When we are overwhelmed with false, or potentially false, statements, our brains pretty quickly become so overworked that we stop trying to sift through everything. As Gilbert writes, human minds, “when faced with shortages of time, energy, or conclusive evidence, may fail to unaccept the ideas that they involuntarily accept during comprehension.”
#COMPULSIVE LIAR VS PATHOLOGICAL LIAR VERIFICATION#
In certain circumstances, that verification simply fails to take place. It takes work: We must actively choose to accept or reject each statement we hear. Unfortunately, while the first step is a natural part of thinking-it happens automatically and effortlessly-the second step can be easily disrupted. Only then do we take the second step, either completing the mental certification process (yes, fraud!) or rejecting it (what? no way). For instance, if someone were to tell us- hypothetically, of course-that there had been serious voter fraud in Virginia during the presidential election, we must for a fraction of a second accept that fraud did, in fact, take place. First, even just briefly, we hold the lie as true: We must accept something in order to understand it. Gilbert argues that people see the world in two steps. What happens when a lie hits your brain? The now-standard model was first proposed by Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert more than 20 years ago. Lies are exhausting to fight, pernicious in their effects and, perhaps worst of all, almost impossible to correct if their content resonates strongly enough with people’s sense of themselves, which Trump’s clearly do. For decades, researchers have been wrestling with the nature of falsehood: How does it arise? How does it affect our brains? Can we choose to combat it? The answers aren’t encouraging for those who worry about the national impact of a reign of untruth over the next four, or eight, years. What does this mean for the country-and for the Americans on the receiving end of Trump’s constantly twisting version of reality? It’s both a cultural question and a psychological one. Unless Trump dramatically transforms himself, Americans are going to start living in a new reality, one in which their leader is a manifestly unreliable source. He has the megaphone of the White House press office, his popular Twitter account and a loyal new right-wing media army that will not just parrot his version of the truth but actively argue against attempts to knock it down with verifiable facts.
Donald Trump will become the chief executive of the most powerful nation in the world, the man charged with representing that nation globally-and, most importantly, telling the story of America back to Americans. On January 20, Trump’s truthful hyperboles will no longer be relegated to the world of dealmaking or campaigning. Trump apparently loved the wording, and went on to adopt it as his own. In his own autobiography, Trump used the phrase “truthful hyperbole,” a term coined by his ghostwriter referring to the flagrant truth-stretching that Trump employed, over and over, to help close sales. New York tabloid writers who covered Trump as a mogul on the rise in the 1980s and ’90s found him categorically different from the other self-promoting celebrities in just how often, and pointlessly, he would lie to them. Those who have followed Trump’s career say his lying isn’t just a tactic, but an ingrained habit. (Compare that to the politician Trump dubbed “crooked,” Hillary Clinton: Just 26 percent of her statements were deemed false.) A whopping 70 percent of Trump’s statements that PolitiFact checked during the campaign were false, while only 4 percent were completely true, and 11 percent mostly true. Nixon, Reagan and Clinton were protecting their reputations Trump seems to lie for the pure joy of it. The sheer frequency, spontaneity and seeming irrelevance of his lies have no precedent. It is, in some ways, an inherent part of the profession of politicking.īut Donald Trump is in a different category. Lying in politics transcends political party and era. Bill Clinton said he did not have sex with that woman he did, or close enough. Ronald Reagan said he wasn’t aware of the Iran-Contra deal there’s evidence he was. Richard Nixon said he was not a crook, yet he orchestrated the most shamelessly crooked act in the modern presidency. Maria Konnikova is a contributing writer at the New Yorker and author, most recently, of The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It … Every Time.
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