Big-Time Liars and the People Who Enable Them

Many big-time liars, who tell lie after lie, get away with their lies for years. Morally, they often come across to other people as totally ordinary. How do these ordinary people end up as extraordinary liars?

There is a lot to it, but one of the most important, and almost entirely neglected, part of the process is the role of other people. Extraordinary liars succeed, at least for a while, because other people believe them.

Why is that? It is not just that people are bad at detecting lies, though often they are. It is more than that – sometimes other people want to believe the lies.

It is even more than that. It’s a set up. Big-time liars set up the people in their lives to believe them. You may think of extraordinary liars as miscreants, but some of them are affable and talented and get the people around them to not only believe them, but also believe in them. Big-time liars succeed by toying with a whole supporting cast of other people, often including the liar’s friends, relatives, colleagues, bosses, mentors, and even some people who only know of the liar.

Learn about big-time liars and their supporting cast in this brief book written by one of the foremost scholars of deception, Bella DePaulo.