Is lying harmful? Be an honest Pinocchio!

I believe everyone has heard of the fairy tale of Pinocchio. The most profound impression it leaves on us should be the allusion that the nose will grow longer if you lie. I guess many readers, like me, have had the habit of touching the tip of their nose unconsciously when they lied in their childhood. Although the phenomenon of "longer nose" does not really happen in real life, psychologists have indeed found that frequent lying can actually affect our physical and mental health.

You tell more lies than you think:

One of the most basic things we learn in childhood is to be an honest child and not to lie to others. However, almost no one can really do this. Robert Feldman, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts, conducted a study on lies in 2002. He found that 60% of the people in the experiment lied at least once in a 10-minute conversation. According to statistics, people lie at least 4 times a day on average, and a total of 1,460 times a year. Although these data are relatively general, they also prove the fact that we are not as honest as we think.

What are the motivations for people to lie in their daily lives?

The tendency to lie is deeply rooted in human evolution. Anthropologists have observed that other primates also understand the concept of deception. Primatologist Frans de Waal mentioned an interesting example. In the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands, a chimpanzee named Yeroen deliberately limped in front of his rival, another chimpanzee named Nikkie, to gain sympathy and gain an advantage in the competition for food. For humans, as early as between the ages of two and five, we have mastered this deception technique to obtain much-needed survival resources and obtain the meticulous care of our parents. It is regarded as an important milestone in our cognitive development.

Of course, there are many kinds of lies, and their classification depends on the liar's motivation for lying. Some motivations are insignificant, some are well-intentioned, but some have the ability to bring devastating consequences. In a 2022 study, the experimenters collected a questionnaire on the motivation for lying from 157 participants with an average age of 40. Among them, the main sources of motivation for people to lie include: avoiding negative evaluation, avoiding punishment, self-expression, getting rewards, compulsive lying, careless slips of the tongue, love of deception, maintaining personal mystery, protective lies, pleasing others, and protecting others (altruism).

Does lying often affect our health?

The answer may surprise you. Indeed, lying frequently does have a negative impact on health. As social animals, our personal reputation has irreplaceable significance in the group. Most people are willing to pay any price to maintain a trustworthy and upright image. After all, in today's social environment where information flows extremely quickly, no one wants to be the next victim of social death. However, in life, we have many people and things that need to be dealt with with lies, which creates a psychological contradiction. Everyone knows that being exposed as a lie will cause irreparable damage to one's reputation. Therefore, when lying, ordinary people will be in a state of high alert, and this pressure will increase with the importance of the lie. It will change our current physiological reactions, such as sweating, dry mouth, trembling voice, faster breathing and heart rate, etc.

In brain imaging studies, scientists have found that the reason why people have these physiological reactions and emotional reactions such as anxiety is not because we are condemned by our conscience, but because lying activates the brain's limbic system, which triggers the "fight or flight" response under stress. When people tell the truth, the activity of the brain's limbic system is at a minimum. Therefore, telling the truth more often makes us feel relaxed and comfortable, while lying makes our brains feel more stressed. This uneasy feeling after lying is what we often refer to as "the condemnation from conscience" in common sayings.

According to a 2015 study, frequent lying can cause additional cardiovascular burden, including high blood pressure, increased heart rate, vasoconstriction, and increased stress hormones in the blood. In addition, lying can also increase the risk of cancer, obesity, anxiety, depression, low job satisfaction, and poor interpersonal relationships.

People who love to lie are more likely to fall into the whirlpool of life:

A study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience in 2016 found that when our brains gradually adapt to deception and develop the habit of lying, the physiological and psychological effects mentioned above will gradually weaken, which is why some people can lie without blushing or beating their hearts. But please don't be too happy too soon, as studies have shown that the more people like to conceal and lie in their daily lives, the more likely they are to fall into some scams in society, such as telecommunications fraud and pyramid schemes, and they are also more likely to participate in activities that may put themselves in desperate situations, such as gambling, drug abuse, robbery and other criminal acts.

Conclusion

In fact, most people are terrible at lying. Awkward body language, unnatural smiles, distorted facial expressions, and unconvincing logic all show the liar's inner anxiety and panic to the outside world. It is difficult for such people to have close friends, and it is even more difficult for them to gain positive energy from social interactions in daily communication, because they always think about the question: "Is the person opposite me also not telling the truth to me?"

One lie needs a hundred lies to make up for it, and a perfect "Pinocchio" needs an honest Pinocchio to complete it . Therefore, please try to be honest with others in your daily life. This is not only to protect those we love around us, but also the best way to help ourselves get rid of the troubles brought by the limbic system (conscience) of the brain.