Born Liars (25 page)

Our need to keep in touch with reality exists in tension with an equally strong need to make up stories that aren't true – and to believe in them. Without the former, we couldn't get on for long with our environment or with each other. Without the latter, we wouldn't have the imaginative reach that has driven all human progress. Perhaps we should accept our need for both and wear our masks with equanimity, while not letting ourselves forget they are masks. In the words of Wallace Stevens, ‘The final belief is to believe in a fiction which you know to be a fiction.'

After curing his first patient, Quesalid was acclaimed as a great shaman. The only person who didn't believe that Quesalid had performed something magical was Quesalid. But success had shaken his cynicism. As word of his triumph spread, he accepted invitations to practise his technique at the healing ceremony of neighbouring tribes, and found that he could cure patients thought to be beyond hope. In the years that followed he grew famous and wealthy by practising the art he once dismissed as a sham. Although Quesalid told Boas that he was still a sceptic, he took great pride in his work.

1
. While this is inherently true of language
per se
, it may be that there are some languages in which it is harder to lie than in others. The language of the Matses, an Amazonian tribe, has a structure that obliges its speakers to specify exactly how they know what they're saying is true. Instead of saying ‘An animal passed here,' the Matses speaker must specify whether he saw the animal passing, or saw its footprints and made an inference, or made an educated guess, or heard it from somebody else. If somebody makes a statement without backing it up like this, it's considered a lie. According to the linguist Guy Deutscher, if you ask a Matses man how many wives he has, unless he can actually see his wives at that very moment he'll answer in the past tense and say something like ‘There were two last time I checked.' After all, he can't be absolutely certain that one of them hasn't died or run off with another man since he last saw them, even if this was only five minutes ago – so to report it as a fact would be deceitful.

2
. Talwar relates that the creativity of the lies told by children in this test is impressive, ranging from ‘That's great, my dad really needs a bar of soap.' To ‘I collect soap.'

3
. This awful story ended with more violence. After his arrest, Weddell was released on bail. He travelled to his mother-in-law's house, shot her, then turned the gun on himself.

4
. Larson brought back Margaret Taylor for another session the day after her first, ostensibly to find out whether the questioner was affecting the subject and hence the reliability of the test. He asked her to lie to him, and then he asked her out. Within a year they were married.

5
. The polygraph was also adopted by organisations wishing to screen for homosexuality. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police experimented with a device that monitored the diameter of a subject's pupil while he was shown pictures of naked men. Faced with inconclusive results, the Mounties designed a fluid-filled tube that fastened around the subject's penis, registering any tumescence whilst he viewed lurid images of men, women and children. The penile plethysmograph is used in the assessment of sex offenders to this day.

6
. By contrast, the police questioning of Omar Ballard was brief, casual, and completely lacking in the high-pressure techniques applied to the Norfolk Four. Unlike their confessions, Ballard's testimony matched the known facts of the crime and contained verifiable details that had not been publicly disclosed.

7
. Michelle's parents, who watched the tapes of the confessions, continue to believe that the men convicted of the crime are guilty, and expressed fury at the conditional pardons.

8
. By publicly casting doubt on the phenomenon of recovered memories, Loftus became a pilloried and even hated figure among its almost cult-like devotees. She received death threats, and for a while armed guards were required to accompany her at speaking events.

9
. Three-quarters of a million dollars was spent investigating the Ingram case. Police flew night helicopter patrols, searching for the fires of a satanic cult meeting in progress; all they found were a few terrified students drinking from kegs of beer. Doctors examined the Ingram daughters for evidence of physical violence or sexual abuse, and identified none. A forensic archaeologist, Dr Mark Papworth, was called in to search for the bones of dead babies, with the help of maps that the daughters had helped the police to draw up, identifying the supposed burial spots. After much digging he found nothing except the toe bone of an elk. Papworth later recounted telling one of the detectives that there was ‘No evidence. None at all. Zero.' The detective replied, ‘If you were the Devil would you leave any evidence?'

10
. The cognitive scientist Mark Changizi explains why this works better for Fitzgerald than keeping his eye on the ball. It takes a tenth of a second between the time the light from the ball strikes his eye to the time his brain perceives it. When the ball and the person are moving fast, a tenth of a second is a long time; if Fitzgerald's brain is working with a perception of what the world is like when light hits his eye, the ball will fly past him. So he closes his eyes and takes a highly educated
guess
on what the world will look like in a tenth of a second's time.

11
. If you lost this ‘sixth sense' you would become painfully aware of its importance. The clinical neurologist Jonathan Cole has written about a patient who suffered nerve damage from a viral illness at age nineteen, and lost all proprioception. He became entirely reliant on his
conscious
attention for working out what his body was doing. Unless he watched his arm or leg to keep it still, it moved uncontrollably. After a Herculean effort to train his body he was able to stand, and eventually resume something like a normal life. He learned to walk, to dress himself, even to drive, by applying fierce attention to his own body. But if the lights went out, he collapsed to the floor.

12
. In
Ethics
, published posthumously in 1677, the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza wrote that ‘Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.'

13
. When the researcher holds up the alternative cards (photographs) in this experiment he is actually holding two in each hand, with the opposite choice of each card tucked behind it. The two cards at the front have a black back. When the participant chooses a card, from say, the researcher's left hand, the researcher lays both cards in that hand face-down, and slides the one on top – the opposite of the one chosen – across the table. The participant doesn't see that his actual choice remains face-down on the table, because its black back blends with the black tabletop.

14
. This is a slight simplification. A few people seem to have language facility in the right brain. But
where
it resides isn't so important. What matters is that specific brain systems handle specific tasks.

15
. ‘How does it feel,' wonders the neuroscientist Christof Koch, ‘to be the mute hemisphere, permanently encased in one skull in the company of a dominant sibling that does all of the talking?'

16
. Marion's husband was not a believer. He went to bed as usual that night, and slept soundly.

17
. For the purposes of publication, Festinger changed the place in question to a town in Michigan. He also invented the names for the people involved; those are the ones used here.

18
. There is some evidence to suggest that men are more prone to positive illusions than women, who are more likely to have some negative illusions about themselves – to regard themselves as slightly less skilled and competent than they really are. But it's hard to tell whether this is a function of gender or of power: women in dominant power relations are more likely to have positive illusions; men in subordinate positions are more prone to negative illusions.

19
. Woods had commanded an Apache helicopter company in the first Gulf War. During the course of his 2003 interviews he realised that one of the men he was about to meet, a senior member of Iraq's Republican guard, had been the commander of an armoured tank brigade that Woods and his company had destroyed in the open desert of northern Kuwait. After a couple of sessions with this man Woods told him about their previous encounter. The Iraqi calmly recounted the horror of the incident from the other side of the gun sight.

20
. According to the Iraq Survey Group (a separate fact-finding mission organised by US intelligence services), Saddam knew his subordinates had a tendency to lie, but his earlier efforts to check their claims through personal tours of inspection of military facilities decreased as he became more and more reclusive. He was deeply shaken by the 1998 joint US and UK bombing operation ‘Operation Desert Fox', during which one of his palaces was reduced to rubble. Following this, he retreated even further into a small, closed and secretive world.

21
. Nobody rated Saddam's people skills more highly than Saddam, who would often boast of his ability to see the hidden hearts of those around him. On one of the tapes that Woods listened to, Saddam declares to his assembled generals and ministers that ‘I know which one of you will betray me before you know.'

22
. Psalm 116 describes the psalmist's gratitude to God for saving him from physical danger and spiritual despair. In the English (King James) translation verse 11 reads: ‘I was greatly afflicted: I said in my haste, All men are liars.'

23
. Back in 1761, when he was in London, Franklin had attended a performance of music produced by stroking the rims of glasses filled with liquid to various levels. Charmed, he resolved to design a glass-based instrument that would be easier to play. His invention consisted of a row of glass bowls of different sizes, fitted on a wooden axle that was rotated by the action of a foot-pedal. The performer spins the bowls with his foot and touches the rims of the glasses with his moistened fingers. The result is an ethereal, mystical music; notes seem to float in from nowhere, like ghosts, and linger in the air. By 1762 the armonica (Franklin derived its name from the Italian word for harmony) was being commercially produced and was soon taken seriously by composers and musicians (its fans included Beethoven and Goethe). Franklin himself loved to play it and wasn't above encouraging the popular belief that it had healing qualities. Princess Izabella Czartoryska of Poland describes in a diary how she was ill with ‘melancholia' when she met the great American, so ill that she was already writing her testament and farewell letters. Franklin – an epic flirt – took her hands, gazed into her eyes, and murmured ‘
Pauvre jeune femme'
, before playing the armonica for her. ‘
Madame
,' he declared after finishing, ‘you are cured.' Sure enough, she immediately felt like her old self again.

24
. In his 1911 play
The Doctor's Dilemma
, George Bernard Shaw presents a doctor who is incompetent in every scientific sense, and yet effective nonetheless. Dr Sir Ralph Bloomfield-Bonington (‘B.B.') is described as ‘healing by the mere incompatibility of disease or anxiety with his welcome presence. Even broken bones, it is said, have been known to unite at the sound of his voice.' The ideal physician, of course, has both skill-sets.

25
. David Morris points out that cultural beliefs have sometimes evolved to create illness as well as to relieve it, as a means of heading off greater dangers. Apaches, from ancient times until the twentieth century, suffered from certain maladies unique to their people. Merely crossing the path left by a snake was enough to bring on horrible facial sores (which the shaman would then have to treat). Any contact with a bear – even touching bear fur – could bring on physical deformities. These conditions seem to have developed as the strongest possible signal to keep away from potentially fatal encounters.

26
. The vendor described his Shreddie as ‘not in mint condition – one corner is chipped'.

27
. Zborowski was not the man Mead thought he was. His most significant professional experience was not in anthropology, but spying. All the time he worked for Sedov he was actually feeding information about the Trotskyites to Stalin's secret police, the GPU (Stalin was said to take a special interest in his reports). Several of Zborowski's anti-Stalinist friends died sudden, violent and mysterious deaths, including Sedov himself, whom Zborowski then replaced as leader of the group. His GPU handlers then tried to persuade him to go to Trotksy's hideout in Mexico (the cable urged him to ‘get to the OLD MAN'), but Zborowski contrived to remain in Paris, where he was studying anthropology at the Sorbonne. When Zborowski moved to the United States he continued to spy for the GPU, this time on the activities of his American Trotskyite friends. His spying was revealed to a Senate committee in 1955 by the defector Alexander Orlov. Brought before the committee, Zborowski admitted to spying but said he ceased doing so after 1937. Later evidence proved this to be false, and in 1963 he was sentenced to five years in prison, of which he served two before being released. He lied to Margaret Mead, who remained a loyal friend to the end, telling her the Soviets forced him to work for them by threatening his relatives. His academic career was largely unhindered. He rose to become Director of the Pain Institute at Mount Zion hospital, where he remained until retirement. Mark Zborowski died in 1990 in San Francisco, aged 82.

28
. Luckily, she escaped six days later after being freed by resistance fighters.

29
. Students of Bill Clinton's impeachment trial may find this style of argument familiar.

30
. One useful, possibly unintentional side-effect of this doctrine might have been to make the deceit more convincing. Actors are sometimes trained in a similar technique.

31
. Following Garnet's trial, Shakespeare gave a line to the Porter in
Macbeth
that audiences would have recognised as a reference to Garnet, Southwell, and Jesuit casuistry: ‘Here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven.' Indeed, as the critic Frank Kermode pointed out, verbal equivocation is one of the play's themes. The witches employ linguistic trickery to lead on Macbeth, such as their promise that none of woman born may harm him. Only when it is too late does Macbeth ‘begin/to doubt th' equivocation of the fiend/That lies like truth'.

32
. Protestants faced the same dilemma, and some reached similar conclusions as the Jesuit casuists. William Tyndale declared that ‘to lie also, and to dissemble, is not always sin.'