Young adults – defined here as people aged 18 to 29 – are the most skilled liars, while teens are the most prolific. That's according to a new study published in Acta Psychologica that claims to be the first ever to investigate lying behaviour across the entire lifespan.
Lying proficiency showed an inverted U-shaped curve through the lifespan, improving through childhood, peaking in young adulthood and then gradually declining into old age.
Teens admitted to telling more lies (an average of 2.8) than any of the other age groups. Again there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between age and lying such that lying frequency increased during childhood, peaked in adolescence, then decreased through life, so that the oldest group lied with the same frequency as the youngest participants.
I now know there are steps I can take to change how I think, to find the true me again. That is why I am going to take better care of myself this year. In fact, that’s the only resolution I care to make. For both my own health, and as an important example to my kids, this year, I'm resolving to practice a kindness that starts from within.
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