Psychologists Examine the Science of Lying: The Type of Lie Matters

Lying can be an art, but it's also a science. Researchers have taken a closer look at what happens to a person when they tell a lie and have found out exactly what occurs in an individual's brain. Yet exactly what happens doesn't just depend on lying in general--it depends on what type of lie the person tells.

There are, in general, two types of lies. There are false descriptions and false denials. While false descriptions are deliberate flights of the imagination that we invent for something didn't happen, false denials are brief lies that actually deny something that happened. False descriptions, surprisingly, are far more easily remembered.

"If I'm going to lie about you about something that didn't happen, I'm going to have to keep a lot of different constraints in mind," said Sean Lane, one of the researchers, in a news release. "As the constructive process lays down records of our details and descriptions, it also lays down information about the process of construction."

The researchers examined participants who told a series of lies. False descriptions were remembered better precisely because they required more effort. In fact, the liars could accurately recall their own false descriptions about 48 hours after telling them. False denials, though, were another matter.

"I'm not constructing details," said Lane. "But I'm also not going to remember the act because there's not much cognitively involved in the denial."

In fact, the liars had a hard time remembering their own false denials after 48 hours. Because the denial is relatively straight forward and requires little mental effort, it is also not remembered as well. Yet there are also implications for innocent suspects. The subjects had a hard time remembering if the denials they made were true or false.

"They're telling the truth, they're denying, but later this thing seems familiar," said Lane. "They're confusing the familiarity of the repetition [with the truth], not realizing that those repeated denials are what makes it seem familiar 48 hours later."

This means that telling the truth can actually lead to a false memory. For example, a man who repeatedly denies being at the scene of the crime might actually begin to imagine that scene, even if he was never there. This means that the scene could begin to feel strangely familiar to him.

The findings could have major implications for how suspects are questioned during investigations. False memory is a well-documented phenomenon, and this study offers more insight into this bizarre behavior.

The findings are published in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition.