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Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

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11–20 of 115 posts

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#11

Dear parents: never let your kids lie, at any age. It might be cute when they're 3 or 4 or 5, but if you don't gently tell them that "we don't tell lies, we always tell the truth" it will become a habit they will carry into adulthood.

Do you have any experience/data to back that up? While, on its face, it seems like a good idea to discourage lying, presenting children with such a binary approach to deception might leave them underprepared for the "bullshit" (marketing, propaganda, etc...) they will encounter in the real world. EDIT: I'm not a parent and don't want to offer parenting advice. My point is simply that saying "we never lie" seems overl…

why? I have no data either, but I’mnot seeing how you’re connecting the two. One is about personal values (saying the truth) the other one you’re concerned about is how to question the outside world. Two completely different things IMO (and things I’m currently trying to teach my 4yo kid)

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#12

Dear parents: never let your kids lie, at any age. It might be cute when they're 3 or 4 or 5, but if you don't gently tell them that "we don't tell lies, we always tell the truth" it will become a habit they will carry into adulthood.

Do you have any experience/data to back that up? While, on its face, it seems like a good idea to discourage lying, presenting children with such a binary approach to deception might leave them underprepared for the "bullshit" (marketing, propaganda, etc...) they will encounter in the real world. EDIT: I'm not a parent and don't want to offer parenting advice. My point is simply that saying "we never lie" seems overl…

... he said don't teach your kids to lie not don't teach your kids to recognize a lie.

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#13

Dear parents: never let your kids lie, at any age. It might be cute when they're 3 or 4 or 5, but if you don't gently tell them that "we don't tell lies, we always tell the truth" it will become a habit they will carry into adulthood.

The bigger problem is the parents. Let's start with Santa Claus. Blatant lie. Parents teach kids that lying is ok from a very young age.

Abolish Christmas, and then get back to me.

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#14
post #9

As an Aspie, (almost) every neurotypical person seems to be a pathological liar, not able to make a small talk without committing a few lies. Examples: "I am fine, thanks", "You look great!", "It is a wonderful idea!", "You are our best client", "For our company privacy is a priority", etc, etc.

That's just business talk, not lies.

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#16

Dear parents: never let your kids lie, at any age. It might be cute when they're 3 or 4 or 5, but if you don't gently tell them that "we don't tell lies, we always tell the truth" it will become a habit they will carry into adulthood.

Lying is actually a pretty well known psychological milestone, since deception requires that you hold two concepts in your head at once. Trying to stop that completely is a fool’s errand.

Do you have any evidence to back up the assertion that lying too much at 4/5 is how one becomes a pathological liar?

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#17
Don’t take the following too seriously, but studies might preselect for liars.

You usually need to meet certain criteria to be eligible and participants may fudge their answers to participate. I’ve done food testing on and off through the years and you always need to answer some questions beforehand to determine eligibility. If you gave a “wrong” answer, the survey-asker would say something like “Are you sure?”, prompting you to pick the other choice that made you eligible for the study. Or even without prompting, if I’m trying to get paid to taste bubblegum and they ask how often you have bubblegum, I’m more likely to inflate my reported frequency compared to my actual frequency of gum chewing.

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#18

Dear parents: never let your kids lie, at any age. It might be cute when they're 3 or 4 or 5, but if you don't gently tell them that "we don't tell lies, we always tell the truth" it will become a habit they will carry into adulthood.

Do you have any experience/data to back that up? While, on its face, it seems like a good idea to discourage lying, presenting children with such a binary approach to deception might leave them underprepared for the "bullshit" (marketing, propaganda, etc...) they will encounter in the real world. EDIT: I'm not a parent and don't want to offer parenting advice. My point is simply that saying "we never lie" seems overl…

About 13% of people would agree that a binary approach to deception is excessively restrictive. ;)

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#19
I can imagine there are professions where the threshold for lies to count as pathological would be higher than others.

If you barely talk, if the few things you say are all lies, that's pretty serious. But for people who talk a lot, like politicians, salesmen, managers, etc, 10 lies per day doesn't sound very high at all.

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#20
post #9

As an Aspie, (almost) every neurotypical person seems to be a pathological liar, not able to make a small talk without committing a few lies. Examples: "I am fine, thanks", "You look great!", "It is a wonderful idea!", "You are our best client", "For our company privacy is a priority", etc, etc.

That's just business talk, not lies.

You mean that's business talk _and_ lies.
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