No place for brutal honesty

Of the four types of lying, while white lies help in stabilising the network, the other three types are antisocial

An intermediate level of deception may be optimal in performing social functions. Photo: Bijoy Gosh

Are you the kind that looks for complete honesty in your social interactions? Here is a study that tells us that may not be the best situation if you want to be a part of an activesocial network.

Recent research done by Iniguez, Govezensky, Dunbar et al, from Aalto University, Finland, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico, and University of Oxford and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B , finds that while totally honest interactions prevent diversity and totally dishonest interactions destroy the network, an intermediate level of deception may be optimal in performing social functions.

The paper describes four types of lies, as classified by social psychologists: Prosocial: lying to benefit someone else; self-enhancement: lying to save face or gain an advantage; selfish: lying to conceal a misdeed and antisocial: lying with an intention to hurt someone else. In the study only the first type is classified as prosocial and the remaining three types are classified as antisocial.

Modelling social interactions by a network and focusing on lies told to a specific person at a time, the authors differentiate between the two types of lying and study the roles of these in stabilising social networks.

They find that the prosocial, or white lies, actually help in stabilising the network. An interesting offshoot of the study is that among a randomised representative sample of 1,000 Americans studied, it was found that there was an average of 550 lies told by a person per year (that is, about 1.65 lies per person per day). Half the lies were told by five per cent of the people surveyed.

Could it be, one wonders, that the individuals contributing towards stabilising a social network could be a small fraction of all the people?

It must be noted that this study is a model of a network, not necessarily human. While there is a question whether a distinction between white lies and antisocial lies exists among other animals than humans, there are interesting indicators. These are, for instance, feigned brooding and broken wing displays observed in various species. So the next time you insist on only the truth and nothing but the truth, think again!