high trust are easy to trust others, while people with low trust are not easy to trust others.
Next, they called another group of students for a mock interview, asking some of them to tell the truth, while others lied on several key issues. Finally, they let the subjects watch the videos of these students and asked them to find out who lied in the interview.
The results show that the performance of high trusters is far better than that of low trusters. Why? This is because people who tend to trust others seem to be easily deceived. This is because they tend to participate in more extensive social contacts and have higher risks. In this kind of communication, there will inevitably be deceived places, but it will also exercise your ability to judge other people's lies.
People who don't want to trust others are only willing to associate with familiar circles, which leads to less opportunities for them to associate with others, so they will lack opportunities to gain insight into other people's intentions and motives.