Researchers from the University of Southern California report that pathological liars and cheats actually have differently-structured brains than people who don't. Adrian Raine and Yaling Yang report in the British Journal of Psychiatry that liars they studied seemed to have 22 percent more white matter in their prefontal cortex than "normal" people. From Reuters:
The new study suggests that because grey matter consists of brain cells, while white matter forms the "wiring" or connections between these cells, pathological liars may have more capacity to lie and fewer moral restraints.
"They've got the equipment to lie and they don't have the disinhibition that the rest of us have in telling the big whoppers," Dr Raine said…
While the findings have no practical implications at present, if confirmed they could be useful in clinical diagnoses of whether a person is pretending to be sick.
They could also help in criminal justice settings by helping police determine if a suspect is lying, and in pre-employment screening.
