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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAhh, that explains Trump and his cult-What happens when older adults lie?
A new study suggests that in as little as 45 minutes they can come to believe it's the truth.
(researchers) used electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor the brain activity of younger and older adults while they answered a questionnaire truthfully and deceptively.
In the study, the older cohort, ages 60-92, proved significantly more likely than the 18-24-year-olds to accept as the truth a lie they had told less than an hour earlier.
"Older adults have more difficulty distinguishing between what's real and not real," said Laura Paige, a former graduate student in the Gutchess lab and the paper's first author.
Paige said her findings suggest that telling a falsehood scrambles older peoples memory so they have a harder time recalling what really happened, in effect giving greater credence to the lie.
http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2018/november/lying-old-gutchess%20.html
delisen
(6,042 posts)What I am finding in daily life in the US is that there is much prejudice against older people regarding memory and little positive reinforcement.
There is much negative reinforcement . Memory lapse that are accepted as normal in younger persons are often mistakenly seen as the onset on dementia or a disease process in persons over 65 or 70, leading to much self-doubt. "Am I mis-remembering" the older person begins to think.....and the self-doubt leads to accepting someone else's version of the truth. It is a form of gaslighting.
Additionally there has been have a sharp increase in victimization attempts of older Americans by con artists. Is the elderly person more susceptible to being conned or just being targeted so much more than a younger person?
What is the situation in cultures where there is more respect for aged persons?
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)One could also see this study as showing older adults are better at lying about lying. Along the lines of practice makes perfect...
progressoid
(49,928 posts)He does it so much that it's likely he actually believes some of it.