Reality Radio

PROGRAMNR 51495 /ra3 Reality Radio Fact Five on Lies Script, words and questions Signature Fern Scott Olsson: Lying is a way of life; at least it’s our way of life. In fact, on average we lie once or twice everyday. Why people lie isn’t very difficult to understand. People lie – among other things – in order to protect themselves from being punished. Music Fern: I often hear people say “I’m an honest person, I don’t lie”. But this is a lie in itself as actually its human nature to lie. We spoke to Maria Hartwig at Gothenburg University. Maria is an expert on lying and she told us that we think we know how people behave when they are lying. Maria: People tend to think that liars are looking away, that they don’t maintain eye contact that they look at the floor or up in the ceiling and anywhere else but in the eyes of their conversational partner. People also think that liars fidget, and liars move around a lot, and that liars scratch themselves, play with their hair and make a lot of movements. But research shows that this isn’t true. Liars aren’t poorer than truth tellers in maintaining eye contact and also liars do not make more movements. Liars instead, tend to make slightly fewer movements than truth tellers. The most common believes about how people behave when they are lying, are actually incorrect. Fern: However, more experienced liars know about body language and they behave in a way that we would not expect them to behave. One police officer told us that some criminal suspects can be so relaxed while waiting to be interviewed that they can fall asleep. Maria told us that what we actually say - or rather the words we choose - can give us away more often than our body language. 1 Maria: For example, liars tend to say what didn’t happen rather than what did happen. Liars tend to say things a bit more backwards, like “it wasn’t like this and that” while truth tellers tend to say “it was like this and that”. Liars tend to make fewer of these normal mistakes that people make when they speak. We call them ordinary imperfections. For example, truth tellers are more likely to say “it happened at five o’clock, no wait, it happened at four thirty”. And they tend to make these corrections spontaneously. Liars are less prone to do that, to correct themselves. Fern: We wonder, is it harder to remember the more complicated lies? Maria: Liars pay a lot of attention to what they said the last time and try to create the same account again. While truth tellers on the other hand are interested in recreating the event and they try to say exactly what they remember. What they tell at one time may be a bit different from what they tell another time. Liars are interested in saying the same thing every time they are asked to tell about this thing, because they don’t want to contradict themselves so they tend to remember what they said the first time they talked about it, so they tend to repeat that. Fern: So when do we start to lie? Psychologists say it’s a normal part of children’s development, and that kids at four or five years of age already start to lie. But what’s funny is they act in a way that we would expect liars to act. They fidget, they blush, and they don’t look at the person with whom they are speaking in the eye. However, young children quickly learn that this kind of behaviour doesn’t work, so they change their behaviour and by the age of ten or eleven kids are just as good at lying as adults are. Signature Words: Honest = ärlig Fidget = skruva på sig nervöst Imperfection = brist, fel, defekt Prone = benägen, ha lätt för Contradiction = motsägelse Tend = tendera, luta åt Blush = rodna Behaviour = beteende Ceiling = innertak Discussion Questions: Easy 1. When do we start to lie? 2. How many times a day do a person lie in average? 3. Why do people lie according to Fern? 2 Advanced 1. How can you tell a person is lying? 2. What are ordinary imperfections? 3. Are some lies more accepted than others? Why? Rough Cuts on Lies Script, words and questions Signature My name is Teresa and here are my thoughts about truth and lies. Music Robyn “my truth” I remember when I was about 6 years old trying to understand what truth was all about. I had learned that lying was a really bad thing and I wanted to be a good girl. I had been told that my tongue would turn black if I lied, so I figured it was really obvious that lying was wrong. Of course like every kid I was also thinking about Christmas - I was going to be good. In order to be good I thought I had to tell the truth all the time. I told my mom everything, even the most uninteresting and embarrassing things. It felt good to be honest to her, and she always had a comforting answer for me. If I had been bad, I told her right away and she would say “it’s okay, don’t worry”. I became a little mini-catholic and I had my “confession” every day. Music Prince “do you lie?” And we all know it wasn’t easy knowing what was true or false when you are a kid. You sort of believed everything. I remember a shortcut I used to take to get to school. My friends’ bigger sister told me I shouldn’t walk on that path, because if I did, I would become invisible. So I jumped on the rocks trying not to touch the ground everyday for a whole year. It didn’t take long until I found out that people lie. There was no Santa Claus. He wasn’t real. It was all a lie. He had fake beard. I learned things weren’t what they seemed to be, I learned people lie and I learned the truth was more important to me now than ever before. But I found an easier way of handling the truth; I started to trust my self knowing what was the right or wrong thing to do. No one is going to make me believe I could go invisible ever again. Knowing I could trust myself for making my own decisions I started looking for MY truth, instead of THE truth. I mean, what is THE truth anyway? Music India Arie "truth" 3 My next encounter with lies was through my grandmother. I was about 10 years old and found a photo album in her closet. She had tried to hide it, but every time I paid a visit to my granny I was all over her drawers looking for things, so it didn’t take me long to find it. When I opened the album there were a lot of pictures of my granny together with someone else I couldn’t see because that part of the picture was covered. I went through the whole album and it was the same thing on every single picture. I was confused. What had happened? I had to know. At first my granny didn’t want to tell me the truth, but a few years later she told me about the man in the pictures and she told me about their first date. She told me she was in love for the first time and she told me she was happy, and when she got pregnant they decided to get married. Not too long after their daughter was born my granny found out he was already married to someone else. I was 12 years old and devastated. How could someone be that cruel? It’s bad enough to tell a lie, but living it? I don’t think my granny ever trusted anyone again after such a terrible lie. But what about me? I’m a grownup now. I tell the truth, most of the time. I don’t lie, that often. But am I being honest? Well, I know I’m a person who is really honest towards my feelings. I cry when I’m sad and I laugh when I’m happy. No, really, I do. And that’s not easy. People have accused me of being “too sensitive” or “too emotional”. And sometimes I don’t like it either. I hate the fact that I cry so easily. It’s like my emotions are on the outside of my body, and I just can’t hide them, fake them or lie. When I feel something, I react to it. But that’s being honest, isn’t? On the other hand I don’t feel I’m being honest about what I am. I was born in Sweden, my mom was born in Sweden and my father was born in Mexico. So that makes me half Swedish and half Mexican. I have lived all my life in Sweden and you could say I’m not a bit Mexican. When I was younger I said I was Swedish when people asked me. It was true, it is true, but it felt like a lie. And when I got older I said I was Mexican when people asked me. It was true, it is true, but it felt like a lie. I felt uneasy. What was I suppose to be? So I tried to be as Mexican as I could ever be, and since I look Mexican more than typically Swedish I thought it would be easy.

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