专家揭秘为何有些人总爱说谎
By the age of 3 or 4, we all start to lie. At this point in our brain's development, we learn that we have an incredibly versatile and powerful tool at our disposal -- our language -- and we can use it to actually play with reality and affect the outcome of what's happening. Lying is "bad", but we all have to lie sometimes. But some people are pathological liars, meaning they can't stop spreading misinformation about themselves and others. The psychological reasons for why some people are this way is a bit of a mystery, but according to the third edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", pathological lying is a disorder in its own right, as well as a symptom of personality disorders like psychopathy. Psychiatrist Judith Orloff said pathological liars have empathy deficient disorder, meaning they lack empathy, which essentially means a lack of conscience. When you don't care about other people, lies don't seem to matter. A lack of empathy essentially means a lack of conscience, which is a hard concept to grasp for a lot of people. "When they lie it doesn't hurt them in the same way it would hurt us," Orloff said. "So many people can't understand why they're lying, because they're trying to fit these people into the ordinary standards of what it means to be empathetic." But they don't fit. In fact, they may not even realise they are lying half the time, because they're not conscious of it. Orloff said they actually believe they are telling the truth a lot of the time. It's not so much about the fact itself, she said, as it is about wanting to have power over somebody. Once the lies start, it can end with the victim being gaslighted, which is essentially when they are told over and over again that their version of reality is incorrect, and they begin to believe the warped truth of the abuser. |