That means their charm, a characteristic of liars, may have worked its devilish magic. Spotting, Living With, or Working for a Whopper of a LiarĬan you tell on first meeting that someone might be a troubled liar? It’s difficult, but Ekman has found this rule-of-thumb helpful: "In the first half hour, if I want to invite them home for dinner, I watch out!" he says.
#Pathological lying treatment how to#
Counseling or psychotherapy may help, with a focus on how to reduce impulsivity. Little research exists on treatment options for liars. Or they do so after their lies have resulted in dire consequences such as bankruptcy, divorce, or loss of a career. Usually they only do so when directed by court order, after they've gotten into trouble, he says. In Ekman's experience, most liars who are compulsive or pathological don't want to change enough to enter treatment. Can Compulsive or Pathological Liars Change? Ekman estimates fewer than 5 percent of people lie compulsively or pathologically. "Compulsive liars usually get away with it because they tell the lies we want to believe."įortunately, neither type of liar is common, according to Feldman and Ekman. Sometimes the lies are even self-incriminating, making them that much more difficult to figure out.Ĭompared to pathological liars, compulsive liars can get along pretty well in life, Ekman says. While everyday lies are goal-directed - you don't want to hurt the feelings of your overweight spouse - pathological lies often seem purposeless. They concluded that the increase in white matter may somehow provide these "super-liars" with ''the cognitive capacity to lie." In a study in The British Journal of Psychiatry, scientists did brain scans on pathological liars and others, and found that the liars had more white matter in the brain's prefrontal cortex. Liars' brains may differ structurally from the average brain. But they’ve debated whether these types of lying are symptoms or a disease. They know impulsivity and a need to impress could be linked to the habit. "I don't think we really know enough about the etiology of these to know if they should be considered a mental disorder," notes Ekman.įor example, experts don’t know for sure what drives the troublesome lying. Neither compulsive nor pathological lying has been studied extensively, say Feldman and Ekman. The two lying types are pretty similar, he says, and actually, ''You could be a compulsive pathological liar."
They ''continue to lie when they know you know they’re lying," Ekman says. "You often believe what they say - at least for a while." "Often, they’re pretty good liars," Ekman adds.
I've actually been asked by the governor of California to comment on this." Ekman, they’re likely to say something like this: "You know, you made a really wise choice in asking my opinion.
When you ask a compulsive liar for an opinion on an important issue, says Dr. "They tell the stories they think want to be heard," he says.
Definitions are fluid, experts say.Ĭompulsive liars have a need to embellish and exaggerate, says Paul Ekman, PhD, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California in San Francisco and the author of Telling Lies, among other books. Out-of-control lying is known as compulsive or pathological lying.
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