Verified by 
Young children are asked not to look at a toy behind them when the researcher leaves the room for a couple of minutes. But as any parent would expect, the vast majority of them do.
Here’s where this simple experiment gets interesting. When the researcher returns, she asks the children if they looked. By the time they’re four years old, 80% lie and say they didn’t.
Those that lie have IQs on average 10 points higher. And it turns out that teaching children to lie improves their executive functioning and their capacity for empathy, both key to the successful management of social relations.
Distressing as we may find the implications of this study, presenting things as they aren’t has long been a huge competitive advantage. It wasn’t the fearsome Achilles that won the Trojan war, but wily Odysseus with his lie of the wooden horse being a sacrifice to the gods.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from neuroscience, it’s that our reality is fungible. Spinning a good narrative can place facts in a different light and drive people to think and act the way we want.
But we also lie to ourselves through cognitive dissonance reduction: rationalizing, discounting or ignoring the facts that are at odds with our view of the world. Steven Pinker notes that when we are in a disagreement with someone, you can bet we’ll see ourselves as holding the moral high ground, but so will the other person.
When it comes to the morality of lying, we may have to focus on the ends rather than the means.
But returning to the study of lying toddlers, it also offers us a lesson on how to motivate truth telling or any other behavior we want. Studies have shown that harsh punishments don’t stop people from lying, but asking people to make a personal commitment to tell the truth and having them witness praise for truth telling does.
Money works too, but it’s expensive. If a child is paid $2 for lying, it will take $3, 1.5 times as much, to motivate them to tell the truth. It’s not the absolute amount, but the ratio that’s important.
The take away for managers? Get rid of the punitive criticism and don’t break the bank by inflating compensation. Instead, tell a story with an aspirational vision of the future that people will commit to and then positively encourage all efforts to its achievement.
