London, Oct 25: Telling self–serving lies may gradually lead people
to a bigger one and filly push them down a slippery slope where their
brains may start to adapt to the dishonesty, making deceit look much
easier, an interesting study has revealed. The findings showed that
telling small lies desensitises our brains to the associated negative
emotions and may encourage us to tell bigger lies in future. Further,
amygdala — a part of the brain associated with emotion — was found to be
most active when people first lied for their persol gain.
The amygdala’s response to lying declined with every lie while the
magnitude of the lies escalated. Larger drops in amygdala activity
predicted bigger lies in future, the researchers said.
“When we lie for persol gain, our amygdala produces a negative
feeling that limits the extent to which we are prepared to lie,” said
Tali Sharot from University College London (UCL). “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,” Sharot observed.
For the study, the team included 80 volunteers who took part in a
team estimation task that involved guessing the number of pennies in a
jar and sending their estimates to unseen partners using a computer.
Participants were told that aiming for the most accurate estimate
would benefit them and their partner and over–estimating the amount
would benefit the volunteer at their partner’s expense.
The results revealed that people started by slightly exaggerating
their estimates which elicited strong amygdala responses. Their
exaggerations escalated as the experiment went on while their amygdala
responses declined.
The researchers only tested dishonesty in this experiment, but the
same principle may also apply to escalations in other actions such as
risk taking or violent behaviour, they stated, in the study. (IANS)