Deception is an integral part of human nature.
From the age of one and two,
we begin to lie by crying to get attention.
And it's estimated we all lie up to nine times a day.
People are better at lying actually, than we are at detecting lies.
But what if we created a world in which we couldn't lie?
In a radical experiment,
pioneering scientists from across Europe have come together
to make this happen.
Brand-new technology is allowing them to rig three British people -
priest, advertising exec and YouTuber...
I feel like I'm in, like, a sci-fi movie or something.
..to make it impossible for them to lie undetected.
Firstly, I went to a networking party.
I don't think that I ever lie.
She said yes, but she was nodding no.
Yeah, they were fine, they were fine.
This is probably a lie.
Then, they will be challenged to live for a whole week without
telling a single lie... Have we been frustrating?
Erm, not at all.
..a bold social experiment to discover the role of deception
in our lives... Lying is a fundamental part of being human.
Is it really possible to not lie for an entire week?
..to investigate the impact lying has on our mental state...
You know it's stressful.
What's so hard?
..and the consequences of it for our relationships.
If I tell you, I think we'll get divorced.
Would the world be a better or worse place if we couldn't lie?
Three people are about to take part in a world first -
a lie detection study of modern British life.
I'm Mo Saha, I'm 37 years old,
from East London and I'm a brand and advertising consultant.
I'm Ruth Newton, I'm 46 years old and I am a parish priest
and lay training officer in the diocese of Leeds.
My name is Ehiz, I am 19. I am from East London and I'm a student
at university and an online blogger.
They are key in an experiment being run by psychology experts to study
the impact that lying has on our lives today.
I think it'd be great if we could understand a little bit about their
home lives, their social lives, maybe... work as well.
My interest in deception is basically individual differences.
So, the variety of motives for people's lying, their performance,
are they good liars, good lie detectors?
What's very different about this experiment compared to almost
everything else that any of the deception researcher has done before
is that we are following the same people for an entire week.
Normally participants come in
and tell one truth or one lie,
or maybe both and that's it.
So, Ruth, are you as excited and anxious as we are?
Yes, I think I am, yeah.
So, what do you do in advertising then? What's the job?
Well, I'm a consultant, a freelance consultant.
I try and find something interesting about the product or the service and
create campaigns off the back of it. Borderline lying or...?
Erm, positioning, I'd call it,
putting it in its best light, I think.
Hopefully not lying. What we are going to do is hook you up with
three pieces of technology. OK.
Key to this experiment
is ground-breaking new lie detection equipment
the subjects will be wearing throughout their normal lives.
So, let's start with the watch.
This state-of-the-art wrist sensor detects changes
in heart rate and sweat, which can change when we lie,
transmitting the data to the science team.
I'm a bit worried that I lie more than I think I do
because I think I'm quite an honest person
but, since I've been thinking about it, I'm not 100% sure,
so I'm very worried about that.
This is going to measure your heart rate,
measure whether you are sweating or not.
So, I'll put it on your right wrist. Yeah. Perfect.
Lying increases the cognitive load, or strain on our brains
which, in turn, can affect the movement of our bodies.
I feel like I'm in, like, a sci-fi movie or something.
These unique suits use 17 accelerometers
to pick up on the tiniest of movements... Like that?
..enabling the scientists to sort truths from lies,
with around 82% accuracy.
I am nervous.
I am nervous that I might be more dishonest than I think I am
and that would reflect really badly on my self image
and on my professional image.
Stretch your arms out.
Perfect. And walk back to where you came from.
The scientists' final tool is language analysis,
which looks for clusters of verbal clues indicating deception.
With the subjects fully rigged, it's time for the experiment to begin.
First, the scientists want to gain an insight into the types of lies
the subjects regularly use.
Let me start with a toughie.
Do you remember the last lie that you told?
I... had a cigarette, actually, the other day and told my partner
that I didn't and she called me up on it.
That was the last one I can remember,
it was a couple of days ago. A lot of the lies that we tell
are actually to protect ourselves,
for example, because you did something wrong, a transgression,
and you are trying to hide it.
My sister, she left some pancakes in the fridge
and she asked who ate them,
and I said that it was not me.
And then there are omissions, where we don't tell the piece of
information that perhaps might have been relevant to the story.
I think that I find it difficult to tell people difficult truths.
If they said, "Does my bum look big in this?"
It would have to look very big for me to say, "Go and change."
I think, at work, sometimes, when I don't agree with the point of view,
I'll go, "That's interesting," and kind of not address it,
or say that I don't agree with you.
We all have a unique relationship with deception
and why we choose to lie.
Understanding this context is key for the scientists.
When I was a bit younger, I had a little bit of a slippery
relationship with the truth cos I used to keep quite a lot...
My parents are quite traditional, Indian parents, so I didn't feel
like I could be honest with my parents about my sexuality
and my relationships, and my lifestyle.
Jesus is the way, the truth and the life,
the important phrase being, "The truth."
But, if it's a choice between truth and love,
I always want to go with love.
There must be a way of being lovingly truthful,
but I haven't quite learnt that yet.
That sounds like a big challenge.
I know, when I was in school,
I was bullied a lot because of my personality and the way I speak,
and the way I behave. And I even, to the extent,
wanted to become somebody who I was not happy being,
which was this stereotypical, "All right, mate," kind of guy.
When we present to others we have a front stage,
which we prepare for everybody to see and do,
and then there's a backstage, which we reserve to ourselves
and maybe a few select others.
So, I've come to find the frontstage and backstage,
and I've come to the decision that I am going to be centre stage
and I'm going to play my role and be the best person I can be.
We're now going to move onto something
we often do in a laboratory, which is have people
deliberately tell a lie,
so we can see how it impacts on you and the sorts of things you do.
This context will help them create a baseline of behaviour
to assist in identifying their lies in the real world.
So, can you tell me about your last holiday?
My last holiday was to Seattle.
We went to Scarborough, in North Yorkshire.
I went to the Maldives.
So, in our research, we showed that the majority of people actually more
when they are lying. Mo is one of the few people that move less when
they are lying, so she sort of freezes when she becomes deceptive.
The most fascinating I find about Ehiz's baseline
is the amount of details he includes in all of his stories.
So, he first lied about his trip to the Maldives
and he actually included a lot of interesting details.
I'm not going to lie, the flight was really horrible because it was very,
very cramped because...
Ruth's physiology we were monitoring was quite stable, really,
throughout the interactions with us,
so she's going to be a tough one.
The scientists are monitoring the participants across a typical day,
to uncover how important deception is to our lives.
One in five of our social interactions usually involves some
kind of deceit and 92% of us admit to lying to our romantic partner.
The scientists want to study if
and how Mo lies to her romantic partner, Sofia.
Hiya. You all right?
Can I get two smoothies, please, and two soya lattes, please?
Two soya lattes. Thanks very much.
Mo's baseline taught us that she really owns her truths,
compared to her lies.
When she lies, she shuts down and she becomes much more concerned
about making sure she is saying the right things and not giving it away.
Will the scientists' baseline observation that Mo doesn't speak
her mind play out in real life?
How do you feel about Brighton next weekend?
Are you looking forward to it?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know your two friends that well,
but I'm up for going and I want to stay in Brighton,
and it'll be nice to go, you know, hang out,
get out of London for a bit.
I think it'll be fun. I don't know anyone, but I think it'll be good.
Truth or lie?
So, this is a really interesting one, from a language perspective.
What we see here is Mo using very positive, effective language
to give a top-level answer,
which is masquerading perhaps some deeper concerns
about what's happening.
I'm up for going and I want to stay in Brighton and it'll be nice to go,
you know, hang out and get out of London for a bit.
From a movement perspective,
this one was very interesting as well
because she was sitting almost completely still.
So, if we have a look here, then you can see
she's not using her hands at all for gesturing.
It looks like she's holding her chair almost, yeah.
Yeah, it looks like she's holding her chair and, from the baseline,
we know that Mo, whenever she's telling the truth
that she actually uses her hands quite a lot,
so I think, based on her movements, that this is probably a lie.
So, either lying or certainly perhaps covering up
a more mixed feeling about that trip to Brighton? Definitely.
I do want to get out of London and I do want to go to Brighton.
It wouldn't be, like, my first choice of thing to do,
to go to someone's birthday party that I don't know.
But if that's the case and it makes her happy, then I'll do it.
If you have one conversation,
then the chances are the highest that
if this conversation is with a stranger, that you are lying.
But because you talk so much more often to people
that you are very close to -
for example, your romantic partner, your best friends,
maybe your boss - if you add up all the lies that we tell,
actually the majority of the lies are to people
that we are very close to and that on top of this list is,
I'm sorry, Mum, but mothers!
Lying to avoid confrontation is a common form of deception.
Studies show that this regularly occurs in the workplace.
How are you doing? Yeah, good. I haven't seen you in ages...
The scientists are keen to observe how this plays out in real life.
Today, I've got a meeting with one of my brand clients.
Going to be having a catch-up basically,
a bit of a recap of some of the work we've done.
You know, they're new clients, so I don't want to be too overly direct.
Actually, I think the fact that there is tension that we can't quite
nail right now is a good thing.
Yeah, I'm totally here to bounce off. I'm around all of next week.
Have we been frustrating? Not at all, I just think
it's probably been the most challenging one of these I've done,
but because of the reason...
..that there wasn't a "why" to start with...
..that works in today's marketplace.
A tough question.
You are sat in front of your clients
and with colleagues beside you,
you're asked a very direct question,
I certainly saw her respond with
increased arousal during that whole phase of questioning.
We see that she doesn't move that much but, actually,
I think later on, she's going to explain it a bit more,
she starts moving more, so probably the initial answer,
"No, you're not," that's maybe not completely true,
but then, afterwards, she is going
to explain exactly what the challenges are.
I don't think they have been frustrating.
I think I'm frustrated at myself
for not spotting how to get them there quicker.
I think she could be a little bit harsher with us.
She could say to us, "Guys, come on, we've talked around this
"a few times, where are you coming down on it?"
Mo often has to lie when she presents herself
in the workplace publicly.
That is, she doesn't like to be in the limelight, but her work,
like it does for so many of us,
forces us into a position where we have to be that extrovert
and that can be really quite draining for someone who that's not
their natural way of interacting.
70% of us say that it is OK to lie
in order to protect someone or avoid hurt feelings.
Parish priest Ruth is one of those people.
In Sharrow, North Yorkshire,
the scientists will be monitoring Ruth's honestly levels
on a typical Sunday to see how much she lies
and what impact this has on her.
I'm feeling very excited.
I'm not feeling too nervous about the service
because I don't think that I ever lie during a service.
Although, perhaps afterwards, during coffee, who knows?
Good morning, everyone,
and welcome to St John's.
Since I've thought about this experiment that I'm involved with,
I've noticed that I sometimes
struggle to challenge people with the truth.
After hearing some special prayers from members of her congregation...
And pour out your love on us.
..it's time for coffee with her parishioners.
Our early interactions with Ruth taught us
she tends to be overly positive when she lies,
so she uses that positive emotion as a way of
glossing over the underlying truth.
She also uses a great amount of omissions.
So, she doesn't actually tell a deceit,
she doesn't actually conceal information, but what she does
is not answer the question,
or not address the issue at hand.
Hi, how are you? OK. Lovely, lovely service.
Thank you. Yes, and the prayers, were they...?
Yeah, they were fine, they were fine, yeah.
They... covered the brief.
So, yeah, I think...
And, um, they were very clear,
everybody could hear what was going on.
Good. So, yeah, I think you did really well.
Really? Yeah. Thanks, Ruth.
Well done, Richard. Thank you very much. Bye now.
In a bid to better understand how we lie,
one of the methods the scientists employ is language analysis,
recording everything Ruth says and highlighting patterns
and changes in her speech.
Ruth's answer is quite factual based.
"It was to the brief," for example. Yeah.
If you actually think about what that means,
it's, "That was satisfactory.
"That just kind of did the job."
Also, commenting on the fact the prayers were audible, you know.
If you really can't say anything else, then talk about audible.
Looking at the data we are getting from the watch
and the physiological response there, it's quite interesting.
During that interaction she was having there about the prayers,
there was certainly a spike in how sweaty her fingers were getting,
so the electrodermal activity.
What I found very interesting
is that she said, "Yes,"
but she was nodding, "No," when she was saying
that the prayers were fine.
The prayers, yeah, they were fine.
They were fine, yeah.
They covered the brief.
With her, I find that, quite strikingly, that her nonverbal
behaviour and her verbal behaviour doesn't always match.
Absolutely. So, to just sum it up, do we think she was lying here?
It sounds like she's trying to present to Richard
a more positive story than she actually believes.
I think so too, yeah.
I think that I probably told Richard
that his prayers were better than they were.
If things are good enough,
then I tend not to say how they can be made better.
I just want to encourage people that they've done a good enough job.
Hi. Come in. Hi.
Next, Ruth has a visit from a couple she's marrying.
And then we have the final hymn,
and then a blessing.
They have a general chat about the upcoming wedding,
but bride Paraskevi has a more probing question for her.
We're having our wedding on a Saturday, aren't we?
Do you feel like your weekends get taken up with weddings?
I like taking a wedding.
You do? It makes... It makes... a happy day.
There's lots of things that I do that aren't really very enjoyable,
because they're to do with people being sad, or people being ill,
or people needing support.
But weddings are real happy occasions.
So, you don't mind your weekends being taken up with them?
No. That's nice.
Right, I just want to jump in on this one.
So, when she's asked about whether she enjoys working at the weekends,
we see a little bit of a spike,
an increase in her electrodermal activity,
so that response where the wrist gets slightly more sweaty,
and her heart rate drops as well.
So, that's making me start to question
whether she's being entirely honest...
That's interesting, because I think, from a language point of view,
we see a similar thing, which is almost lying by omission,
a strategy that we know some people use.
There's lots of things that I do that aren't really very enjoyable
because they are to do with people being sad, or people being ill,
or people needing support.
In this case, what Ruth is doing
is she's choosing a more negative option and reflecting on the fact
that weddings are more positive.
So, by comparing it to very sad and negative events,
a wedding on Saturday is perfect.
Yes. On the other hand, I can't really blame her.
This is a bride who's very excited about her one special day,
probably planning it for months or years.
Isn't this the perfect example of white lies?
That white lies serve a particular purpose.
It's a great example of the fact that lying is not inherently bad.
There are times when it has a role in our interactions
and our relationships with others.
When it comes to telling white lies, Ruth's not alone.
Around three quarters of us admit to telling white lies.
They account for around 80% of the fibs we tell.
Saturdays, every other week, is my day off
and, if I get a run of weddings and I don't get my day off,
then that is quite annoying.
But I just didn't think it was good to say
I'd rather be doing the shopping than doing the wedding.
And somehow that's not entirely true either.
♪ I got a ticket for the long way round
♪ I brought a whisky for the way
♪ And I sure would like some sweet company
♪ There's something... What do you say? ♪
19-year-old drama student and online blogger Ehiz
lives at home with his three siblings,
who have their own theories about his lying techniques.
We've been brought up not to lie and just to be truthful with everything,
no matter how bad it is.
But when he does lie, he does, like, a little lip quiver
and his eye does this, and I also know that he becomes
very dismissive and defensive as well.
People are better at lying, actually,
than we are at detecting lies.
But we do think we are pretty good at lie detection,
so our confidence levels are quite high.
We probably over-rely on lots of nonverbal behaviour
and things like that,
which we think is indicative of deception -
which, in actual fact, isn't.
We're usually about a coin toss accuracy, 50-50
or 54%, the research says.
♪ You're gonna miss me when I'm gone. ♪
Yeah!
Over the course of a week, we lie to a third of the people in our lives.
And research shows that many of us tell a lot more self-centred lies
than those that benefit others. Why would I wear your clothes?
The scientists want to study how this theory works in the real world,
so they are monitoring how Ehiz deals with tricky questions
from his family. His baseline taught us, when he's trying to construct
his lie, he completely distances himself from what's being said.
So, there's no first person pronoun use, no pronoun use at all almost,
it's all third person, describing what was going on,
until he's got a story in his head that he can then move forward with.
When Mum and Dad are calling you to come and do something,
do you purposely ignore when they are calling you?
You know the walls are very thick...
No... so it's very, very hard to, like, hear and, like, interact.
Do you pretend to sleep when we call you downstairs
to come and do something? You know how much I work hard, you know...
No, no, no... No, no, no. You know I work very hard. Yeah.
I go to uni and I go to work and I've got band practice
and church on Sunday. You know it's stressful.
I'm living a very stressful life.
But I remember on Christmas Day, I saw you quickly hide your phone
under your pillow and slap your head on the pillow,
and you covered yourself, and you were laughing. No, no.
Laughing... But you do know that, like, at times...
..I sleep talk and that?
Sleep talking! You can have dreams where you are...
I actually did have one the other day.
You were sending voice notes. No, I wasn't.
Yes, you were. I don't know what room you went to
cos I was not... In the morning, I don't talk to anyone,
so I don't know what you're on about.
Wow. So, from a language perspective,
there's two really interesting things occurring here.
Firstly, when he starts to answer that question,
he uses absolutely no first person pronoun.
Really? There's no use of I, or my or me,
which research has shown is often associated with lying
or trying to avoid telling the truth.
Then he starts to give lots and lots of detail
about a thing that's completely peripheral to the
question that's being asked.
You know I work very hard.
I go to uni, I go to work and
then I've got band practice,
then I'm at church on Sunday. You know it's stressful.
One of the things that's been observed in research in the amount
of details people give is actually truth tellers and liars
don't often differ in the amount of details they give,
what they differ in is the quality of those details.
So, truth tellers really talk about the substance,
the context, the smells, the sites, the sounds,
the experiences they felt.
Whereas liars often talk in superficial details,
they try and pad out their story
to try and make it sound more realistic.
I wasn't expecting that at all.
I didn't tell one fib, one little white lie, you know I didn't.
I just said it as it is. Literally, all just as it is.
The scientists think he's lying,
his siblings say he's lying,
but Ehiz is adamant he's not.
Or this an embellishment, too?
He's appeared to lie to cover up of some his wrongdoings
and that's actually something we do from a very early age.
From the age of one and two,
we begin to lie by crying to get attention.
There's sort of an increase in how much and how proficient people are
at lying. From the age of six up to roughly adolescence,
and then when we get older,
we actually don't lie that much any more.
You see that whenever people hit roughly 60 years
and they are back at the level of lying of six-year-olds,
which I think is wonderful.
My schedule has just been jam-packed, it's so busy.
I am here networking, auditions...
Networking, repeat.
Where's networking? Thursday, I went to a networking party...
Did you, like, make any contacts, anyone important?
I got there, listen... I opened the door...
He puts a great deal of effort into the presentation of his persona.
It's nonverbals, it's facial expressions, it's tone of voice,
it's accent and all these sorts of things,
but you've got to think that a lot of hard work.
Got work on Friday and Saturday, then church on Sunday.
Then, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday...
So, what's the benefit?
Interestingly, we find that some people actually display
what we call duper's delight.
It's the enjoyment of lying,
it's the enjoyment of potentially getting one over on somebody.
It's potentially a sense of power.
And I think we certainly see that sometimes in Ehiz.
Did it even cross my mind that I may have been lying?
Possibly, did it even subconsciously...?
I've not even realised and the people I'm speaking to
probably didn't realise themselves. In the end, you are just building
a lively conversation and that is part of human interaction.
OK, guys, without further ado, let's get on...
Like many of us now, Ehiz has a strong online presence.
As a blogger, he has an alter ego.
Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe.
But there's little difference between his tendency to exaggerate
and embellish online and offline.
New forms of communication technology
have opened up brand-new platforms,
where we have to decide how honest to be.
But is this technology actually causing us to lie more?
There is a real concern in almost every area of the Internet...
..online dating, hiring people,
friendships, that people lie more with technology.
Professor Jeff Hancock is a world-leading expert
in understanding how technology and deception fit together.
I don't think technology is making us lie more,
it's changing the way we lie and the way we trust each other.
One example is, we had people apply for a job.
They could do it on LinkedIn, or in a paper resume.
And we found surprisingly that the LinkedIn profiles were more honest.
One of the reasons for this is because of this network right here.
So, this is all the people that are connected to me and so,
lying on my LinkedIn profile can show up to these folks.
So, the network acts as a, kind of, constraint on deception,
and so I can't lie about those kinds of big job things.
Also, when we asked people to record all their lies for a week,
we actually found that they lied the most on the phone and least of all,
in their e-mail. This is really surprising for people usually,
but one of the reasons we see more lies on the phone and face-to-face
is because it's spontaneous.
I can get asked things where truth isn't a good option for me,
so I might say, "What do you think of my beard?"
You hate beards and you say,
"Yeah, it's nice, your shirt's really nice,"
because you don't want to make me feel bad.
Where e-mail and text messaging gives us a little time,
and we can actually come up with answers that are more honest
than if we were just put on the spot right away.
So, we're probably not telling more lies,
we may just be changing when we lie and the way we do it.
But does technology make us more likely to be deceived?
So, some kind of lies, we're much more susceptible to.
This is one of the reasons why fake news has been so problematic.
When I see something that's highly emotional,
it triggers a truth-first response.
So I believe that. The reason we have that truth response is if there
was a sabre-tooth tiger over here
and I felt an emotion and I disregarded it with,
"I'm going to doubt that first,"
then I would die and my genes wouldn't be passed on.
So, this truth bias, or trust default that we have,
comes from our evolution and so fake news takes advantage
of that default trust. Highly emotional, must be important,
I'd better spread it.
With false news being shared more and reaching more people,
how do we combat it?
I think technology and deception is kind of like an arms race.
So we do get more tools to deceive other people,
this is what fake news is taking advantage of,
but at the same time we get tools that we can detect deception.
So, take the headline,
copy the headline and put it into the search bar.
That's as simple as it is.
Deception ability increases, but then detection increases.
So, I don't think, overall,
technology makes it harder for us to detect deception.
The first part of the experiment
studying how we lie in the real world is complete.
Hello again. How are you? Hi, Ruth. Hi.
Its purpose was to take deception studies out of the lab and discover,
for the first time, how deceptive we are in our everyday lives.
So, the technology has been examining your behaviour.
Now, what we're with you is sometimes you omit details
and you go off on other paths.
It's distracting somebody from the question they've asked
that you don't want to answer - is that really lying?
Well, interestingly, scientists view it as a form of lying.
OK, so I didn't realise that,
the technology was going to pick up omission.
I thought that I was going to be able to use that really well,
and really cunningly, to not lie.
So, Mo, that meeting you had with some clients
seemed fairly intense to me and, when you are in those scenarios,
do you feel you're, kind of, almost projecting an alternative you,
and to what extent is that a lie?
It is a performance, to some extent.
In that way, I think it's not entirely honest.
I've got a deep interest in how society is increasingly favouring
the extrovert - the person who is happy to be gregarious
and go to all of the meetings, and presenting all the time -
over the introvert - who has to make a lot of effort
to fit into that society.
Yeah, it's funny because I think most of my clients
would assume I'm like that all the time and I'm not really.
So, it is difficult.
To truly study the effect lying has on society,
the experts have a radical second part to their experiment,
challenging the participants to live completely honestly 24/7
for a whole week. For a week, we just want you to be fully honest.
So, what does that mean? What do we expect from you?
Fabrications, downright lies - those aren't allowed.
These lies of omissions, I think, are off the table.
I'm just trying to imagine doing this and it sounds difficult.
I'm really excited to get some new insight
into if it's really possible
to not lie for an entire week.
We are hoping that we see some behavioural change
and also a better understanding of when it's appropriate
and not appropriate to lie.
They'll keep wearing the smartwatch
to provide the scientists with data
and it will also act as a reminder to be honest.
Hi there, day five...
They'll all be keeping in close contact with the scientists
throughout, via video diaries.
For Ruth in Yorkshire, whose aim is always to be kind,
she's off to a slow start on her dishonesty detox.
This morning, I went for an appointment and, on the way,
I met a couple of people, who seemed really pleased to see me.
But I didn't know who they were.
Now this is incredibly embarrassing and I didn't say,
"I'm sorry I don't remember you, or know who you are."
That would have been quite hurtful to think that you weren't memorable.
So, I played along and I asked them lots of neutral questions
and I think that I convinced them
that I knew who they were
and that I remembered about their life.
But, actually, I didn't have a clue.
The scientists have learned that Ruth often tells little white lies
and lies by omission to be kind to other people.
So, they challenged her not to do this during her week of honesty,
to study the effect it has.
Ruth's role as a parish priest is one that's fraught with tension,
in terms of her relationship with deception.
She's got to navigate being honest to many people
who have put a lot of trust in her,
while also not needlessly upsetting them, or
turning them away from the good work that they're doing in the church.
How will she, and those around her, cope
when that perceived kindness is taken away?
Ruth is conducting her weekly church committee meeting.
Good morning. Thank you.
I'm looking at the agenda for this morning and, so far,
we have, "Looking at the worship for the duration of March,"
and we are talking about what we're going to do for our grand opening
of the building.
Are there any other items you want to go on the agenda?
I don't think so. OK.
If we start with the fun thing,
which is the worship in March, I just want to...
We do have this concept about speaking the truth to one another
in love, in order to stop another person
going in a different direction,
or for the harmonious relationships within the church.
I particularly, as the parish priest,
have an obligation to do that.
So, I think we've arrived at
a fairly decent consensus on everything,
so we'll just conclude with the grace, unless...
Sam, you look like you want to say something else.
Yes, I think, just a piece of AOB.
I think the standing committee ought to have a brief report
on the situation on the gas.
I was about to conclude,
but then someone came in with more any other business.
I wouldn't have really minded,
except that I'd asked at the beginning of the meeting
what the agenda items were,
so that I could time the meeting properly, get it finished on time.
As you know, the gas leak was discovered finally last Friday
and that... they've had to put a stop,
an emergency stop on the gas, so we've had no heating since then.
So, I was quite irritated, in a way, by that,
so I decided that it would be an act of omission to ignore that.
I think it would be better if in future, if...
If we, sort of, had all the agenda items at the beginning,
you know, rather than some of this stuff coming up at the end.
Whilst I do want to know about the gas, it...
You know, I got a little bit ambushed by stuff at the end.
I didn't like doing it, I did feel uncomfortable.
I have great empathy with my people,
they work really hard and sometimes they get things wrong.
But I had stated that was the way
I wanted meetings to run and they'd forgotten.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
and love of God in the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit...
So I think, in the long run, it'll probably be beneficial,
but I didn't like doing it.
Thank you, there we go.
Thank you.
Hello there, guys. My Uber is here.
How are you guys doing? Today is day one of the...
Hi, it's me. OK...
Got to have an Uber this morning, I mean this afternoon,
cos I've got work now.
Hi, you all right?
Sorry, don't mind me, I'm talking to my camera.
I've got a project to do.
I think Ehiz will find his week of living honestly difficult.
I think the embellishments and exaggeration he includes
are so much part of him and his storytelling, and who he is,
to remove those and to eliminate them from every aspect of his life
will really mean redefining who Ehiz is
and that's going to be a real challenge.
OK, that's when the beat came in and I had to keep quiet
because it was just... on another level, it was just so cool.
The videos that I actually do enjoy a lot is...
..making reaction videos to a song,
that maybe an artist may have,
you know, recently released.
The scientists want to study the impact that lying has
on our society and, for Ehiz,
that means both his offline and online personas.
Hey, yay.
I actually loved it. Do you know what?
I'm literally just so much, I'm too much. I'm honestly so much...
I laugh because it's so funny, you know, just to see how comical I am.
Having created an exaggerated alter ego of himself both online
and in the real world, what impact will it have on Ehiz
to revert to complete honesty for the first time in years?
Hello, guys it's me...
What you do post online
sometimes isn't all what life is behind the camera.
I came up with this persona called Jordan Banks.
That's not my name, it's not my birth name,
but it's almost like an alter ego.
Having a hard time in secondary school didn't help
and it got to a point where I didn't even know, in myself,
what my identity was.
And it ended up leading to a lot of depression you know.
Didn't talk to anybody, had no friends.
But I've always had this persona to give me a confidence boost
and it helped me in a really big way because, you know,
every single time I thought about Jordan Banks, his life was perfect,
you know. He had friends, he had money,
he had everything
and I always look towards that as motivation.
One of the things about Ehiz is he's a very creative individual.
It is interesting, though, to think about what we call
the "dark side" of creativity.
People who are particularly creative can lie more,
can be more inclined to choose a slightly more creative moral route,
let's say, which I think is really interesting.
Even just suggesting creativity to people,
one of the ways in which they then start
to exploit that is by being more deceptive.
The scientists don't hear much from Ehiz for a few days,
and then they get this.
I was meant to go into work today, but I called in sick.
Yeah...
It's not going to happen. Um...
I feel like
it's going to affect the experiment in a big way
because I'm trying to use this week as much as possible
to live as truthfully as possible
and I'm restricted from doing that today
because of my illness.
100% honesty may be proving too much for Ehiz.
Introvert advertising exec Mo, on the other hand,
is taking to the idea of telling people what she really thinks,
rather than saying, "Yes," when she means, "No."
Are you going? Yeah.
So, I just told the truth quite consciously, then.
We just saw a couple of people and Sofia asked me,
"Do you want to stop and say hello?"
And normally I would have said, "Yeah, sure, let's say hello."
This time I said, "No, I don't, really."
But how will Mo cope in a high-pressure work situation,
where she has to be assertive to stick to the experiment?
What I want is to get these three musicians - Maxine, Matthew...
Mo, I think has a lot of potential for learning during this week.
I think she'll find it challenging,
but also I think she could find it quite liberating,
as she begins to realise that, actually, being more honest
has a lot of positive, as well as negative, consequences.
Mo has a new commission from the Musicians' Union.
First, she's filming some social media content for them,
and then she's meeting her client to discuss.
It might be a bit tricky to navigate today
because I'm meeting my client, Naomi.
When you have a new client, you're generally trying to put
a good impression across, you know,
look like you're completely in control, those kind of things,
and also we might be talking a little bit about budget
and we're always really transparent with costs,
but I just hope there's no tricky questions around that.
Off to meet the new client.
I think we're on time. Good, yeah.
Thanks for meeting me, Naomi. No worries.
Really excited about kicking this off.
So, did you want to show me some stuff?
Yeah, this is all the video. Just little moments, like this.
I'll turn it down...
They were just getting their instruments out.
It sounds good, even though they're just warming up, doesn't it? Yeah.
In terms of format, has that been discussed on your side?
There might be a possibility of making a connection
with a cinema chain and actually getting some cinema ads,
so do you think we might be able to do that
with the footage that we've got or...?
Well, I think... I think it's a great idea.
There's a slight change in request for the content we're doing
to be maybe made for a cinema, when it was always for social.
That wasn't in the original brief.
Normally, I'd be like, "Yes, yes, yes," cos that's client service
but I'm trying to be as honest as I can.
I think, you know, with cinema in mind,
I probably would have done it slightly differently,
or we would have set it up...
I think I need to go away and have a think about it
but, at the moment, it's not set up
to be, sort of, displayed on the cinema screen.
It would have budgetary implications.
It WOULD have budgetary implications, yeah.
It felt good being a bit more... Clearer, I suppose,
but there were definite moments where I was like,
"Ooh, I'm being a bit fluffy," I think.
And I don't think that was good for her or me, so it wasn't ideal.
In a bid to study how and why we lie in our normal lives,
this experiment is pushing
all of our subjects out of their comfort zone.
Cheers. Nice to see you.
Mo meets best friend Alice and partner Sofia
to discuss how she's finding the experience.
So, how did the meeting go this morning?
I think I probably wasn't as direct as I could have been, in terms
of going, "Well, that wasn't in the original scope."
What was it that makes you not do it, you know?
Because in that moment, what's the first thing
that happens in your head? I just want to please them.
Yeah. I want to accommodate them as a new client
and make them feel reassured and happy.
If this was the old me,
or if this was before this week,
I wouldn't have even tried to be more direct.
No. So, do you think that that is a shift?
Yeah. You're much more aware of when you're being honest and you're not,
but you haven't quite tipped into consistently being honest.
I want to be more.
I just... Have to find a way you feel comfortable.
Yeah. I suppose so. I don't want to...
Yeah.
Are you all right? Yeah.
Oh, no...
Oh, what's so hard?
Don't know.
I just don't want to feel like I'm going around being fake
and having fake relationships,
and putting on a front in a way that's, like, disingenuous.
And do you think you're doing that?
I don't think I am.
I don't think I am, but if I'm not been totally direct
then maybe I am, you know.
Best friend Alice has known Mo for 20 years.
I don't think that she inherently feels that who she really is
is a totally OK thing to show the world.
There is such a fear of being told that she is wrong
or being inappropriate in any way,
and I do think that it's holding her back,
actually, from, kind of, proper happiness.
You know, I'm halfway through on day four.
But I don't think I've fully, full throttle, you know,
been to be truthful and honest.
I don't think I have done that yet.
Yeah, I'm getting a bit upset but I think it's more like...
It's quite a deep, in a way.
The next challenge in Ruth's week of living truthfully
is her weekly school assembly.
So, Ruth, we see lies by omission.
It's a common thing many of us do.
At assembly, I want to give genuine feedback to the children.
Maybe me just smiling and saying, "Ooh, yes,
"that's nice," doesn't help the children to learn and grow.
The story we're going to have today is called The Boy Who Cries Wolf.
That will be quite difficult because you don't want to hurt the
children's feelings and you do need to be really careful.
Do you think the boy found it easier to cry wolf
the first time,
the second time, or the third time?
I think the first one was easy because they actually believed you,
cos it was the first time you shouted it.
Now, I think you're answering a question
that is different to the question I'm asking.
I think what I did differently in the assembly was that
I was less affirming of the answers
that weren't giving me what I was hoping
the question would deliver.
What do you think this means?
"What do you do makes you who you are."
Well, what you normally do is the best thing
to what you should do
because what you normally do is being yourself, so yeah.
OK, so you think...
That's not quite what I meant,
but it's a good thought, isn't it?
But the children need to know that, whilst your thought was interesting,
it wasn't exactly what I was looking for and maybe if you'd listen to
the question a bit more carefully,
you would have come up with the answer that I was looking for.
If everyone was the same and told the same lies,
and everything like that, the world would be a pretty boring place.
If everybody was different.
If everybody was the same, it would be boring.
But that's not what I meant either.
Who's blowing the candles out?
It didn't seem to upset anybody.
The children were happy enough and I had been sufficiently affirming.
Honesty is a tricky thing to define.
Clearly, there are some things where
we are being deliberately dishonest when we are answering a question
with a fib, which is clearly not true and then there's clear truth,
where we're being absolutely honest and telling
the person everything. In that grey middle area,
is this notion of things like omissions, where we leave out
information that might be wanted, but also the notion that if I tell
you everything that comes into my mind, every single detail,
that seems to go a little bit beyond the notion of truth.
So, do you think that not telling somebody something is a lie,
if they've not asked the question and you just tell them it?
If they've not asked the question and you just tell them it?
You omit to tell them something.
Ruth and her husband Andrew are still struggling with the question
of exactly how far she should go with telling the whole truth.
So, you're being really annoying,
asking me to take your shoe on and off on and off, do I have to say,
in order to be truthful,
"This is really annoying, Andrew, taking your shoe on and off?"
Or do I just keep it to myself?
We're not fighting. We have discovered a robust area
of disagreement, that's all.
Andrew thinks she should go further with her truth telling.
By omitting to say something, do you actually improve this situation?
So, every time that I'm finding it frustrating,
every time I'm finding it annoying,
every time you've done something that I think
is a bit embarrassing or you've said something
to somebody that I wish you hadn't, every time you do that,
if I think that, I'm to tell you?
Yeah. It won't make any difference.
I think we'll get divorced. It won't make any difference.
I want you to concentrate on doing lies of omission
and not telling me things that I don't want to hear,
so I don't want to know if my dress isn't as good as it was yesterday.
Because I think that's just rude.
I think volunteering information
that people don't ask for and don't want is rude.
Each participant, by the end of this week, seems to have a notion
of where to draw the line, in terms of honesty being the best policy,
so Ruth has said, "I'm very happy to lie
"when it's for the benefit of others. I'm really not happy to lie
"when it's for my own benefit, or unnecessary."
So she's drawn a line in the sand there and
I hope she continues to stick to that line.
So, today is the last day and here is me taking the truth watch off
for the last time and hoping that its effects
are going to be long-lasting
and that my conscience is now as sensitive as the watch.
Good morning, guys.
Well, no, good afternoon, really.
After calling in sick to the experiment for a few days,
Ehiz is back in touch.
The scientists have challenged him
to make a totally authentic video blog,
without exaggeration and embellishment.
But for Ehiz, the challenge of living truthfully
has proven too much.
This week, it has tested me a lot.
It has tested me in many, many areas.
But making a YouTube video, being quite truthful,
it wasn't going to work out.
It just wasn't going to happen.
I don't feel like my viewers would necessarily connect to that,
as I would have wanted them to.
What's new with you?
This week, yeah, it's just been...
It's been quite stressful.
How so? Because obviously, I was ill for the first two days.
Best friend Countessa wants to check up on his progress.
Would you say that Jordan Banks is kind of a lie?
No. For example, if I was to do, like, a story time on YouTube,
for example, and I'm over exaggerating.
You wouldn't necessarily feel like, "He's a liar,"
cos you're so caught up and immersed in what's going on.
OK, so it's not a lie? No. It's a deception. It's a deception. Wow!
When you compare the word deception and lie,
are they not ever so slightly similar? Do they not cross paths?
With deceptions, you don't necessarily feel you're lying,
until you properly like think about it, whereas with lying,
it's almost like guilt.
You feel guilt. But with deceptions, in regards to Jordan Banks,
it's always part of me.
So, for Ehiz, deception isn't lying.
He's found a way of justifying his lies
and is choosing to stick with it.
I feel like he was using Jordan Banks as a crutch
and I feel like he's... been struggling.
He's been struggling to keep the persona and be truthful.
I feel like this is an act.
I feel like it's a facade.
He's a scam. It's a scam!
He's potentially finding this quite difficult
because there is a deceptive component to this alter ego
that he has, and I think he slips into it quite readily.
Which raises the idea that maybe deception is a slippery slope.
What we see is that people start to do it more, as they get more
opportunity to do it, but also it takes less of an emotional toll,
if you like, so basically it gets easier to lie as you move on.
So, I think very realistically, if it becomes central to your
character, then, yeah, it could become all-consuming.
Hi, Mum and Dad!
Hello.
What's this? Mo spent most of her 20s not being completely honest
with her family about her sexuality,
so wants to tell them all about the experiment.
Do you think you'll see any changes in me
after doing this week of truthfulness?
Like what?
Can you see that, yeah?
So, do you reckon you're going to keep it up, like,
trying to be more honest and direct?
I think I am going to try and keep it up because,
even though I don't think I was entirely successful this week, um,
the times I was a bit more truthful, a bit more focused on being honest,
I got really good results.
What I found amazing about Mo's behaviour this week
is that she's almost on a high of all the brave moments
that she had where she told
the truth and actually was getting very positive things of it,
and that's something that, in research,
we actually never really consider.
What happens when we're truthful rather than deceptive?
Because I think, in research, we assume people are truthful
most of the time and we focus on deception,
but actually this week has shown me that people are quite deceptive,
actually, a lot of the time.
The experiment is over.
It has provided a myriad of new data.
And surprising scientific insights into just how deeply ingrained
lying is into our behaviour.
We've seen people lie automatically,
or drop into deception just by force of habit.
Do you necessarily recognise when you're doing that?
This is the first time lying in our normal lives has been studied
in such depth, and the results on just how much we lie have defied
all previous expectations.
One of the big conclusions I'll take from this experiment is potentially
the fact that people are under-reporting
the number of lies they tell.
Yeah, they were fine. They were fine, yeah.
The one thing that I've learned is that we're all so much more
dishonest than we think we are.
Obviously, you do know, at times...
I think this week's experiment has shown that lying is a fundamental
part of being human.
The data has shown that even the most devout of us
lie on a daily basis.
But is all this lying bad for us?
I think I've learned that I am an ordinary person
and that I'm not spectacularly honest
and that I'm not spectacularly dishonest.
We have to lie sometimes to get what we want and sometimes lying actually
does help make things better.
We often have this black and white view that lying is a terrible thing,
when it's quite clear when watching all of the participants'
lives and there are times when they've felt that lying was a very
appropriate thing to do for the social glue.
When you have a certain job and whether that's being a priest, or
whether that is being a consultant and having to talk to people about
their projects and their companies, as the role you play for your
job, you often can't be honest because people will be so offended.
They probably don't want to watch, or listen to you any more.
This ground-breaking experiment has given scientists a unique glimpse
at what a world without lying might look like,
but is this a world we'd want to live in?
There are some really nasty lies that go on out there,
so ridding the world of scams and ridding the world of cheating
spouses and things might be a positive,
but no, I think the world would be a darker place, potentially, without
some of the more pro-social and positive sides of deception.
I think lying is pretty fundamental to human nature, in the sense that
a society without lying is probably a less successful one.
Can we live in a world without lying?
I'm not sure we could
and I'm certainly sure that we wouldn't want to.