Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist,
and I make mental health education videos.
Today, I'm talking about pathological lying,
what it is and how it compares to normal lying.
Yes, there is such a thing as normal lying.
There isn't an established official definition
for pathological lying
because it's not considered a mental disorder.
Instead, it's observed as a behavioral disturbance
that's present inside of other disorders,
like some personality disorders,
like antisocial personality disorder,
and some brain disorders like Korsakoff's syndrome,
which is brain damage from alcohol.
Pathological lying used to be called pseudologia fantastica.
I like saying that.
And it referred to people who told multiple outrageous lies
that would border on the fantastic.
And those were more than just simple lies.
These would include elaborate details
that seem questionably believable,
and when you challenge the person on the details,
they tell even more lies to make the story work.
The motive behind the lying wasn't always clear,
and sometimes it was just to impress people.
Now, there is a body of research on deception.
Most of the early work was within a forensic context,
usually looking at people who have committed crimes,
but the more recent research has focused
on non-criminal settings.
And of that research,
there has come this understanding of deception.
Lying is defined as the deliberate attempt
to get someone to believe something
that you know is not true.
And there's three types of lying:
normal, prolific, and pathological.
Pathological lying is still seen as a different entity
that takes lying to a different level,
but normal lying and prolific lying
were considered behaviors that were non-pathological.
Normal lying was defined
as telling less than five lies in a day.
Now, before you think that seems excessive
because "I hardly ever lie,"
let's take a look at how they broke down the lies.
In one of the studies
that I have referenced in the description,
they divided the lies into little lies
and big lies using specific examples.
These were considered little lies.
Telling a lie to keep from hurting someone's feelings.
For example, "No, your butt doesn't look too big
in those jeans."
Telling a lie to protect someone.
"No, no, no, no. It wasn't him.
I took the $500 cash from your drawer, sorry."
Telling a lie when you don't like someone's gift.
"Oh yeah. I love those polka dots socks
and the matching flannel panties.
Thank you, yeah.
Yeah, thanks."
Telling a lie to stop someone from finding out a secret.
"Oh, Jenny's abstaining from alcohol
because she's observing lent."
But really, Jenny's from alcohol because she's pregnant
and she's not ready to tell people yet.
And then telling a lie when a child wants something
that he or she can't have.
"You can't have that toy because it belongs to the boogeyman
and he may get mad at you if you touch it."
Do any of these sound familiar as lies that you've told?
These can be thought of as lies
that are justified in some way
because they serve a bigger purpose to protect someone.
Now, these were considered big lies.
Lies about whether or not you love someone,
not telling your partner who you've really been with,
not telling your partner where you've been,
calling in sick when you feel fine,
and considering it a mental health day,
lying about whether you like someone,
lying about how much money you've spent on someone,
pretending you were too busy to take a call,
saying that you haven't had that much to drink
when you really have,
and telling someone they look good when they don't.
This is similar to the little lie of not admitting
that someone looks fat.
In this case, you offer that someone really looks good
when you know they don't.
They didn't ask you so you could've kept it to yourself,
but instead, you build them up with these false statements.
So back to the difference between normal lying
and prolific lying.
On average, normal everyday lying
was telling one to two little lies a day,
and one big lie a week.
Prolific lying was telling six little lies
and three big lies in one day.
That's a lot of deception and as such,
prolific lying tend to result in more problems
in the work setting and in relationships.
An observation from the study that I thought was interesting
was that they found that the prolific lying group
tended to be younger, male,
and had higher occupational status,
like being in a managerial or supervisory position.
Does this mean that chronic deception creates advantages
over always being completely honest?
So both normal and prolific
would be considered non-pathological,
even though prolific can still cause problems.
Pathological lying is more compulsive
and the lies don't have a clear motive or benefit.
It can seem like lying for the sake of lying.
Some people start to believe their lies
and have trouble even knowing what the truth is.
When that happens,
it's pointless to challenge the person on their lies
because they may have gotten so lost in the lies
that they can't even dig their way out.
Because pathological lying has been poorly researched,
we don't have a good treatment protocol for it.
There's therapy to help increase the person's insight
into their lives and identify what triggers the behavior,
and even help the person recognize
that they're getting a lying loop.
Believe it or not, for some people,
it can become like ordinary talk
and they don't even see themselves
as spinning a lot of lies.
They just see it as talking, like storytelling.
And what's wrong with storytelling?
So for that person,
it could be helpful to help them recognize
that their storytelling is harmful to others and themselves.
As for a medication approach,
there isn't a specific medication to keep people from lying.
But if you treat the lying like a compulsion
where the person becomes very anxious if they don't lie,
or uses the lies to compensate
for some obsessional thinking that they have,
then it's possible that they may experience some improvement
from taking an antidepressant similar to what we use
for treating obsessive compulsive disorder.
So that's pathological lying.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.