Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
traitor It is a game based on lies and deception. The contestants live together in a Scottish castle. Those secretly selected as traitors are tasked with “murdering” their fellow players while avoiding suspicion. The rest are loyal, trying to drive away traitor,
Of course, traitors must lie all the time to avoid being caught – but many loyalists also lie: to throw traitors off their scent, to form alliances or to manage what other players think of them.
This means that all players “feel the heat” at the night’s roundtable when they are accused of being traitors and lying. But what does psychology tell us about how to defend yourself against accusations that you are lying?
TV shows aside, when you lie, you have one big advantage: The people you’re trying to deceive probably aren’t paying attention to any signs that you’re lying. According to communication expert Timothy Levin’s Truth Default Theory, people generally assume that whatever they are told is true – in other words, the truth is the default.
What this means is: People hear and read a lot of information a day, and generally, that information is true. Doubting everything we experience would be exhausting, possibly dangerous, and very bad for our social relationships.
If you’re crossing the street and suddenly you hear someone yell “Stop!” When you hear yelling, your first instinct should be to stop—not to keep going, thinking: “I wonder if they’re lying to me.” And your friends probably won’t remain your friends for long if you respond to everything they say with the suspicion that they’re lying.
You can trust it when someone is telling a white lie. Whoever you’re lying to is unlikely to subject you to the third degree in response to you saying: “We would have loved to attend your party this weekend, but we couldn’t.”
Strategies to use
However, on The Traitors, neither the Traitors nor the Faithfuls have that luxury. All the other players look for the slightest hint – a sly smile, a head turn at the wrong time, an above-average vocabulary. Anything can bring you into the limelight. So what are your options? Here are some strategies to consider.
1. Think about the evidence.
What does the person accusing you know and what can he prove? Strongly denying something and saying to a third player “I heard you say so” can get you in trouble.
Watch Apple TV+ for free for 7 days
New customers only. £9.99/month. After the free trial. Plan to automatically renew until canceled.
Advertisement. If you sign up for this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism at The Independent.
Watch Apple TV+ for free for 7 days
New customers only. £9.99/month. After the free trial. Plan to automatically renew until canceled.
Advertisement. If you sign up for this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism at The Independent.
And don’t just think about the evidence they’ve already confronted you with: Consider whether your accuser is hiding other evidence to frame you in a lie and then confront you. This “strategic use of evidence” can be very effective for an interrogator, so be careful with it.
About the author
Lara Warmelink is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University.
This article is republished from Conversation Under Creative Commons license. read the original article,
2. Don’t protest too much.
When trying to seem like you’re telling the truth, don’t go overboard. Your first instinct may be to do everything you can to appear loyal, but that’s not how people who tell the truth generally behave. Doing too much can be just as harmful as doing too little.
For example, research shows that many liars make too much eye contact. Because people think that liars avoid eye contact, they try to prove that they are telling the truth by looking people in the eye and end up deceiving themselves.
3. Tell the truth.
Sometimes it may be better to come right out and admit that you lied. Covering up can be worse than the crime.
For example, in series 3 of The Traitors, when Lisa Coupland was pressed about her lies, she decided it would be better to come clean and admit that she was an Anglican priest. It worked beautifully: everyone believed him and other loyalists stopped suspecting him of being a traitor (although after four episodes the truth was almost certainly a factor in his “killing”).
However, the strategies may not keep you safe in the long run. The Traitors is a game designed to keep you alert. The rules of relegation mean that all players will benefit from you being accused. Once you have been named as a potential traitor, any relief may be temporary.
Loyalists have long memories and even the smallest mistake can come back to haunt you, one roundtable after another. And even if they believe what you say, it can make you a more attractive target for “assassination.”