People lie when they are short of time

People may be more inclined to tell a lie when they are running short on time. This is the suggestion of new research to be published in the Association for Psychological Science journal Psychological Science, which found individuals might fib when under time pressure if they are required to make a decision that could bring financial gain.

Investigators from the University of Amsterdam and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev also discovered people are less likely to bend the truth when they are not pressed for time and there is no opportunity for them to rationalise their actions.

Shaul Shalvi of the University of Amsterdam explained the theory suggests individuals tend to act on instincts that are self-serving - only to think about whether or not such behaviour is socially acceptable at a later time.

Mr Shalvi stated: "When people act quickly, they may attempt to do all they can to secure a profit - including bending ethical rules and lying."

Chartered Psychologist Paul Buckley said: "The finding is an fascinating one, and seems to tie in with research in decision making whereby time-pressured decisions tend to be made more instinctively and non-time-pressured decisions are more likely to be reasoned ones; given that there appear to be no sanctions in this experiment attached to lying, the instinct would appear be to lie and make as much money as possible.  Perhaps a more interesting way to look at these results would be to ask why everybody didn’t lie under these conditions: maybe we should be looking at the thought processes of the truth-tellers.”