The obvious solution would be, of course, to simply arrange all of humanity into rotating shifts, the two never allowed to interact with each other under any circumstances. Unfortunately, the world isn't quite so simple. There's actually a full 24-hour range to work in, so you have a chance to fit into any time on the clock depending on your chronotype. So if you're dealing with someone who seems to be a lying sack of snakes, try interacting with them at some other time of day. Show up at their house at midnight. If the results aren't satisfactory, come back at four in the morning. The best version of them is hiding somewhere, dammit!
1
Yes, Power Turns You Into A Liar
The trite old saying goes "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" -- something most of us would have realized anyway after just observing the world for seven or eight minutes. But when we quote it, we're always thinking of other people -- politicians, CEOs, abusive cops. We never stop to ask how long it would take power to corrupt our own souls. Fortunately, science has looked into this too, and the answer is that it takes about the length of one experiment.
After using psychometric data to determine some basic personality traits (like honesty), a group of participants were allowed to play boss in a game. They had to decide how to pay out cash to workers, with the potential to give themselves a larger portion at the expense of everyone else, in the typical "The Universe is one giant blank check made out to me!" manner we associate with greedy assholes. People who scored as being more dishonest were dishonest right out of the gate, giving themselves more money than everyone else. But the more interesting part is that the honest people stayed true to themselves at first, then slowly degraded into Gollums of greed and assery over time, taking more than their fair shares.
And that's in a controlled experiment, with nothing really at stake! It seems like "power corrupts" doesn't require a throne or corner office to work -- just the slightest sense that you can give yourself an unfair share and get away with it.
If you're the type of unscrupulous person who just wants to be good at lying, you can actually just get your own lie detector test. Best of all, it comes in game form!
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For more check out 6 Things That Are Secretly Turning You Into A Bad Person and 5 Psychological Experiments That Prove Humanity is Doomed.
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