WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT YOU

Telling lies gets easier, researchers say. .

Poor Pinocchio never had a chance. A new study in Nature Neuroscience confirms the reason for the puppet's ever-growing proboscis: The more we practice prevarication, the easier it gets. In the latest contribution to research literature on lying, scientists at University College London and Duke University have shown that repetition of small lies weakens the negative emotions associated with telling untruths, leading to bigger lies down the road. In a laboratory experiment, 80 college volunteers each told a second participant their best guess at the number of pennies in a jar. Various scenarios gave them incentives for being dishonest about the amount. In one, dishonesty about the amount benefited the first subject only. In others, dishonesty benefited both or benefited the first subject but hurt the second participant. "People often perceive self-serving dishonesty as morally wrong and report uneasiness when engaging in such behavior," the authors wrote. The researchers scanned subjects' brains with an MRI while they performed the various tasks. Focusing their attention on the amygdala, where emotions, emotional behavior and motivation are all integrated, the scientists discovered that the more times subjects lied to benefit only themselves, the less activity in the amygdala. In other words, more lying appeared to lead to fewer qualms about lying. On one level, the finding wasn't all that surprising. Neuroscientists have shown over the years that repeating a stimulus that evokes a negative emotion diminishes the intensity of that emotional response. What may be more surprising is what other researchers have discovered about honesty. Last year, scientists at Jerusalem College of Technology in Israel conducted an experiment similar to the one above. Instead of a brain scanner, however, the researchers asked participants an extensive series of questions to determine their backgrounds, personalities, education, employment, even intelligence. Only one relationship emerged: The more honest someone was, the higher his or her intelligence.