Posted on 09/30/2005 11:05:52 PM PDT by DeweyCA
The brains of pathological liars have structural abnormalities that could make fibbing come naturally.
“Some people have an edge up on others in their ability to tell lies,” says Adrian Raine, a psychologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “They are better wired for the complex computations involved in sophisticated lies.”
He found that pathological liars have on average more white matter in their prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that is active during lying, and less grey matter than people who are not serial fibbers. White matter enables quick, complex thinking while grey matter mediates inhibitions.
Raine says the combination of extra white matter and less grey matter could be giving people exactly the right mix of traits to make them into good liars. These are the first biological differences to be discovered between pathological liars and the general population. Systematic manipulation
Other researchers have used brain imaging to show that the prefrontal cortex is more active when ordinary people tell lies. They are looking for ways to use this as an alternative to the polygraph test.
But pathological liars are a distinct group who systematically manipulate others, lie or use aliases for financial gain or personal pleasure, such as to get sickness benefits or to skip work. “It’s almost like a livelihood,” says Raine.
Until now no one has looked at the structure of the brains of this particular group, says psychologist Maureen O’Sullivan of the University of San Francisco in California, who specialises in lying and truthfulness.
Raine interviewed 108 volunteers from five temporary employment agencies in Los Angeles and set them standard psychopathic tests. This allowed him to identify 12 as pathological liars, 16 as people with a personality disorder but who did not exhibit pathological lying and 21 as controls, who were neither anti-social, nor liars. White matter
Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), he scanned the brains of all three groups and found that liars had 26% more white matter compared with anti-social, non-liars, and 22% more than the controls. Liars also had 14% less grey matter than the controls.
Responsible for information transmission, white matter is composed of nerve fibres or “axons” that connect nerve cells or neurons to each other. Raine believes that having more white matter makes people better at the complex process of lying, which involves manipulation, thinking ahead and multi-tasking.
“It’s a bit like being a mind reader. You have to think, ‘what does she know about the situation, what does she not know’,” he says. You also have to suppress anxious emotions and the automatic impulse to tell the truth. Austistic children, who find it very difficult to lie, develop white matter at a sixth the rate of ordinary children.
Grey matter mostly comprises the cell bodies of neurons, which process information. Previous studies have shown that people with less grey matter tend to break more rules and care less about moral transgressions, says Raine. Simple lies
“This is a very interesting study,” says O’Sullivan. But she warns that more data is needed. “We don’t know whether they are good liars, all we know is they lie a lot,” she explains.
Psychologist Bella DePaulo at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies deception, also found the study “intriguing” but points out that not all lies are more complex than truths, nor do they necessarily require more inhibition.
“People who know that their fabricated stories may be challenged will sometimes practise telling their false tales. After a while, the made-up story may come to mind more readily than the true one,” she says.
British Journal of Psychiatry (October 2005)
For children to grow up under the thumb of a psychopath or narcissist is unbelievably difficult. Some inherit the problem, others subconsciencely seek out the same type of person.
Got your mail. Thanks!
I hope that the kids had a taste of real life - that not everyone dominates others using cruelty, fear and anger.
The author's daughter has put it on the internet for academic and educational use for free!
The Mask of Sanity
I tried to provide that for them as a contrast, but apparently it is too late. There's still the 11 yr old, though.
Eeeek, it's 485 pages long! I bookmarked it, until I can buy more paper : )
Thank you very much for the link.
There are two women profiled as well. I just read the one about Anna again as a friend is in a relationship with someone like this.
And you never know what will happen later in life to the other ones. Knowing you did your best is sometimes the only solace.
I've heard about this book, and it's pretty shocking according to the poster. I most definitely want to read this.
Have they always been out there, but constrained by a society's rules that no longer exist? Or is our culture breeding them at a high rate of speed?
I've quit beating myself up about certain things.
The checklist that Bon Mots provided is excellent. I printed it out, and showed it to my bf. It describes his ex, my second oldest daughter's bf(didn't a checklist for him-he can't even pretend very well), and a couple of our past employers. All you can do is avoid contact.
The best books on the subject have been written by Dr. Robert Hare, the originator of the PCL-R checklist for identifying psychopaths. He is the world's leading expert on psychopaths.
Dr. Hare even consults with police departments. On one such consultation, the police were having trouble getting one psychopath to reveal all of his crimes. After consulting with Hare, he told them to get him to brag, so they went back to him and one of the cops said, "Ah, you ain't nuthin' compared to other serial killers like Gacey, etc..."
Whereupon, the pscyhopath then began bragging about his litany of previously unknown atrocities.
ROFL! Loved his storytelling.
The writers did an amazing job making him someone girls wanted to have sex with (the portugese waitress, the cleaning lady, the secretary). Of course, they were all his downfall in one way or another. :-)
Even wrote in a character that wanted to marry him, of all things! (Until he killed her with envelope glue).
I've heard of Cleckly and Hare. I didn't realize the book was written in 1941, though.
Yes, they love to brag. It's all about meeeee! I've also heard that if you denigrate them, they'll blow up all over the place and spill the beans. I think that might go more for narcissists. Sam Vaknin has a very good website, and one of the articles is, "How To Beat A Narcissist In Court".
Body and soul comprise an organic unity. When the the soul is deformed by the will with lies, it stands to reason that the body would be affected. The scientists have cause and effect reversed. It's impossible for simple matter to make a choice for evil, which is what a lie is.
John 8:44 (KJV)
“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”
Women can 'read' men much better and faster than the other way around.>>>>>>>>>
If this be true, why are so many women taken in by men who take every advantage possible?
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