In this social media age, where people look to portray their best selves online, it is easy to fall prey to exaggeration, the omission or distortion of inconvenient truths, and even outright lying. The news media brims with stories of people falling from grace after they are called out for lying. Democratic Party politicians in the United States, some of their Republican Party rivals and psychologists regularly call US president Donald Trump a habitual, pathological liar. A recent New Yorker article exposed novelist Dan Mallory, who writes under the pseudonym AJ Finn and penned the hugely successfully thriller The Woman in the Window , as a compulsive liar. Among his litany of fabrications was lying about having brain cancer and inventing the deaths of family members. Police labelled American citizen Mikhy Farrera Brochez, recently accused of leaking the names of more than 14,000 HIV-positive people in Singapore, a pathological liar. He was found to have lied about his HIV status and to have used fake credentials to obtain teaching jobs. Activist probably caused own wounds and faked kidnapping, court hears And Netflix is planning a series based on the spectacular fall from grace of Anna Sorokin, a Russian-German socialite in Manhattan charged with grand larceny following claims she pretended to be a trust-fund millionaire. As a 2018 article in New York Magazine told it, Sorokin confided to acquaintances that she was an heiress from Germany waiting on her trust fund before she could proceed with plans to open an art space in the city. Clinical psychologist Candice Lam, of the Mindcare clinic in Central, Hong Kong, says compulsive or pathological lying is a mental illness in itself or a symptom of mental illnesses such as narcissistic personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety and depression. “Pathological liars’ brain structure is different from [that of] normal people,” she says. “Normal people will feel fear when they lie, as lying involve risks and [possible negative] consequences. But pathological liars don’t feel any fear when lying. They can’t control their lying behaviour.” The first study in the world to provide evidence of structural neurological differences in pathological liars was done by the University of Southern California and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2005. Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to explore structural brain differences between liars and control groups. The findings showed that the brains of liars had significantly more white matter and slightly less grey matter than those of study subjects in control groups. A researcher involved in the study, Adrian Raine, told Science Daily that having more white matter may give liars the tools to master the art of deceit. Lam says telling so-called white lies – harmless or trivial untruths, often to avoid hurting another’s feelings – is an evolutionary human trait and serves critical functions such as avoiding embarrassment and making oneself look better in front of potential mates. However, she adds, there is a clinical difference between lying for external benefit and lying for internal reasons. “People lie to gain external benefits like sex, power and money. Like a [married man] lies to a woman [to say] that he is single in the hope of a sex reward, or a child lies about having done his homework to avoid punishment. This kind of lying is driven by external factors and cannot be considered pathological,” she explains. How one woman beat anxiety and helps others overcome theirs “However, some people lie to satisfy internal desires. As an act of self-aggrandisement, their lying makes them feel good about themselves. Or their lying might gain them more outside attention. They can’t control these internal desires. This is pathological lying, and addiction to it is common.” Lam says that, after years of self-deception, pathological liars end up believing their own lies and are no longer aware they are telling untruths. “They tell lies with much confidence. It’s like actors who are totally into their roles. The act of pathological lying might first start as a self-coping mechanism to deal with stress or adversity. For example, a student might fail in exams multiple times. Not wanting to deal with rejection or neglect by others due to his failure, the come up with a lie to explain away his failure.” After he tells the same lie repeatedly, he starts to believe it himself, and genuinely begins thinking his failure has nothing to do with his ability. This coping mechanism may help him feel better, but gradually over time, the behaviour will develop into a pathological act. “We see more pathological liars now because the social media and internet age has made verification of facts a lot easier. Liars were not [always] caught out in the past because their lies were not exposed,” Lam says. Pathological lying can be treated through cognitive behavioural therapy, Lam says, where a psychologist will first identify the reasons for the patients’ lying, then help them cope with their problems and face reality. “The prognosis for pathological liars is not good, as the patients usually won’t seek mental help themselves. They are usually brought to us by family members who witness their pattern of lying and want them to seek treatment,” Lam explains. “We will treat the patient’s personality disorders or mental health problems associated with their habit of lying. Therapy will be [used] to reduce their impulse to lie, break the habit, deal with their self-esteem issues, help them learn to accept themselves for who they are, and make them aware that lying will only make things worse because it will bring more recrimination and punishment.”