With the presidential primary debates in full effect, a University of Wisconsin study shows politicians — intentionally or unintentionally — may use extra words to cover up lies within their statements.
The study, co-authored by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Research Specialist Michael Braun, focuses on the Pinocchio effect, which is the term used to describe the phenomenon of liars using more words than those who tell the truth, Braun said. This notion can be especially true in situations where politicians need to create a believable reality so their audience is convinced.
“We think the reason is that liars need to do more groundwork to make their statements believable, whereas truth-tellers may think that everyone shares the same set of facts because it’s the truth,” Braun said. “So there’s no need to establish what the truth is and therefore they can use fewer words.”
While this study doesn’t indicate people will always be able to distinguish a lie from a truth, UW communication science professor and study co-author Lyn Van Swol said longwinded statements can serve as a red flag. If a voter is curious whether a politician is lying, evaluating a large amount of statements would be more helpful in finding the truth than an individual statement.
She said when a lie is told, the speaker may equivocate their speech to either water down the lie or put it into context, meaning speakers will add more details to their statement to make it seem more realistic and vivid to boost credibility.
“I wouldn’t use it to determine the truth of any specific statement because there’s context that probably plays a much bigger role than truth or deception in terms of how long people are talking,” Van Swol said. “But we’ve found that if you look at a lot of statements there’s definitely a tendency.”
In some cases, voters may feel as though a politician discusses a topic to an “excessive degree” that doesn’t appear like normal conversational behavior, Braun said. This intuition could play a role in how one assesses the statement. While longwinded answers can signal lying, there are complicated topics that require more explanation because the statement can’t be packaged into a sound byte.
Politicians who ultimately lie may be doing it without intention, but there are also liars who strategically use extra details. Braun said if a statement is made, the speaker can include additional comments so if they are called back to the statement in question, they can claim the statement was taken out of context because the surrounding nuances may be true.
“Voters should recognize they themselves have the duty as voting citizens to inform themselves about the issues so that the motivation for politicians to lie is reduced because we all have a broader set of facts that politicians can’t twist,” Braun said.
