Movies, Lying in

Social Necessity for Deception

In 1975, Ronny Turner and his colleagues explored the idea that deception may be necessary for people to function within society. They studied people's conversations and found that people frequently reported controlling information within conversations, and they reported several reasons for why they did so. Two of the reasons reported were that people wanted to protect themselves from being embarrassed, and that they wanted to prevent other people from being embarrassed. Turner and his colleagues argued that social reality as people perceive it would collapse if people did not control information when they communicated.

This necessity for deception to preserve social harmony is displayed in two popular comedy films about lying. The 2009 film The Invention of Lying explores a place and time in which everyone tells the truth, often engaging in brutal honesty, until the central character played by Ricky Gervais tells a lie in order to protect himself. This lie is followed by several others that eventually allow Gervais's character to become a rich and famous screenwriter-turned-prophet by his ability to craft fantastical lies in a land where no one can deceive, and thus, everything is believed.

This same theme is explored slightly differently in the 1997 film Liar Liar, which stars Jim Carrey as a lawyer who loses his ability to lie for 24 [Page 685]hours after his son makes that wish on his birthday. Again, comedy arises because, as Carrey's character demonstrates, people need to be able to control information in order to do their jobs and maintain relationships.

Cognitive Load for Deception

Both of these films demonstrate a debated topic in the deception literature: the cognitive load hypothesis. The cognitive load hypothesis suggests that it is more difficult to lie than to tell the truth because it is more cognitively taxing to produce a deceptive message. However, much of the comedy that ensues in these films is consistent with the arguments of Turner and colleagues and stands in contrast to the cognitive load hypothesis. Specifically, most of the comedy in these films stems from the difficulties and impact of people communicating in a direct and unvarnished fashion, revealing all of the thoughts that are in their heads.

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