Sources
Epigraph: William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow, London: Harvill Press (1980).
Lie 2: I am lying
1 more than 25 per cent: The Innocence Project, False Confessions or Admissions, http://www.innocenceproject.org/causes/false-confessions-admissions/.
2 the bigger the brain: Byrne, R. W., and Corp, N., ‘Neocortex size predicts deception rates in primates’, Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences 271, 1549 (2004), 1693–9.
3 the average person: Meyer, P., Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception, Macmillan: St Martin’s Press (2011).
4 Women are more likely: Feldman, R. S., Forrest, J. A., and Happ, B. R., ‘Self-presentation and Verbal Deception: Do Self-presenters Lie More?’, Basic and Applied Social Psychology 24 (2002), 163–70.
5 structural brain abnormalities: Yang, Y., Raine, A., Narr, K., Lencz, T., LaCasse, L., Colletti, P., and Toga, A., ‘Localisation of Increased Prefrontal White Matter in Pathological Liars’, Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 190 (2007), 174–5.
6 ‘leakage’: Ekman, P., and Friesen, W. V., ‘Nonverbal Leakage and Clues to Deception’, Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 32, 1 (1969), 88–106.
7 A study in 2009: Porter, S., ten Brinke, L., and Wilson, K., ‘Crime Profiles and Conditional Release Performance of Psychopathic and Non-psychopathic Sexual Offenders’, Legal and Criminological Psychology 14, 1 (2009), 109–118.
8 asked 110 people: Kelly, A., and Wang, L., A Life without Lies: How Living Honestly Can Affect Health, APA 120th Annual Convention, Orlando, Florida, USA (2012), 32.
9 Liars also make: Wright, G. R. T., Berry, C. J., and Bird, G., ‘Deceptively Simple … The “Deception-general” Ability and the Need to Put the Liar under the Spotlight’, Frontiers in Neuroscience (2013), doi: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00152.
10 ‘epic, patronising tosser’: Rawlinson, K., ‘Boris Johnson: Tony Blair Is an “Epic Tosser” for Warning against EU Vote’, Guardian, 12 April 2015.
Lie 7: Memoir is non-fiction
1 morally suspect: Hardwig, J., ‘Autobiography, Biography and Narrative Ethics’ in H. Lindemann Nelson (ed.), Stories and their Limits: Narrative Approaches to Bioethics, London: Routledge (1998).
2 ‘disgorged’: Genzlinger, N., ‘The Problem with Memoirs’, New York Times, 28 January 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/books/review/Genzlinger-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
3 convince a quarter: Loftus, E., ‘Creating False Memories’, Scientific American 277, 3 (1997), 70–5.
Lie 10: He married well
1 authentic personalities: Canossa, A., El-Nasr, M. S., Colvin, R., North Eastern University, Virtual Personality Assessment Laboratory (V-PAL), http://www.northeastern.edu/games/virtual-personality-assessment-laboratory-v-pal/.
2 a darkened room: Barnes, C. M., et al., ‘Morning People are Less Ethical at Night’, Harvard Business Review, 23 June 2014.
3 a bigger car: Konnikova, M., ‘Inside the Cheater’s Mind’, New Yorker, 31 April 2013.
4 reputation to maintain: Fu, G., et al., ‘Young Children with a Positive Reputation to Maintain are Less Likely to Cheat’, Developmental Science (2015), doi. 10.1111/desc.12304.
5 evening the score: Carey, B., ‘The Psychology of Cheating’, New York Times, 16 April 2011.
Lie 11: We’ve posted you a present
1 psychopathy checklist: Schroeder, M. L., Schroeder, K. G., and Hare, R. D., ‘Generalizability of a Checklist for Assessment of Psychopathy’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 51, 4 (August 1983), 511–6.
Lie 13: I’m the most hard-done-by
1 It is not what happens: Rowe, D., ‘The Sibling Bond’, Psychologies, April 2007, https://www.psychologies.co.uk/family/the-sibling-bond.html.
2 53 per cent: Conley, D., The Pecking Order: A Bold New Look at How Family and Society Determine Who We Become, New York: Vintage (2005).
3 Philosophers draw a line: Bok, S., Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, London: Harvester Press Ltd (1978).
4 studies of ten memories: Sheen, M., et al., ‘Disputes over Memory Ownership: What Memories Are Disputed’, Genes, Brain and Behavior 5 (2006) (Suppl. 1), 9–13.
5 Rowe: Rowe, D., My Dearest Enemy, My Dangerous Friend: Making and Breaking Sibling Bonds, London: Routledge (2007), 66.
Lie 17: I’ve lost my mother
1 programmed to attach: Harlow, H. F., ‘The Nature of Love’, American Psychologist 13 (1958), 673–85.
Lie 18: The man will come with big scissors …
1 Fifty-seven per cent: ‘Infidelity Statistics’ (sources: Associated Press, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy), http://www.statisticbrain.com/infidelity-statistics/.
2 omitted the word: Molloy, C. ‘Dublin Abuse Report Asks: “When Is a Lie Not a Lie?”, National Catholic Reporter, 1 December 2009, https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/dublin-abuse-report-asks-when-lie-not-lie.
Lie 21: I didn’t peek at Barney
1 bladder control: Wong, S., ‘The Lies We Tell Are More Convincing When We Need to Pee’. New Scientist, 19 September 2015.
2 Barney: Evans, A. D., et al., ‘When All the Signs Point to You: Lies Told in the Face of Evidence’. Developmental Psychology 47, 1 (January 2011), 39–49.
3 Dorothy Rowe: Rowe, D., Why We Lie, London: Fourth Estate (2010), 50.
4 lost shoe: Fu, G., et al., ‘Children Trust People Who Lie to Benefit Others’, Journal for Experimental Child Psychology 128 (January 2015), 127–39.
Lie 26: I am your father
1 stressed-out animal: Gapp, K., et al., ‘Implication of Sperm RNAs in Transgenerational Inheritance of the Effects of Early Trauma in Mice’, Nature Neuroscience 17 (2014), 667–9.
2 genes of the survivors’ offspring: Yehuda, R., et al., ‘Influences of Maternal and Paternal PTSD on Epigenetic Regulation of the Glucocorticoid Receptor Gene in Holocaust Survivor Offspring’, American Journal of Psychiatry 1, 8 (2014), 872–80.
3 more significant impact on men: Frederick, D. A., and Fales, M. R., ‘Upset over Sexual vs Emotional Infidelity among Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Heterosexual Adults’, Archives of Sexual Behavior (2014).
4 ‘evil’: Warnock, M., Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children?, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2002).
5 a correlation: Slepian, M. L., Masicampo, E. J., Toosi, N. R., and Ambady, N., ‘The Physical Burdens of Secrecy’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 141, 4 (2012), 619–24.
Lie 29: We’re staying together for the children
1 over 44 per cent: Review Legal, ‘Top Five Causes of Divorce and Separation in UK’, 12 December 2015, http://www.reviewlegal.co.uk/about-separation-and-divorce/top-5-causes-of-divorce-and-separation.
2 giving birth to a daughter: Hamoudi, A., and Nobles, J., ‘Do Daughters Really Cause Divorce? Stress, Pregnancy and Family Composition’, Demography 41, 4 (2014), 1423–49.
3 the reason people most often give: ‘Divorce Study Shows Couples Are Unhappy, But Too Scared to Split’, Huffington Post, 18 July 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/divorce-study_n_3618509.html.
Lie 31: I forgot
1 Clive Wearing: Sacks, O., ‘Abyss’, New Yorker, 24 September 2007.
2 One review paper: Reardon, S., ‘Drugs Help to Clear Traumatic Memories’, Nature (2014), doi:10.1038/nature.2014.14534.
3 a more difficult compromise: Ackerman, S., ‘41 Men Targeted But 1,147 People Killed: US Drone Strikes – the Facts on the Ground’, Guardian, 14 November 2014.
4 ‘We live by leaving behind.’: Borges, J. L., ‘Funes, the Memorious’, La Nación (1942).
5 ‘nonstop, uncontrollable and automatic’: Parker, E. S., Cahill, L., and McGaugh, J. L., ‘A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering’, Neurocase 12, 1 (2006), 35–49.
6 ‘strong forgetting’: Roediger, H., Weinstein, Y., and Agarwal, P. K., ‘Forgetting: Preliminary Considerations’ in S. Della Salla (ed.), Forgetting, Hove: Psycholog
y Press (2010).
Lie 36: I have never enjoyed taking a poo
1 ‘Self-deception’: Levine, T. R. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Deception, Los Angeles: Sage (2014).
2 94 per cent: Trivers, R., Deceit and Self Deception, London: Penguin Books (2011).
3 strangers to ourselves: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2012), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-deception/.
4 two contradictory beliefs: RadioLab, ‘Lying to Ourselves’, 16 October 2015, http://www.radiolab.org/story/91618-lying-to-ourselves/.
5 tend to be clinically depressed: Leslie, I., Born Liars, London: Quercus (2011), 202.
6 ‘Have you ever wanted to rape, or be raped?’: Gur, R. C., and Sackeim, H. A., ‘Self-deception: A Concept in Search of a Phenomenon’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (1979), 147–69.
7 Joanna Starek: Starek, J. E., and Keating, C. F., ‘Self-Deception and Its Relationship to Success in Competition’, Basic and Applied Social Psychology 12, 2 (1991).
8 ‘I much fear’: Confessions of Saint Augustine, trans. Edward B. Pusey, Oxford: J. H. Parker (1853), Book Ten, Chapter XXXVII.
Lie 42: That was entirely inappropriate
1 ‘place cells’: Moser, E. I., et al., ‘Place Cells, Grid Cells, and the Brain’s Representation System’, Annual Review of Neuroscience 31 (2008), 69–89, doi: 10.1146/annurev.neuro.31.061307.090723.
2 ‘mental travel’: The Nobel Prize, ‘Scientific Background: The Brain’s Navigational Place and Grid Cell System’, (2014), http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2014/advanced-medicineprize2014.pdf.
3 London cab drivers: Carr, N., ‘Think Smarter with Nicholas Carr: Welcome to Nowheresville’, The Penguin Blog (2015), http://penguinblog.co.uk/2015/01/27/think-smarter-with-nicholas-carr-welcome-to-nowheresville/.
4 225 innocent people: Loftus, E., How Reliable Is Your Memory? TED talk, June 2013, https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_the_fiction_of_memory
Lie 44: It won’t happen to my child
1 corporate deceit: Eisenstein, C., ‘The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies’, 7 May 2007, http://charleseisenstein.net/the-ubiquitous-matrix-of-lies/.
2 70 per cent: ‘Donald Trump’s file’, http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/, accessed 7 November 2016. (70 per cent is the total of statements deemed ‘mostly false’ (19 per cent), ‘false’ (34 per cent) and ‘pants on fire’ (17 per cent) on Politifact’s scorecard for Trump.)
3 put into care: Schaverien, J., ‘Boarding School Syndrome: Broken Attachments – a Hidden Trauma’, British Journal of Psychiatry 27, 2 (2011), 138–55.
4 to avoid the humiliation: Duffell, N., The Making of Them, London: Lone Arrow Press (2010).
5 Rannoch School: ‘School may face lawsuit over sex attack’, Scotsman, 9 September 2002, http://www.scotsman.com/news/school-may-face-lawsuit-over-sex-attack-1-620032.
6 Sixty-two leading independent schools: Levy, A., ‘Teachers at Dozens of Leading Public Schools, Including Eton and Marlborough, implicated in Child Sex Abuse Cases’, Mail Online, 20 January 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2542557/Teachers-dozens-leading-public-schools-including-Eton-Marlborough-implicated-child-sex-abuse-cases.html.
7 sacked its maths teacher: Hull, Liz, ‘Boarding School Teacher Escapes Jail for Child Porn …’, Mail Online, 10 February 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2555510/Boarding-school-teacher-escapes-jail-child-porn-caught-images-laptop.html
8 abuse allegations: Renton, A., ‘Rape, Child Abuse and Prince Charles’s Former School’, Observer, 12 April 2015.
9 ‘I can’t think of any’: Tickle, L., ‘Britain’s Elite Boarding Schools Are Facing an Explosion of Abuse Allegations’, Newsweek, 1 September 2014.
Lie 46: Jesus knows best
1 Our self-story: McAdams, D. P., ‘The Psychology of Life Stories’, Review of General Psychology 5, 2 (2001), 100–22.
2 ‘chief fictional character’: Dennett, D., ‘The Self as the Centre of Narrative Gravity’ in F. Kessel et al. (eds). Self and Consciousness: Multiple Perspectives, Hillsdale NJ: Erbam (1992).
Lie 49: I deserved it
1 ‘It is always for the prosecution’: Rights of Women, From Court to Report (2014).
2 cited by Lord Falconer: HL Deb 31 March 2003 vol 646 cc1048-110 Hansard, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/2003/mar/31/sexual-offences-bill-hl#column_1048
3 convictions have increased: the conviction rate in 2001–2, according to Lord Falconer in the Lords debate, was 5.8 per cent of recorded allegations and 45 per cent of those charged (ibid.); in 2015–16 it was 7.5 per cent of recorded allegations and 57.9 per cent of those charged (Dodd, Vikram, and Bengtsson, Helena, ‘Reported Rapes in England and Wales Double in Four Years’, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/13/reported-rapes-in-england-and-wales-double-in-five-years).
4 26 per cent: ‘Police Fail to Record One in Five Crimes Reported to Them, Says Report’, 16 November 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30081682.
Lie 55: Honestly it won’t be so bad
1 Large pills: Leslie, I., Born Liars: Why We Can’t Live without Deceit, London: Quercus (2011).
2 Ninety-three per cent: Howick, J., et al., ‘Placebo Use in the UK: Results of a National Survey of Primary Care Practitioners’ (2013), PLoS One, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058247.
3 two hundred patients: Feinberg, C., ‘The Placebo Phenomenon’, Harvard Magazine, January–February 2013.
4 seven-year-olds: Lee, K., et al., ‘White Lie-telling in Children for Politeness Purposes’, International Journal of Behavioral Development 31, 1 (2007), 1–11.
Lie 60: Let me tell you a secret
1 secrets are a burden: Foster, C. A., et al., ‘Are Secret Relationships Hot, Then Not?’, Journal of Social Psychology 150, 6 (2010), 668–88.
2 bury who we are: Krauss Whitbourne, S., ‘Why We Keep Secrets from Our Partners’, Psychology Today, 10 June 2014, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201406/why-we-keep-secrets-our-partners.
3 When we become terminally ill: Hardwig, J., ‘Autobiography, Biography and Narrative Ethics’ in H. Lindemann Nelson (ed.), Stories and Their Limits: Narrative Approaches to Bioethics, London: Routledge (1997), 54.
Lie 64: I am good
1 ‘professional victim’: Kellaway, K., ‘No Pain, No Gain’, Observer, 15 February 2004, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/feb/15/biography.features.
2 two camps: Douglas, K., Contesting Childhood: Autobiography, Trauma and Memory, London: Rutgers University Press (2011), 146–8
3 what are we to do: Howes, C., ‘Afterword’ in Paul John Eakin (ed.), The Ethics of Life Writing, London: Cornell University Press (2005), 245.
4 Synaptic pruning: Nelson, C. A., Bos, K., Gunnar, M. R. and Sonuga-Barke, E. J. S., V. The Neurobiological Toll of Early Human Deprivation. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 76: 127–46 (2011). doi:10.1111/j.1540-5834.2011.00630.x
5 ‘I was so frustrated’: Barron, J., ‘Completely without Dignity: An Interview with Karl Ove Knausgaard’, Paris Review, 26 December 2013.
Lie 69: It’s not easy for me to do this
1 A paper: Okimoto, G., Wenzel, M., and Hedrick, K., ‘Refusing to Apologise Can Have Psychological Benefits’, European Journal of Social Psychology 43, 1 (2012), doi: 10.1002/ejsp.1901.
Lie 70: Always tell the truth
1 Robert Kurzban argues: Kurzban, R., and Aktipis, C. A., ‘Modularity and the Social Mind: Are Psychologists Too Self-ish?’, Personality and Social Psychology Review 11, 2 (2007), 131–49.
2 most prized qualities: ‘Being Human: Honesty, Respect and Tolerance’, School of Advanced Study: University of London (October 2014), http://www.sas.ac.uk/about-us/news/being-human-honesty-respect-and-tolerance.
3 In another study: Zhu, L., et al., ‘Damage to Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Affects Tradeoffs between Honesty and Self-interest’, Nature Neuroscience 17 (2014), 1319–21.
4 never confess: Kirshen
baum, M., When Good People Have Affairs: Inside the Hearts and Minds of People in Two Relationships, New York: St Martin’s Press (2009).
5 define ourselves through memory: Apter, T., The Sister Knot: Why We Fight, Why We’re Jealous and Why We’ll Love Each Other No Matter What, London: W. W. Norton & Co. (2008).
About the Author
Miranda Doyle graduated with an MA from Goldsmiths in Creative and Life Writing and has been mentored through the Arts Council Escalator scheme. Her autobiographical story, ‘Autopsy’, was selected by Irvine Welsh for inclusion in the Scottish Book Trust’s Days Like This anthology, and broadcast on Radio Scotland. A Book of Untruths is her first book. For more lies and for more truth go to bookofuntruths.com
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2017
by Faber & Faber Ltd
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This ebook edition first published in 2017
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© Miranda Doyle, 2017
Cover design by Faber
The right of Miranda Doyle to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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