We Are More Likely to Tell Lies in Afternoons
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – If you want to catch someone in a lie, you'll raise your odds in the afternoons, as most people are more likely to cheat or lie then as opposed to the morning.
As the day wears on, we tend to get weary. Now a study finds that as a result we may be more likely to cheat or lie in the afternoon than in the morning, but only if we are usually ethical to begin with, the scientific American reported.
Scientists showed the volunteers’ patterns of dots on a computer and asked them to tell which side of the screen contained more dots, the right or left. Here is the kicker: the researchers gave the subjects a higher reward if they selected the right side, even if it was incorrect.
And with this incentive, subjects were more likely to cheat in the afternoon than in the morning.
In another experiment, the scientists showed the subjects’ fragments of words, and asked them to complete the word.
For example, they might see the last three letters, R, A, L, of a five-letter word. Surprisingly in the morning the participants tended to come up with the word "moral" whereas in the afternoon the word of choice was “coral.”
The researchers also found that people who tend to cheat regularly were just as likely to do so in the morning as in the afternoon. It was the more ethical folks who suffered lapses as the day wore on. So the early bird gets the worm… and also the truth.