Lying Takes Brain Down ‘Slippery Slope’

Telling small lies desensitizes our brains to the associated negative emotions and may encourage us to tell bigger lies in future, reveals new research.

Researchers have shown that self-serving lies gradually escalate, and they have revealed how this happens in our brains.

Telling small lies desensitizes our brains to the associated negative emotions and may encourage us to tell bigger lies in future, reveals new UCL research funded by Wellcome (the world’s largest medical research charity funding research in human and animal health) and the Center for Advanced Hindsight that studies, designs, tests and implements behavioral interventions to help people be happier and healthier.

The research, published in Nature Neuroscience, provides the first empirical evidence that self-serving lies gradually escalate and reveals how this happens in our brains, Science Daily reported.

The team scanned volunteers’ brains while they took part in tasks where they could lie for personal gain. They found that the amygdala, a part of the brain associated with emotion, was most active when people first lied for personal gain. The amygdala’s response to lying declined with every lie while the magnitude of the lies escalated. Crucially, the researchers found that larger drops in amygdala activity predicted bigger lies in future.

“When we lie for personal gain, our amygdala produces a negative feeling that limits the extent to which we are prepared to lie,” explains senior author Dr Tali Sharot (UCL Experimental Psychology). “However, this response fades as we continue to lie, and the more it falls, the bigger our lies become. This may lead to a ‘slippery slope’ where small acts of dishonesty escalate into more significant lies.” The study included 80 volunteers.

“It is likely the brain’s blunted response to repeated acts of dishonesty reflects a reduced emotional response to these acts,” says lead author Dr Neil Garrett (UCL Experimental Psychology). “This is in line with suggestions that our amygdala signals aversion to acts that we consider wrong or immoral. We only tested dishonesty, but the same principle may also apply to escalations in other actions such as risk taking or violent behavior.”