I was 8 when I first encountered someone who lied for no discernible motive. She went to the same school as I did and we spent an hour a day together, as the school bus jolted us home. She was given to telling me somewhat fantastic tales of her life and I became increasingly suspicious of her stories. One day, she told me that her (Indian) grandparents resided in Hiroshima when the nuclear bomb was dropped. “Oh, really?” I said, somewhat incredulously. “Yes, and I lived with them at the time,” she said, fired up by my interest. Even my 8-year-old brain was able to compute the mathematical impossibility of this.
Why do people lie?
Since then, I have encountered people who lie for a number of reasons. People typically lie for extrinsic motivations, i.e., to acquire something (such as financial gain or care from medical professionals), to avoid an aversive consequence (e.g., a jail sentence), to maintain relationships, or because of situational demands (e.g., knowing a partner will get very angry if you tell them that you stopped for a drink with friends). People within the forensic context may sometimes malinger — i.e., try to appear more unwell than they are because it is perceived as being advantageous for court purposes. Sometimes, people with a psychiatric illness, such as schizophrenia, will hold beliefs that are clearly outside the realms of possibility. This is not demonstrative of an intentional desire to manipulate but is instead reflective of deeply held beliefs that are so strong that they count as delusions.
People with disturbances in personality functioning (such as those with paranoid, histrionic, narcissistic, borderline, or schizotypal traits) will occasionally hold odd beliefs or share stories that border on the implausible. This likely reflects the difficulties inherent in the conceptualisation of the self and the cognitive boundaries between reality and the fantastical (as often seen in those with borderline, paranoid, and schizotypal traits), or a desire to see and present oneself in an overly positive light (as seen in people with histrionic and narcissistic traits). Sometimes, people with organic brain disorders will confabulate (i.e., create missing information to fill in the gaps) — this is not a conscious process and is not classified as lying, but is rather the brain’s attempt to construct a logical reality in the absence of full information.
When lying is actually fraud
While most people will lie on occasion, sometimes the lies can be protracted and malignant in their impact on other people. Melissa Caddick, based in Sydney, Australia, is a good example of the latter. She perpetrated a fraud on a very large scale, setting up a sham financial advice company and defrauding people of approximately $30 million. While her primary motivation is relatively clear (i.e., financial gain), there are likely to have been a number of secondary motivations, including maintaining self-esteem and gaining status. The context of the world she resided in (the high-stakes world of the very wealthy) is likely to have influenced her behaviours and normalised some of her lifestyle choices. Equally, it is likely that a number of psychological factors, such as distortions in her belief system and callous emotionality are likely to have allowed her to perpetrate fraud of this extent on close family and friends.
“I just can’t help myself”: Compulsive lying
Occasionally, we encounter people who lie in seemingly senseless ways, such as Melbourne woman Samantha Azzopardi. Ms. Azzopardi was recently sentenced for a series of bizarre offenses where she impersonated people and implanted herself into the lives of families, masquerading as a nanny. While some of her offenses had some pecuniary gain (she drew a salary as a nanny and was paid as a talent scout), she also engaged in a range of odd acts such as attending a local youth mental health service with the children in her care, dressed as a teenager, and telling the staff that she was a 14-year-old who had been impregnated by her uncle. Investigators eventually found that Ms. Azzopardi has engaged in similar behaviours in other countries, including Ireland and Canada. The nature of some of her lies attracted forensic psychiatric attention as a means of assisting the court with understanding her behaviours. Dr. Jacqueline Rakov, a forensic psychiatrist, diagnosed Ms. Azzopardi with borderline personality disorder and pseudologia fantastica. She said that the latter involves an extreme type of lying that is “internally motivated,” an unconscious internal drive to create fantasies, rather than someone lying to acquire fame, money, or notoriety.
Cases of pseudologia fantastica are very rare, such that the majority of psychiatric literature in this area resides in the domain of the individual case study. Overall, people who engage in lies of this nature appear to have significant difficulties with their identities and sense of self and struggle to understand the boundaries of reality. Some of their stories likely serve to provide a sense of mastery and power over the world (i.e., manipulating other people can bring a sense of power) and can thus serve as a means of wish-fulfillment, may bolster self-esteem, and counter a deeply held sense of inadequacy or defectiveness. Stories designed to portray victimhood (such as masquerading as a victim of child abuse) evoke support and care from other people — possibly serving to compensate for that which was lacking in childhood. These stories may also serve as a denial of reality, or as a way of turning away from a reality that is terrifying or unacceptable.
Being the victim of someone who lies or defrauds can be very difficult. Both Ms. Caddick and Ms. Azzopardi’s victims describe feeling unsafe in their worlds and have greatly reduced trust in people. These behaviours can seem unfathomable and malignant. There is no denying the impact of these behaviours on victims and it is important to hold in mind the reasons some of these behaviours occur and to note that they often speak to deep, underlying pathology, or choices made by the perpetrator.
How do we decide who to trust?
It is almost impossible to accurately detect people who are lying to us; however, understanding the factors that might make us erroneously trust someone may be helpful for maintaining a better level of scepticism in the world. When we decide whether to trust someone, we have usually engaged in a range of split-second decision-making processes that rely on fleeting cues, and relate these cues to past experiences. This can be helpful when we have had a wide range of appropriate experiences to draw on when making decisions, or have direct contact with the people we are evaluating. In an increasingly hyper-connected world, we are often faced with online or phone-based interactions where we may not have contextual or direct cues to base judgements on. Equally, our gut instincts can sometimes be misleading.
Research shows that we instinctively tend to trust people we know, people who appear to be like us in relevant ways, or people who are physically attractive. In practice, this means that someone like Ms. Samantha Azzopardi (a Melbourne-based woman recently convicted of a range of bizarre, fraud-based offences), would instinctively have captured many people’s trust by belonging to the dominant cultural group and by being young and attractive. Similarly, we tend to trust people or situations we have had increased exposure to; Ms. Melissa Caddick’s (a financial scammer from Sydney) victims (largely, her friends and family members) were more likely to have perceived her as trustworthy as they knew her well.
While we may not be able to identify when people are lying to us, there are four simple principles that can keep us safe.
Assess why you trust someone.
Remember to assess whether you believe someone is trustworthy simply because they appear to be aligned with you, are known to you, or are attractive — or whether there are more relevant attributes that make them trustworthy. We often fall into the trap of trusting someone simply because they have come recommended to us by someone we know or because it feels like they have no good reason to defraud us. The reasons for fraud are many and diverse, and while we do not want to approach every transaction as though it might be dangerous, it is important to seek appropriate verification when committing to meaningful deals (such as a mortgage, investments, or allowing someone into your home to care for your children).
Caveat emptor — buyer beware.
If something seems too good to be true (e.g., Melissa Caddick routinely promised her victims a 30 percent return on their investment — very much above market average), then it very likely is too good to be true. It is wise to ask difficult questions.
Seek objective information from collateral sources.
This is a maxim in forensic psychology—as forensic clients often present tailored and managed information to assessors. Forensic psychologists will never complete an assessment without collateral documentation (such as court reports and formal police records).
Similarly, I would encourage you to pursue relevant collateral information (such as corroborated police checks and verified references) prior to embarking on an agreement. It may be helpful to verify some of the documents presented yourself. If in doubt, it is entirely acceptable to ask for information to be sent to you and for time to consider your options. Someone offering you a genuine deal will be prepared to wait for you to determine whether you are interested.
Remember that the more importance something holds for us, the more likely we are to be swept away by emotion.
We often invest overly in things that hold meaning and hope, which is likely why so many lonely people are trapped by romance scams. This is understandable, but it is all the more important to ensure that you stop to consider the credibility of any offers or approaches made in areas that are especially meaningful to you, such as love, money, or work.
Birch, C. D., Kelln, B. R., & Aquino, E. P. (2006). A review and case report of pseudologia fantastica. The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, 17(2), 299–320.
Duffield, G., & Grabosky, P. (2001). The psychology of fraud. Trends and issues in crime and criminal justice, (199), 1–6.
Newmark, N., & Kay, J. (1999). Pseudologia fantastica and factitious disorder: review of the literature and a case report. Comprehensive psychiatry, 40(2), 89–95.
Weston, W. A., & Dalby, J. T. (1991). A case of pseudologia fantastica with antisocial personality disorder. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 36(8), 612–614.
Bocian, K., Baryla, W., Kulesza, W. M., Schnall, S., & Wojciszke, B. (2018). The mere liking effect: Attitudinal influences on attributions of moral character. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 79, 9–20
Todorov, A., Said, C. P., Engell, A. D., & Oosterhof, N. N. (2008). Understanding evaluation of faces on social dimensions. Trends in cognitive sciences, 12(12), 455–460.
Vrij, A., Granhag, P. A., Mann, S., & Leal, S. (2011). Outsmarting the liars: Toward a cognitive lie detection approach. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(1), 28–32.
Zhao, N., Zhou, M., Shi, Y., & Zhang, J. (2015). Face attractiveness in building trust: Evidence from measurement of implicit and explicit responses. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 43(5), 855–866.
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Previously Published on medium
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