The Human Risk Podcast13 Apr 2024

Dr Lixing Sun on Natural Lying

Why do we lie and cheat and why might it not always be a bad thing?

On this episode, I’m speaking to a research professor who has studied lying and cheating in the natural world and what we can learn about it in the human world.

My guest, Dr Lixing Sun is a Research Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Central Washington University. While his research focuses on biology, his interests are in connecting behaviour, evolution, psychology, and economics.

In his latest book, The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars, Lixing explores how nature is rife with cheating and, perhaps surprisingly, how dishonesty has given rise to diversity.
By exploring how everything from microscopic organisms to highly intelligent birds and mammals engage in lying and deception he explains how cheating in nature relies on basic rules which also apply to humans.

In his book and in our discussion, Lixing explains the prevalence of cheating in human society and identifies the kinds of cheating that spur innovation and cultural vitality and lays down a blueprint for combatting malicious cheating such as fake news and disinformation.

Resources
Lixing’s faculty page: https://www.cwu.edu/academics/biology/directory/lixing-sun.php

Lixing on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lixing-sun-7ba5067/

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/LSun5

His book ‘The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars’: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691198606/the-liars-of-nature-and-the-nature-of-liars

The Psychology Today article he referred to on the show:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/lies-and-deception/202311/how-to-outsmart-yourself

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