Neurological Basis Found for Honesty and Lying Tradeoff

In a recent study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists from the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute confirmed the area of the brain responsible for making the choice between honesty and deception. During the study, researchers attempted to determine whether there’s a switch in the brain that controls the cost and benefit tradeoff between honesty and self-interest. Previous studies have shown that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex become more active during functional brain scanning when a participant is told to lie or to be honest. However, there’s no way of knowing if those parts of the brain are engaged because an individual is lying or because he or she prefers to be honest. After studying participants’ responses to a series of games that involved a certain amount of lying related to money, the results shows that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain region known to be critically involved in cognitive control, may play a causal role in enabling honest behavior. “We manipulated the costs and benefits of honesty to quantify the tipping point for each person,” said one of the study’s authors. “We picked tough dilemmas where, for example, telling a lie might harm the other player one cent…and you might decide that being seen as an honest person is worth more than $20, so you won’t lie even though it costs you, or you might decide that one cent of harm isn’t so bad.” The study sheds light on the neuroscientific basis and broader nature of honesty. To read more about this study, click here.