All living things are equipped with various features that enable them to adapt to changing environmental conditions and maintain their survival and reproduction skills. The transparent color of some marine animals, the high speed of antelopes to escape from predators, reptiles that can camouflage among tree leaves, viruses that imitate human-specific surface proteins and prevent the immune system from being attacked by foreign substances, and many other creatures can be given as examples of this situation. Camouflage is used by most living organisms based on an expectation of benefit. In fact, it is a kind of 'non-intentional' deception. The ability to deceive and deceive, used by almost all living creatures, has been called 'lie' in human life and has gained a moral meaning.
Humans have a very developed brain and expression ability. He is aware that social life often consists of manipulations, and he has a verbal weapon that other creatures do not have. First of all, people can lie by using their language, imagination, reasoning ability, mind, in short, all layers of their mind (Baltaoğlu, 2014).
People have been lying, consciously or unconsciously, since almost the beginning of their history, in order to gain an advantage in competitive environments. They resort to misinforming the organism in front of them. Most of us do not know the physiological and developmental basis of lying behavior, which we recognize as a socially, religiously and morally undesirable behavior.
To lie, you need a complex mental structure, which means you need to be intelligent in a way. Cheating requires the fulfillment of many cognitive processes at the same time, such as being able to understand what is going through the mind of the deceived person, analyzing the reactions of the deceived person, and keeping in mind what has been said before about the situation that is the subject of deception. Two researchers named Adenzato and Ardito suggested that we need the existence of two different cognitive mechanisms in order to deceive. The first is 'understanding what others think', which they call 'theory of mind', and the other is 'being able to understand socially determined rules and complying with these rules', which they call 'deontic thinking'. is the understanding of the moment. Therefore, in order to lie, a brain development that is capable of carrying out cognitive mechanisms is required. The theory of mind of a child who continues his normal developmental course at the age of 3-4 begins to develop and he becomes able to tell his first lies (Gelegen, 2014).
When an individual lies, the brain exerts extra effort due to the simultaneous execution of multiple cognitive processes. and blood flow to the activated brain areas increases. These changes in the brain become observable with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). There are also changes in pulse, blood pressure and respiratory rate. Humanity has been trying to weed out those who lie for many years. Examples of these include 'lie detector' books or books designed to provide the ability to detect lies by observing the typical behavior of liars. However, someone who is not conscious of his lie does not show the stress symptoms and physiological characteristics detected in someone who lies consciously (Baltaoğlu, 2014).
Demosthenes said, 'The human mind's capacity to deceive itself is infinite.' In fact, most of the time we lie to ourselves, not to another object. We stubbornly hold on to our belief despite evidence that makes us doubt the reality of what we believe in or even shows the opposite. Behind our thoughts that are incompatible with reality lies the unconscious motivation of personal desires. So, when we see the truth we don't want to see, we have a relationship we don't want to destroy, a hope we don't want to lose, a path we don't want to give up. We are not aware of this, and maybe even though we are aware, we do not want to face the truth. For this reason, we hide the truth, lie, avoid the truth or exaggerate it. We validate ourselves by accepting factual information in our minds and rejecting contrary information. And so our lie becomes our reality. When we share this lie with other people, we do not even realize that we are lying. In this way, we do not experience the physical symptoms of lying, and therefore the risk of our lie being discovered is reduced. In addition, this eliminates the conscientious burden and discomfort caused by the person who lies.
Yourself Deceiving helps deceiving others. Since people who believe their own lies appear to be much more convincing than those who do not, the most successful lies are told by those who are not aware that they are lying. Just as lying to ourselves helps deceive others, it also makes it possible for others to deceive us. People who lie to themselves are more likely to be deceived by other people, and these people are more affected by external factors. As a matter of fact, in daily life we see that more realistic people are more difficult to manipulate. Psychologists have found that people with depression often have a more realistic way of thinking. Since these people cannot easily deceive themselves, they cannot find a positive side to continue their lives from their traumatic experiences and cannot benefit from external factors such as consolation/advice/compliment. Therefore, it can be said that in some cases, 'self-deception' behavior is functional and necessary for our mental health.
Developmental psychology studies indicate that deception and lying skills are acquired and normal behavior. These behaviors follow a predictable developmental trajectory and are not seen only in abnormal situations. For example, excessive honesty/inability to lie behavior is observed in individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. This socially praiseworthy behavior is the product of a developmentally pathological process. It indicates that the cognitive development required for lying has not occurred. For this reason, not being able to lie is also seen as a pathology.
Just as not being able to lie is seen as a problem, it is also seen as an anomaly if a person cannot control his urge to lie and constantly resorts to lying. This is called 'lying disease' among the public and 'mythomania' in the literature. The term Mytomania is derived from the combination of the Ancient Greek words 'muthos = legend' and Latin 'mania = madness'. Mythomania is a type of impulse control disorder. These people have endless lies in every aspect of their lives. It's like they're acting in a theater play they created. Lies can be told without reason and for no reason, as a continuation of each other. is seen. When their lies are revealed, they insist that they are not lying and display aggressive attitudes. To avoid getting caught, they tell a bigger lie and another lie to embellish this lie...
Lies are generally designed to meet the emotional needs of the person telling the lie. These needs are generally to be seen as valued by society, to attract attention, to receive applause, to be approved and to attract attention. However, lies can also be told to escape from the truth or for malicious purposes such as fraud. Ferdinand Dupre, the namesake of mythomania, divides mythomania into 4 main types. These are boastfulness, wandering, malignant mytomania, and misguided mytomania. He argues that although uncontrollable lying behavior is common to all species, the motivations served by this behavior differ according to species. It is important to know that only Dupre made this distinction and that mythomania is not included in this classification as a disease in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Mythomania is viewed by psychologists as a symptom rather than a disease. It may appear as a symptom accompanying personality disorders, neurosis and hysteria. However, in advanced stages, the same behavior may reach levels that are considered psychosis rather than impulse control disorder.
It would not be right to describe Mitoman people as liars because they believe in their own lies so much that they do not realize that they are lying. For this reason, they do not seek treatment because they are not aware of their disease. Generally, when their lies reach a level that restricts their life functions and harms their social relationships, they are noticed by their families or friends, shown to a specialist, and begin the treatment process. The treatment process for mythomania follows the treatment steps for impulse control disorders. Both psychotherapy and pharmacology are used during the treatment process.
Lying behavior can accompany not only mythomania but also many other anomalies. People with Korsakoff Syndrome, where long-term memory loss occurs due to reasons such as high doses of alcohol consumption, death fasts or hunger strikes, may develop the habit of lying. Confab The behavior of making up unrealistic information, which we call 'fantasy', which does not cause any effect on the consciousness as a result of the memory gap and occurs involuntarily, also includes the behavior of lying. In Hubris Syndrome, which we also call Divine Ego and is generally seen in politicians, people describe their daily life activities with blessings, have a self-confidence that is disconnected from reality, and frequently resort to lies and even slander in order to make those around them accept their glorified self. Each of these syndromes has much more detailed configurations than we have mentioned here and they are different from each other. However, what they all have in common is that lying behavior is used in some way. Just as not being able to lie gives us a clue about the insufficiency of cognitive skills and we evaluate this as a problem, all syndromes and disorders that involve lying behavior are also considered as problems.
We all need to lie sometimes. Each of us has a different understanding of 'lie'. What may be a white lie for one of us may be gypsy pink for another. Lying is functional in some situations, as I mentioned from time to time in my article. For example, a mother, who is normally afraid of thunder, exhibiting brave behavior around her child, as if she is not afraid at all, in order not to frighten him and make him feel safe, is seen as extremely functional and is not considered a lie by most of us. In fact, this behavior is equivalent to a cat trying to make itself look bigger than it is by fluffing up its fur when scared. We cannot morally say that neither the cat nor the mother deceived us. However, if we leave the psychological and developmental aspects aside, I believe that every person should have a few relationships in their life where they can say "I would never cheat on him, because he would never cheat on me either." A person should not lie to everyone, and should have relationships built on trust. If we realize that a person has lied even just once, we hesitate about all subsequent sentences. We even include that person in our 'unreliable' category and mention his name with this adjective. One lie can reshape our entire past and future with that person.
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