Liars will lie

We all lie, and if you say that you don’t, that is definitely a lie. Lies are not only statements we know to be untrue that harm others, but mostly untrue statements that we make in order not to harm other people. White lies. But when it comes to ‘black lies’ that provide us with an advantage at the expense of other people the question remains whether people are born liars or whether circumstances make us tell lies.

There are clearly circumstances that can turn honest people into liars, but Diogo Coraldes and his colleagues ran a series of experiments that indicate that circumstances are less important than many people may think. The experiments used the typical setup to measure how honest people are: They are allowed to roll a die and report the number they rolled. This number is not checked by the other party and a higher number provides a higher payoff. Because a fair die comes up with a number between 1 and 6 with equal probability, the people in these experiments should report each of the six numbers with equal probability. Alas, what they really report looks like the chart below.

Reported results of a die thrown without checking

Source: Coraldes et al. (2022)

The different experiments tried to measure if people who are luckier or have higher income lie more often than people with lower income or less luck. Similarly, they tested if people who feel like they can actively influence their income lie more or less often than people who face an uncertain outcome. I won’t go into the details of the experiments because the results were negative throughout. There was no difference in the propensity to lie between people who have higher or lower income, who have agency over their income or not or people who have been luckier or not. In other words, the authors conclude that the popular saying ‘liar will be lairs’ holds true. Some people are just more likely to lie than others and a compulsive liar will always lie, no matter the circumstances.

And that is something that people should be aware of, whether you appoint a new CEO, elect a President or vote for a Prime Minister.