Born Liars: Why we can’t live without deceit

Reviewed by Billy Little – HMP Bullingdon

We have all been accused of it at some point in our lives, some more than others and for good reason in many cases. Whether you choose to tell your pals on the landing that there was ten of them, when there only one (and he worked part-time as a Mr Muscle double), or keep the kids excited about Santa coming, you’re a liar!

Ian Leslie places great emphasis on how we use ‘lies’ to get through the day, as a means of maintaining and even strengthening our social bonds with each other and developing new ones. As a species, we owe a great deal to having the ability to deceive, to mask what we are doing, thinking or feeling at any given time. There are even courses on how to present yourself at that all important job interview, how to enter the room, greet the other person and represent yourself through your ‘curriculum vitae’ (CV). The problem with clone-like behaviour is that it cannot be maintained and your true self is evinced for all to see. One psychologist, Bella DePaulo, found that over one week each of her 147 subjects had lied on average 1.5 times a day; she even considered that they had been relatively modest about that too. Robert Feldman, researcher and author of the seminal book ‘Liar: The Truth About Lying’, noted that when meting someone new, we will tell them three lies within ten minutes: ‘How are you?’ ‘I’m fine.’ When, in truth, there is a concern, anxiety or feeling of stress or depression.

You can expect to be taken on a journey through history, science, religion, philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, fantasy, myth, childhood, advertising, conflict, politics, media, sport and love. Leslie documents some of the traits and characteristics of liars through the generations of time. He employs the everyday and the ordinary and contrasts it with some profound philosophical thought. It would seem that when it comes to our own humility, our inflated sense of potential is underpinned by our tendency towards self-absorption. We are inclined to be optimistic about our motivations and expectations from life. For example, in a survey of college students, 88% rated themselves as being in the top 50% of drivers, whilst 95% of college professors declared their work to be well above average. The person who claims to be the best pool, table-tennis or chess player on your wing is for all intents and purposes deceiving themselves – note how quiet they were prior to playing and when they lose. Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying: ‘So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has mind to do’. Put simply, the pool, table-tennis, chess player will claim to have been distracted by one or more things to qualify his/her reason for losing. The greater the verbal dexterity, tone, posture, assertiveness, etc will determine just how much flannel those around him will put up with before dismissing him/her as being a former contender to the crown.

Scientists, religious leaders (and nutters), historians and philosophers have all played a fundamental role in shaping who we are, what we do, how we know and understand everything around us. Leslie empowers the reader with an insight into deception, the erroneous practices used by the police (specifically in the case of Amanda Knox over the murder of Meredith Kercher in 2007), the over zealous assumptions of psychologists (imagine that!), pithy aphorisms – ‘If you can lie, you can act’ – from Marlon Brando, cognitive dissonance (the intransigent political stance towards Saddam Hussein’s WMD), Major Charles (cough) Ingram, Winston Churchill, Pablo Picasso, Bob Dylan, Barack Obama and the unforgettable former cabinet minister, and first class oaf extraordinaire, Jonathan Aitken all feature to bring the genius of Leslie to the foreground in his field.

Think about it, women lie about their age (and yes you do have a fat arse love,) men don’t have a clue when it comes to measurements. The converse of lying is honesty, yet we can’t even trust ourselves. We command those who express what Kant termed the ‘moral law within’, applaud the compassion given by battlefield surgeons when telling patients what they need to hear in the last moments of life, when all the time accepting that we are nothing without our primary need to survive and thrive. ‘Reporting on reality is an important but secondary consideration. So is telling the truth to others.’

This is the true gem for anyone interested in life, history, body language, philosophy or ethical issues. This ranks right up there with similar works and linked reading like: ‘The Moral Animal’ by Robert Wright, ‘The Nature of Culture’ by A L Kroeber and ‘Machiavellian Intelligence’ by R Byrne and A Whiten.

Read it and believe, challenge yourself, conspiracy theories and your own expectations. Behind the cover of this book are some rational, confident observations on human life; why we do what we do and how easy it can sometimes be to get away with it.