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Learning to lie comes easy to psychopaths

"The stark contrast between individuals with high and low levels of psychopathic traits in lying performance following two training sessions is remarkable," said lead researcher Dr. Tatia Lee.

By Brooks Hays
New research suggests people with psychopathic traits aren't innately better liars but are better at learning to lie. Photo by geralt/Pixabay
New research suggests people with psychopathic traits aren't innately better liars but are better at learning to lie. Photo by geralt/Pixabay

July 25 (UPI) -- New research suggests people with psychopathic traits aren't innately better liars but are better at learning to lie.

Psychologists at the University of Hong Kong had study participants give a series truth and untruthful answers about whether or not they recognized subjects in a collection of photographs. Cues alerted participants whether or not to respond truthfully or untruthfully to each photograph.

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Participants performed each test twice. In between, the volunteers were trained on how to lie more effectively. How quickly study participants gave an untruthful answer when prompted served as proxy for a participant's ability to lie.

Researchers found only those who revealed evidence of psychopathic tendencies in pre-study personal tests showed significant improvements in their ability to lie. When prompted to give an untruthful answer, their response times were significantly faster after undergoing training.

In other words, psychopaths -- or people with psychopathic personality traits -- were better at learning to lie.

"The stark contrast between individuals with high and low levels of psychopathic traits in lying performance following two training sessions is remarkable, given that there were no significant differences in lying performance between the two groups prior to training," Dr. Tatia Lee, a cognitive scientist at UHK, said in a news release.

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Lee and her colleagues published their findings this week in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

Researchers believe the differences in deceitfulness could be explained by how brains process untruthful information. When someone lies, their brain has to suppress and reverse the truthful information.

"Thus, lying requires a series of processes in the brain including attention, working memory, inhibitory control and conflict resolution which we found to be reduced in individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits," Lee said.

Those with low-levels of psychopathic traits had to work extra hard to suppress truthful information.

"The additional 'effort' it took their brains to process untruthful responses may be one of the reasons why they didn't improve their lying speed," Lee said.

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