Is Lying Bound to Commitment? Empirically Investigating Deceptive Presuppositions, Implicatures, and Actions

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Moral Philosophy
• Linguistics

Background:

• Lying is a pervasive moral issue impacting daily life.
• The traditional definition of lying requires explicit expression of falsehoods.
• Implicit deception, such as conversational implicatures, is often excluded from lying definitions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To empirically test whether people consider indirect communication as lying.
• To investigate the public's concept of lying beyond explicit falsehoods.
• To explore the role of commitment in judgments of deception.

Main Methods:

• A preregistered study involving 300 participants.
• Participants judged cases of implicit deception (implicatures, presuppositions, nonverbal acts).
• Analysis focused on lie judgments and perceived commitment to communicated falsehoods.

Main Results:

• Participants judged indirect deceptions as lies, indicating a broader concept of lying.
• Lie judgments correlated with the perceived commitment to the false claims.
• Findings challenge the traditional, explicit-statement-focused definition of lying.

Conclusions:

• The public possesses a more inclusive definition of lying than traditionally assumed.
• Commitment to a communicated falsehood is a key factor in judging deception.
• A new commitment-based definition of lying is proposed to encompass these findings.