What If Everyone Always Told the Truth?

What If Everyone Always Told the Truth? One Monday morning, all eight billion people on Earth lose the ability to say anything they don't believe. Scammers go out of business, trials take four minutes, and politicians finally say what they think. Then the white lies disappear too, and the quiet starts. And six months later you're at your own wedding, waiting to hear what the person you love can truthfully say. The honest world is fiction. The science of lying and honesty in this story is real. Chapters: 0:00 The question 0:23 What if everyone always told the truth? 0:27 The sweater 1:14 Billions of lies, gone 1:32 The honest world 2:26 Honesty was already winning 3:07 The lies nobody counted 4:13 The new lie 4:42 Three words 5:15 The third choice 5:55 The fastest potato 6:16 Straight, or company? 6:46 A good silence 7:09 Back to the flowers 7:47 The ugly sweater 8:11 The hard part Sources: People report telling about one or two lies a day, and about one lie in four was told purely to benefit someone else: DePaulo, Kashy, Kirkendol, Wyer and Epstein, Lying in Everyday Life, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1996 About 1.03 trillion dollars lost to scams worldwide in one year, an estimate based on surveys: Global Anti-Scam Alliance and Feedzai, Global State of Scams Report, 2024 People told to be honest with everyone for three days found it went better than they predicted: Levine and Cohen, You Can Handle the Truth, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2018 About 17,000 lost wallets in about 40 countries: wallets with more money in them were more likely to be reported: Cohn, Marechal, Tannenbaum and Zund, Civic Honesty Around the Globe, Science, 2019 In a 10-week study of 110 people, weeks with fewer lies went along with better reported health: Kelly and Wang, A Science of Honesty, presented at the American Psychological Association convention, 2012 (a conference talk, not a journal paper) About 55% of US doctors surveyed said they had described a patient's outlook more positively than the facts warranted: Iezzoni and colleagues, Health Affairs, 2012 Happier couples tend to see each other a little more positively than the partners see themselves: Murray, Holmes and Griffin, The Benefits of Positive Illusions, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1996 Lies told to help someone can raise trust in that person's kindness, while lowering trust in their honesty: Levine and Schweitzer, Prosocial Lies, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2015 SPIKES, a six-step method for giving bad news: Baile and colleagues, The Oncologist, 2000 The worldwide truth event, the characters and the wedding are fiction #whatif #animation #psychology #honesty