Synchronicity

• Republican Representative George Santos allegedly lied in many ways, including to donors through a third party in order to misuse the funds raised.
• Another is the medium used to convey the alleged lie: on a bureaucratic form, through intermediaries and via social media.
• Differences like these lead researchers like me to wonder what factors influence the telling of lies.

Figuring out the frequency of lies

• The classic study on lying frequency was conducted by psychologist Bella DePaulo in the mid-1990s.
• The community members averaged one lie per day, while the students averaged two lies per day.
• It could be that each person in the group tells one or two lies per day.
• Participants reported 1,646 lies in total, but half of them came from just 5.3% of the participants.

Does the medium make a difference?

• What if you don’t just consider face-to-face interactions, but introduce some distance by communicating via text, email or the phone?
• Research suggests the medium doesn’t matter much.
• For the rest of the group, the vast majority said that 10% or fewer of their texts contained lies.
• 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.

Does the audience change things?

• In addition to the medium, does the intended receiver of a potential lie make any difference?
• In her classic work, DePaulo found that people tend to tell what she called “everyday lies” more often to strangers than family members.
• Other data also finds participants tell more lies to friends and family members than to strangers.

Investigating the truth about lies

• 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.

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.