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psychology

What Is the Psychology behind a Compulsive Liar?

We’ve all known a compulsive liar. The person who embellishes stories, tweaks facts, or fully concocts fictions both big and small. This habit of excessive lying often springs from deeper psychological motives that compel thefabrication of an alternate reality. For chronic liars, stories are a shield against facing truths that engender deep seated insecurity and fear of rejection.

Lying behavior falls on a spectrum, and many people bend the truth on occasion without reaching clinical levels of pathology. But truly compulsive liars habitually invent entire narratives detached from their real lives. These lies are often more than simply boastful; they form a fantasy world that helps the liar manage anxieties and soothe emotional needs.

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Picture of the Day

survivorship bias ww2

This is a picture tracking bullet holes on Allied planes that encountered anti-aircraft fire in WW2. At first, the military wanted to reinforce those areas, because obviously that’s where the ground crews observed the most damage on returning planes.

Until Hungarian-born Jewish mathematician Abraham Wald pointed out that this was the damage on the planes that made it home, and the Allies should armor the areas where there are no dots at all, because those are the places where the planes won’t survive when hit.

This phenomenon is called survivorship bias, a logic error where you focus on things that survived when you should really be looking at things that didn’t.

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