Believe Me...Why Would I Lie to Me?

Biologically speaking, lying is a gift of a complex neural network that allows us as humans to manipulate those in our environments (sometimes including ourselves) to gain an advantage. Selection pressures, at times, even favor cheaters, as they are more readily able to secure resources (food, mates, status, etc.) if they are not caught.

So at least biologically, the reasons we lie may be clear. But clear to whom is the question?

It’s likely that most of us aren’t even aware that we are lying because often we lie to ourselves first.

Enter the subconscious.

Our subconscious mind is a machine that processes information and instructs behavior in powerful ways, often without any input from our conscious thought patterns. While we like to think of ourselves as infallibly rational beings that make logical decisions, almost nothing could be further from the truth. This belief is merely a justification made by our conscious minds. We are constantly justifying our behaviors and decisions that we are certain we consciously made for reasons other than what we did. We make up stories, and convince ourselves first.

The most easily accessible examples of this for us to process can be found in the research of “split-brained” patients, individuals whose brain hemispheres were surgically disconnected. In work done by neuropsychologist Michael Gazzaniga, a patient would have images displayed to his right eye, which confers information to the left hemisphere of the brain, and he could easily identify and verbalize what he saw.

Visual pathway in brain

Source: Miquel Perello Nieto /Wikipedia

However, because verbal response is strongly reliant on the left-brain hemisphere, when the same patient had images displayed to his left eye, he would verbalize that he saw nothing. And to him, this was the absolute truth. But fascinatingly, when further prompted to draw with his left hand, the patient would sketch accurate pictures of the stimuli with which he had just been presented. So, verbally he would admit that he had seen nothing, when in fact, his right brain hemisphere would be able to communicate honestly what it had seen through a non-verbal medium. When further questioned by researchers about why he was drawing the particular objects he was, the patient again would answer “truthfully” that he had no idea.

How often do we consciously verbalize a truth that just isn’t so? It is likely impossible to know, given that we might interpret our words as objective truths, just as this patient had.

In another classic example of confabulation, a patient was cued to walk when the word was presented to his right hemisphere. He responded by getting up and beginning to execute the command. When the researcher asked what he was doing, he answered (now from his verbal left brain) that he was getting a Coke. His left brain concocted a story to justify the behavior that his right brain had be cued to execute. There was no conscious effort to deceive the researcher. The patient truly believed he was walking to get a Coke, even though in a different part of his brain, he knew the “truth.”

I would posit, boldly perhaps, that while we humans are certainly capable of Machiavellian, intentional, and conscious deceit, we would be fooling ourselves to believe that we are consciously controlling any majority of our truths. Even these conscious lies we tell are likely the output of subconscious programs that direct us in ways that have proven successful over millions of years of evolution.

In the news recently there has been a political uproar around a story in which both sides swear they are telling the truth. And consciously they may actually both believe they are, despite the fact that one side is obviously less comfortable with the truth being exposed. We tell stories about ourselves to justify our behavior and mistreatment of others, valuing our own needs above those of anyone else’s. And, we should. At least from a biological standpoint. When a lie stands between us and a huge reward (status, etc.) we are quick to see others as objects, far less important than the goals and objectives we aim to achieve. Our evolved mind insists upon it.

To move beyond self-deceit, we have to consciously choose to guard against our own justifications by empathizing deeply with others, seeing them as equal beings with equal needs desires and motivations, and hearing their truths about ourselves with an openness that will defy our defensive brains.

Or perhaps, that’s just the story I’m telling myself.