Duping Delight

The act of lying is often accompanied by negative emotions such as guilt or fear of detection. Yet, many experience positive emotions instead: excitement or a thrill at having successfully lied to another, “pulling the wool over their eyes” without them being any the wiser. Such positive feelings are known as “duping delight,” a phenomenon first described by detection scientist Paul Ekman. The used car salesman who smiles when he assures a customer that the dealership makes no money on the warranty he just talked the customer into, the so-called financial planner who disguises his glee at having convinced an 85-year-old widow that life insurance is a great investment for her, and the pretty, popular girl at school who snickers slyly after “helpfully” revealing to [Page 320]the naïve, unattractive new student that the handsome captain of the football team wants to ask her to the homecoming dance—all these liars are experiencing duping delight.

It is important to draw the distinction between duping delight and pathological lying. Also known as pseudologia fantastica, pathological lying is a feature of some psychological disorders, manifesting as persistent lying in the absence of reason, necessity, or reward. Pathological liars commonly experience little emotion, and their lies tend to be very transparent. In contrast, duping delight is an emotion of pleasure that can occur among both normal and abnormal populations of liars.