Psychopaths
are better at learning to lie, say researchers
BioMed Central
Individuals with high
levels of psychopathic traits are better at learning to lie than individuals
who show few psychopathic traits, according to a study published in the open
access journal Translational Psychiatry.
The findings indicate
that people with high psychopathic traits may not have a 'natural' capacity to
lie better, but rather are better at learning how to lie, according to the
researchers.
Dr. Tatia Lee and Dr.
Robin Shao of the State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the
Laboratory of Neuropsychology at The University of Hong Kong found that after
practicing a task that involved giving a series of truthful or untruthful
responses about whether or not they recognized people in a collection of
photographs, individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits were able to
lie much more quickly than before practice.
By contrast, individuals with low levels of psychopathic traits showed no improvement in their lying speed.
Dr Tatia Lee, the
corresponding authors said: "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 Shao added:
"High psychopathy is characterized by untruthfulness and manipulativeness
but the evidence so far was not clear on whether high-psychopathic individuals
in the general population tend to lie more or better than others. Our findings
provide evidence that people with high psychopathic traits might just be better
at learning how to lie."
To find out if
individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits were better at learning how
to lie than others, the researchers recruited 52 students from The University
of Hong Kong -- 23 who showed low levels of psychopathic traits and 29 who
showed high levels of psychopathic traits based on a questionnaire that can be
used to assess psychopathy in a non-clinical setting.
Students in both
groups were shown a series of photographs of familiar and unfamiliar faces.
They received a cue to give either an honest or a dishonest response when asked
whether they knew the person in the photograph or not.
The researchers
measured the students' reaction times for each response and observed their
brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging methodology (fMRI).
Participants then completed a two-session training exercise before repeating
the task.
The researchers found
that following the training exercise, individuals with high levels of
psychopathic traits had significantly shorter response times when being
prompted to lie than during the initial task.
Individuals with low
levels of psychopathic traits showed no changes in response time.
The difference may be
due to how the brains of individuals with high and low levels of psychopathic traits
process lies.
Dr Lee said:
"During lying, the 'true' information needs to be suppressed and reversed.
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. By contrast, in
individuals with low levels of psychopathic traits this lie-related brain
activity increased. 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."
The researchers
caution that as all participants in this study were university students,
further research is needed to be able to generalize the findings to individuals
with high levels of psychopathic traits in other populations.