Tamara Thompson's List: Deception

When we lie, we are not capable of producing the\n"strange" complexities that the truth naturally has.\n\n liars showed fewer exclusive words (but, except) and more concrete verbs\n(walked, ran) than truth-tellers. These two things are typically viewed as markers of simple thinking. Although indirect, this work
indicates that telling a lie may reduce one's ability to produce complex output Why might this be? Newman et al. (2003) suggest that the act of\nlying drains the cognitive resources necessary for complex thinking.Because so many cognitive resources of the liar are spent on things besides the statement itself-managing increasing stress, the additional cognitive burden of producing falsehoods-the actual resulting statement may be less complex than a more truthful statement.\nThis explanation makes sense.