Lying Less May Boost Overall Health
NEW YORK (CBS NEWS) - Would you be more likely to tell the truth if you knew your health was at stake? A new study suggests that liars may be unhealthier than their truthful counterparts.
For the research, psychologists from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, performed polygraph tests on 110 people over 10 weeks. The majority of participants -- 66 percent -- were college students and the rest were adults who lived near the university, with an average age of 31.
About half of the subjects were told to stop telling major and minor lies for the 10-week study period, and other half served as controls and received no instructions. Both groups came to the lab once each week to complete questionnaires about their health and relationships, and take a lie detector test to determine how many major lies or fibs they told during the previous week.
Throughout the study, subjects in the group instructed not to lie reported better health, the researchers found. When participants in that group told three fewer white lies than they did in previous weeks, for example, they reported four fewer mental health complaints (such as stress or sadness) and about three fewer physical health complaints (like sore throats and headaches). The pattern was also seen for major lies, the researchers found.
Participants in the no-lie group became more truthful over the 10-week study, polygraphs revealed. By the fifth week, many of them saw themselves as "more honest" individuals. In weeks in which participants told fewer lies, they were more likely to report improvements in personal relationships and better social interactions.
"Recent evidence indicates that Americans average about 11 lies per week. We wanted to find out if living more honestly can actually cause better health," study author Dr. Anita E. Kelly, professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, said in a press release. "We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated with significantly improved health."
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