Telling Lies in Scarce Environments

Scarcity of basic needs, such as food, time, or money, has a gripping psychological impact on those without. Environments characterized by scarcity of objects, color, and texture, too, appear to affect human cognition and emotion, taxing mental resources and increasing negative emotional arousal. While it is well known that humans are profoundly affected by their environment, no research has tested whether environmental factors can facilitate or impair the ability to tell lies successfully. Since successful deception depends on the same cognitive and emotional systems scarcity depletes, we hypothesized that environmental scarcity would lead to ineffective deception. We tested this hypothesis in three studies: Study 1 examined television footage of an international sample of criminal suspects (N = 59), including genuinely distraught individuals (n = 33) and to-be-convicted murderers (n = 26) emotionally pleading to the public for the return of a missing relative. Liars in scarce environments (vs. enriched)...