The psychology of lying and pathological liars

Why do pathological liars lie? What's the motivation? What’s the difference between pathological liars and compulsive liars? 

“There's a variety of motivations. In fact, most people who are pathological liars would say they don't know why they lied,” explains Dr. Drew Curtis, professor of psychology at Angelo State Universit in Texas, the United States. Dr. Curtis’ background is in clinical counseling psychology and he specializes in the field of deception and pathological lying.

“Some people do lie for impression management, people lie for gain, people lie to get attention,” he explains. 

The terms ‘compulsive’ lying and ‘pathological’ lying are largely interchangeable, Curtis says, and it’s also been called mythomania, habitual lying, and morbid lying, among other things in the past.

In the psychologist’s view, one of the reasons why the pathology isn’t recognized by the World Health Organization or the American Psychiatric Association is because it's been called different things and not really been unified. Part of his work has been to unify this language and define the pathology. 

“People who are pathological liars do have aspects of compulsive behavior, in the sense that they will express some anxiety in the moment, and indicate that they lie in response to that anxiety in the social situation, and in the moment the lie reduces that anxiety,” Curtis says.

The behavior “has some features of compulsivity to it, which is probably why it got the name of ‘compulsive liar’,” he supposes.

Lack of executive functioning

Everyone is familiar with the fable of the boy who cried wolf. After repeatedly warning his local villagers of an approaching wolf bringing danger, despite there being no such wolf, the tables are turned to the detriment of everybody one day the boy cries wolf and is not believed by the villagers when there is, in fact, a wolf approaching. 

Dr. Curtis offers this story as an example, most people can understand that the consequences of our actions may not be as good as getting immediate attention, “so we're kind of predicting the future using executive functioning,” he says.

With this executive functioning, we understand that the consequences are going to be worse, and there are better ways of getting the attention we seek. 

Some of the work Curtis has done with Dr. Victoria Talwar and Dr. Chris Hart recently has found that adolescent teenagers and pathological liars lack this executive functioning. “So they're lying without regard to the future consequences, So it's more of this immediate gain.”

Yet, according to his research, pathological liars will tend to admit their lies if pushed on the question, and often even feel remorse for what they’ve done. 

Press play below to listen to the interview with Dr. Curtis on Filling the Sink or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or Spotify.

Psycopathy

Curtis points out that there is a difference between people who tell lots of lies and another pathology called psychopathy, or antisocial personality disorder. 

Psychopathy is where people lie with intent to cause harm, which is not pathological lying or people lie without remorse.

“Sometimes we think about pathological liars as cold, calculated, manipulative. What that image is, is probably more akin to what we associate with psychopathy.”

With psychopathy, there is generally a lack of remorse on behalf of the person lying. 

“My research has found pathological liars tend to show remorse. And even within themselves, they’ll feel some relief in the moment of lying. And then minutes, hours, even days later, they ruminate, asking themselves, ‘why did I why did I lie about something so trivial, something so inconsequential?’ And then they feel guilt afterwards about that.”

On the other hand, this is not generally the case with psychopathy, people in this category often don’t show remorse or guilt. 

Human disconnect: lying vs being ‘a liar’

Curtis has been struck in his findings about the disconnect that humans feel between telling lies themselves and ‘being a liar.’

The psychologist has found that people generally don’t think of themselves as liars, even if they lie. 

People will reason that they lied for a good cause, for a noble good, or even to spare the other person’s feelings. But with the situations reversed, people would be quicker to brandish others ‘a liar’ if their feelings were hurt.

“Everything we do is rooted in some good, but others may do bad things because they're horrible people, instead of understanding.”