Truth is, we like to be lied to
From our country’s beginning we've had our share of liars, snake-oil salesmen and flimflam artists.
These scoundrels weren't judged on the rightness or wrongness of their scams so much as the skill with which they pulled them off.
The sorry truth is that Americans want to be lied to.
We're suckers for a skillfully told yarn that puts us at ease and helps us sleep better at night.
But my dog, Thurber, is spinning yarns, too?
Part of the reason I love my puppy so much, I had thought, was because he was a refuge from the adult world of mistruth.
But then I stumbled upon an Animal Cognition study that found that dogs, too, are capable of lying to get what they want.
In the study, researchers trained 27 dogs to differentiate between a “cooperative” woman who allowed them to have their favorite treat and a “competitive” woman, who did not.
Dogs were taught how to lead the two women to three boxes: one contained sausages, their favorite treat, the second contained dog biscuits, and the third was empty.
When dogs were asked to “show me the food” they would lead their partner to one of the three boxes.
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Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, All Rights Reserved. Credit: Cagle.com
