Bald-Faced Lies, Blushing, and Noses that Grow: An Experimental Analysis

We conducted two experiments to determine whether common folk think that so-called tell-tale sign bald-faced lies are intended to deceive—since they have not been tested before. These lies involve tell-tale signs (e.g. blushing) that show that the speaker is lying. Our study was designed to avoid problems earlier studies raise (these studies focus on a kind of bald-faced lie in which supposedly everyone knows that what the speaker says is false). Our main hypothesis was that the participants will think that the protagonists from our examples lied without intending to deceive, and the results of our surveys confirmed this hypothesis: most of our participants rated tell-tale sign lies as lies not intended to deceive. Therefore, our analysis suggests that common folk think that some lies are not intended to deceive.