Questioning Authority

The Conference Board Review^® Article

David Livingstone Smith is a liar. And he explains why you are too.

By Vadim Liberman

Dishonesty is pervasive. And that's often a good thing, because the world would collapse under the weight of too much honesty, says David Livingstone Smith, co-founder and director of the University of New England's Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology. "As a species, we are so well practiced in the art of deception that it comes to us almost as naturally and effortlessly as breathing," he writes. In fact, the best liars usually don't know they're lying, Smith points out.

Smith decided to seek the truth in Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind (St. Martin's). Yet despite his investigation into deceit, Smith still considers himself a bad liar. "I really dislike lying intentionally," he admits. "It makes me feel bad." Nonetheless, he confesses to lying in this interview.

Smith, 50, spoke from his Scarborough, Maine, home with Across the Board assistant editor Vadim Liberman about our tendency to deceive-and why Smith felt he had to lie.

You say that the forces of evolution have molded us into natural-born liars. Are people who are better liars more evolved than those who are more honest?

No, because when we speak of evolution, we are talking about a whole species, not individuals. But if we rephrase the question to ask, "Is it advantageous to be a good liar?" I'd say without a doubt, yes. People who deceive effectively get ahead in life. If I can cheat you to my advantage without you catching on, I've gotten ahead. Conscious lying is a very special talent, an aptitude. And most of us are very bad at it. Most people are also very bad at noticing lies. Only perhaps one in a thousand is extraordinarily skillful at detecting lies. In one study, for example, psychologists asked experienced law-enforcement officers, rookie cops, and college students to determine whether various individuals were lying or telling the truth. Not only were there no significant differences in the accuracy of the judgments of the three groups-all three guessed right at a frequency only minimally better than chance. They might as well have just flipped a coin.

Do you need to be a good liar to spot a good liar?

Not necessarily, but I would guess that good liars would have superior lie-detecting abilities. In fact, the next stage of evolution is the ability to detect lies. To do so, it's very important to observe someone's nonverbal action and not to be misled by his words, because words are cheap. What one should look at are changes in voice, little involuntary movements of hand and feet, or transitory facial expressions that are not congruent with the stated affect. For instance, when we're angry, we involuntarily tighten our lips, so a person who is ostensibly and overtly friendly, but whose lips are tightening, might be deceiving you. Or: In a genuine smile the eyes participate, whereas they don't in that phony have-a-nice-day smile.

How often does the average person lie?

First, it's important to point out that lying is normal, and more often spontaneous and unconscious than cynical and coldly analytical. Our minds and bodies secrete deceit. That said, Robert Feldman, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts, suggests that there are three lies for every ten minutes of conversation. I think that's plausible. And bear in mind that his research measured only the frequency of narrow, explicit, verbal lying. The real rate of deception, which includes our movements and expressions, must be considerably higher.

In that case, what have you lied to me about so far?

Right now I'm trying to sound as knowledgeable and impressive as I possibly can. I sort of convinced myself that I'm this great authority on lying. But really, I'm lying, in the sense that when we're interacting with others, we're always performing. So for this interview, I've been playing the role of an expert trying to impress you. There's deception involved. I, however, am aware of this effort. But plenty of people are not aware of their self-deception; they are narcissistic and have convinced themselves that they're the greatest thing since sliced bread. In fact, most people tend to believe their own lies.

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