According to a recent study at Northwestern University, lying can be perfected with a certain amount of practice and training, reports Medical Xpress.
Previous research has shown that people tend to make more mistakes when lying than telling the truth because they try to suppress the honest answers and have conflicting responses in mind. But a current study suggests that the deceptive reaction time can be significantly reduced just by training.
The study involved two groups: the "control group" and the "training group." The participants in the control group were asked to speed up their lying ability without given them the time to prepare their lies and try making minimum errors. On the other hand, training group was taught on how to speed up their deceptive responses and were given ample time to prepare for their lies. As a result, among the training group there was no difference between deceptive and truthful responses, according to Medical Xpress.
Xiaoqing Hu, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in the department of psychology at Northwestern also found that the control group was able to reduce the deceptive response time. Hu found that lying is more flexible than thought which can be changed over conscious practice.
"This was really unexpected because it suggests that people can be really flexible, and after they know what is expected from them, they want to avoid being detected," Hu said in a report by Medical Xpress. "In real life, there's usually a time delay between the crime and interrogation. Most people would have time to prepare and practice their lies prior to the interrogation."
