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“The Truth about Lying”
“So you did, you know,” the Red Queen said to Alice. “Always speak the truth—think before you speak—and write it down afterwards.”
“I'm sure I didn't mean—” Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen interrupted her impatiently.
“That's just what I complain of! You should have meant!”
, , , , , , & (2010). The truth about lying: Inhibition of the anterior prefrontal cortex improves deceptive behavior. Cerebral Cortex, 20 (1): 205-213.
Neuroethics is a field very much in vogue, with many experimenters clamoring to provide neuroscientific explanations for moral behaviors. Too often, this enthusiasm translates to poor experimental methodology and broadly unsupported causal assertions. Karim et al., however, have used robust methods to provided intriguing primary evidence for a causal role of the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC) in deceptive behavior. The area is certainly ripe for further study.
The authors used transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS)—a technique that disables particular areas of the brain by stimulating them with an electrical current—to investigate lying and deceptive behavior. By stimulating the aPFC, they were able to induce a small but significant improvement in deceptive behavior. While aPFC has previously been indicated to be involved in ethical decision-making, this study provides new evidence of its causal role in moral behaviors.
Their methodology is commendably ecologically valid: They asked participants to steal a wallet left in another room and then answer questions posed by an interrogator. Mimicking a police interview, the participant had to choose which questions to answer truthfully and which to answer with a lie. A “lying quotient” (LQ) was calculated using the ratio of lies to incriminating questions to truthful answers to nonincriminating questions. An effective deception would be one that not only did not provide compromising informatio