The Psychology of Lying and Detecting Lies has just been published. The book is a collection of 29 of my brief writings on deception that have appeared in blog posts and books over the past decade. It is available in paperback or as an e-book.
For many (though not all) of my e-books, I have the option to put them on sale for seven days, several times a year. One of those weeks is starting today, June 13, 2015, I think at 8 a.m. (If you are reading this after June 20, 2015, this particular sale is over but the regular prices of all of these books are still affordable.)
These are Kindle countdown sales. The way they work is that the prices of the books are at their very lowest (99 cents) on the first day, then gradually increase over the course of the week to their usual list price. The sale is ongoing at both the US and the UK Amazon sites.
Most people value honesty. They want to tell the truth. They also value kindness. Sometimes, though, honesty and kindness collide. That happens when telling the truth would be hurtful, but being kind involves telling a lie. How do people negotiate this clash of noble intentions?
Once upon a time, my primary professional interest was in the psychology of deceiving and detecting deceit. I wrote about that in “My previous life as a deception researcher.” Now my passion is the study (and practice!) of single life. But I continue to get questions about deception. So I have compiled here many of my blog posts about lying and detecting lies. You can find many of these, plus some other writings, in the book, The Psychology of Lying and Detecting Lies. If you are interested in my other books about deception, you can find links here. (You may need to scroll down to find the books about deception.)
Recently, I went to a talk here at UC Santa Barbara by a communications scholar who studies deception. When he got to one of the puzzling aspects of the available research on deception, he said that thinking about it kept him up at night.
Much as I love Dexter, the charming serial killer on the TV show with the same name, I was skeptical when I was asked to read an advance copy of a book of essays by philosophers. Sure, I had edited my own book of essays about Dexter, but that was different – the contributors were psychologists.
