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Why We Lie Essay

732 Words3 Pages

Honesty might be the best policy, but according to scientific discovery, honesty may not be the only policy our brains are wired to abide by. Yudhijit Bhattacharjee’s article explored the neurological behavior behind lying an in attempt to figure out not only why humans lie, but also why we do not lie more. Throughout the article, Bhattacharjee develops his idea that lying is imbedded in us with supporting experiments done by other scientists and interesting anecdotes from different famous liars. The initial story immediately caught my eye. In the heat of filling out college essays and feeling overwhelmed by the lack of extracurriculars I have, I’ve stumbled into conversations with my peers wondering how college admissions officers actually …show more content…

A human’s natural tendency towards small lies for various reasons paired with a human’s natural tendency to trust in people is an idea teeming with irony. When I think about it, lying is not a characteristic that is taught to us in our developmental stages at home or in school, yet everyone lies. It is an innate behavior, but why? Scientist have been experimenting to figure out the answer to this question for years. My favorite theory goes back to evolution and relates to ideas in Survival of the Sickest. Lying is a non-physical form of manipulation. It is a more efficient way to get what a person needs to survive. The game of life abides by one rule: it is the survival of the fittest. It’s not hard to imagine how lying to manipulate other people into giving you the best medical care, the best food and water choices, or better living conditions would help the “fittest” (the best manipulators or liars) survive. The part that is still unknown is the wiring of the brain. Does the brain already have the extra fibers in the prefrontal cortex that show up in the brain scans of habitual liars, or do the extra connections come as a result of the habitual lying? I’d to see an experiment where a brain scan was done at each developmental stage of someone from newborn to adulthood. Scientists could compare the growth of the fibers in the cortex to the frequency of lying to determine which appears first: the habit of deception or the greater connectivity within their

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