A Behavioral Analysis of Lying: Session 191 with Corey Stocco

Why do people lie? It's an age-old question that's been asked for perhaps as long as our species has had verbal capabilities.

In this episode, Dr. Corey Stocco from The University of The Pacific joins me to discuss the existing scholarship in this area, as more specifically, the work that he and his colleagues have done in this area. Specifically, we walk through a recent paper that was published in Behavioral Interventions, Further Evaluation of Contingencies on Lying About Homework Completion.

Regarding this paper, we got way into the weeds in terms of how he recruited participants, the data that they had to leave out for space considerations, what they learned from this work, and where they want to go next in looking into the lying/truth-telling dynamic.

We even talked about how Kevin Luczynski's kid earned reinforcement for peeing on his floor.

As always, Corey closes out the show with some great advice for the newly minted!

Lastly, on a housekeeping note, if I sounded more nasally than usual, your ears are working correctly. I was battling a cold during the interview, and I hope it wasn't too distracting for the purposes of this interview.

• Bon Iver
• Matt Norman's appearance in Session 65 of the BOP
• Prisoners of Silence film
• Rollins College speech (see the likely incomplete Editor's note at the bottom of the article)
• UW Eau Claire Behavior Analysis Undergraduate Program
• Pat Friman's Under the Dome article
• A Behavior Analytic View of Human Development by Hank Schlinger (note: Amazon associates link)
• Stocco et al. (2021). Further evaluation of contingencies on lying about homework completion.
• Resources for Corey's lab (website, IG)
• Say-Do Correspondence review paper
• Parsons (1989). Lying
• Victoria Talwar's Google Scholar page
• Nurtureshock: New thinking about children (Amazon associates link)
• Bergstrom et al. (2016). Teaching children with Autism to tell socially appropriate lies

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