In a study of 527 people, researchers found that only 5 percent of the participants actually owned up to how much and how often they lied, according to a press release.
We are often taught and told that everyone tells white lies at some point in time or the other but how many of these people are often truthful about telling lies! University of Amsterdam undertook a study to find out just that.
All study subjects were asked questions about how much and how often they had lied in the last 24 hours. More than 41 percent of them said they didn't lie at all, which was not exactly true, whereas just 5% turned out to be accountable for 40% of all of the lies told.
To check how truthful they were with their reporting, researchers conducted a further experiment where participants were asked to roll dices and were given money according to the number they rolled. The participants were free to cheat and reveal higher numbers because the researchers were not able to see the number they actually rolled.
At the end on the study, researchers found that the participants who admitted to lying won more money that the other participants. Whether this was actually a strike of luck or merely them lying again wasn't determined in the study. However, it was clear that people who lied more frequently openly admitted to their lying.
"The fact that participants who indicated lying often actually did lie more often in the dice test demonstrates that they were honest about their dishonesty," said Bruno Verschuere from the University of Amsterdam. It may be that frequent liars show more psychopathic traits and, therefore, have no trouble admitting to lying frequently."
A previous study conducted by University of Massachusetts researcher Robert Feldman found that on an average 60 percent of people lie at least once in a 10 minute conversation, according toDiscovery Channel. This may be a simple white lie or a big black lie. The reason for lying can be many but one thing is for certain is that there's no end to human lying. Even children realize pretty soon that lying can help to manipulate their parents. For example, telling their parents they've done their homework to go out to play, when in reality they have not finished their work.