Lies, Liars & Lying

[escargot]

Dunno if this is just a quirk of mine but if I personally catch someone lying to me, that's it.

The fantasists I've known (like the work colleague whose own unarmed body was classed as a lethal weapon or the friend who spun yarns about local police secret operations) become irrelevant. I don't have any time for them because I can't believe a word they say.

The reason they do it doesn't matter, I'm not interested in them any more.

Same in relationships. Small lies, big lies, they're the same. Off he goes.

It's not a line I've drawn or a principle I live by, it's just how it is. You can't have any kind of adult relationship with liars. They're untrustworthy.

 

[Frideswide]

I've been told it's "not nice" of me but I enjoy them. I like to find out how far they will go...

Some of it comes down to an autistic fascination with NT behaviour. It's not true that we can't lie. Some of us will have conniptions if put in a position where it is expected, many of us can do social lies after more or less training. Some of us get really good at it but it's an exhausting skill...

 

[EnolaGaia]

There's an old saying to the effect you should never try to bullshit a bullshitter (i.e., liars are adept at detecting lies). Newly published research indicates this is not the case. In fact, bullshitters are more vulnerable to accepting BS at face value.

Research shows that BSers are more likely to fall for BS

People who frequently try to impress or persuade others with misleading exaggerations and distortions are themselves more likely to be fooled by impressive-sounding misinformation, new research from the University of Waterloo shows.

The researchers found that people who frequently engage in "persuasive bullshitting" were actually quite poor at identifying it. Specifically, they had trouble distinguishing intentionally profound or scientifically accurate fact from impressive but meaningless fiction. Importantly, these frequent BSers are also much more likely to fall for fake news headlines.

"It probably seems intuitive to believe that you can't bullshit a bullshitter, but our research suggests that this isn't actually the case," says Shane Littrell, lead author of the paper ... "In fact, it appears that the biggest purveyors of persuasive bullshit are ironically some of the ones most likely to fall for it."

The researchers define "bullshit" as information designed to impress, persuade, or otherwise mislead people that is often constructed without concern for the truth. They also identify two types of bullshitting-- persuasive and evasive. "Persuasive" uses misleading exaggerations and embellishments to impress, persuade, or fit in with others, while 'evasive' involves giving irrelevant, evasive responses in situations where frankness might result in hurt feelings or reputational harm.

In a series of studies conducted with over 800 participants from the US and Canada, the researchers examined the relations between participants' self-reported engagement in both types of BSing and their ratings of how profound, truthful, or accurate they found pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific statements and fake news headlines. Participants also completed measures of cognitive ability, metacognitive insight, intellectual overconfidence, and reflective thinking.

"We found that the more frequently someone engages in persuasive bullshitting, the more likely they are to be duped by various types of misleading information regardless of their cognitive ability, engagement in reflective thinking, or metacognitive skills," Littrell said. "Persuasive BSers seem to mistake superficial profoundness for actual profoundness. So, if something simply sounds profound, truthful, or accurate to them that means it really is. But evasive bullshitters were much better at making this distinction."

SOURCE: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/uow-rst030821.php

 

[EnolaGaia]

Here are the blbliographic details and abstract for the 'bullshitting the bullshitters' study ...

‘You can’t bullshit a bullshitter’ (or can you?): Bullshitting frequency predicts receptivity to various types of misleading information
Shane Littrell, Evan F. Risko, Jonathan A. Fugelsang
British Journal of Social Psychology
First published: 04 February 2021
https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12447

Abstract
Research into both receptivity to falling for bullshit and the propensity to produce it have recently emerged as active, independent areas of inquiry into the spread of misleading information. However, it remains unclear whether those who frequently produce bullshit are inoculated from its influence. For example, both bullshit receptivity and bullshitting frequency are negatively related to cognitive ability and aspects of analytic thinking style, suggesting that those who frequently engage in bullshitting may be more likely to fall for bullshit. However, separate research suggests that individuals who frequently engage in deception are better at detecting it, thus leading to the possibility that frequent bullshitters may be less likely to fall for bullshit. Here, we present three studies (N = 826) attempting to distinguish between these competing hypotheses, finding that frequency of persuasive bullshitting (i.e., bullshitting intended to impress or persuade others) positively predicts susceptibility to various types of misleading information and that this association is robust to individual differences in cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style.

SOURCE: https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjso.12447