Pinocchio Effect If someone tells a lie, their nose will become longer and longer, allowing people around them to know immediately that they are lying to us. If this happens, we will definitely not be easily fooled. But that is just a story in a fairy tale.
Once upon a time, there was an old carpenter who lived alone. He had no children, no wife, and no relatives. One day, he decided to make a wooden puppet to look like his son and named it “ Pinocchio .”
After the old man went to bed exhausted, that night a fairy appeared and made the wooden puppet come to life as a reward for all the good the old man had done, promising that whenever Pinocchio was a good and brave boy, he would become a real person.
But things are not as they seem. Pinocchio is so engrossed in his life that he doesn’t even try to be a good boy. He becomes a big liar, and every time he tells a lie, his nose gets longer and longer. It only shrinks back when he tells the truth.
From wooden puppets to psychological phenomena
The story of Pinocchio has been translated into more than 260 languages and is used to teach children and young adults to be good, brave and honest. The ruse of lying and the long nose was used to make children afraid of lying, before it became a psychological phenomenon that occurs when people tell lies.
When you lie, you will get hiccups.
If anyone is a fan of Korean series, they must have seen the famous series Pinocchio, starring the hottest actor Lee Jong Suk and the famous actress Park Shin Hye. The most talked about issue is the Pinocchio Syndrome that the actress has.
Choi In Ha, the heroine of the story, cannot tell a lie. It is not because she is religious or believes in the truth, but because it is a symptom of Pinocchio’s disease that she has had since birth. Whenever she lies, she will immediately hiccup and will continue to hiccup until she tells the truth. Because of her condition, everyone always believes what she says and is sure that it is the truth.
“When Pinocchio Syndrome Becomes a Selling Point”
When Choi In Ha grew up, she decided to become a reporter in the hopes of meeting her mother, and used her Pinocchio syndrome as a selling point to become a reporter because everyone who consumed the news she did would be sure that everything she said was the truth. What everyone forgot was the blind spot of this disease. Our heroine said everything according to her understanding and what she really knew, but that didn’t mean that what she knew and passed on and presented in the form of news was correct.
“When the witness also has Pinocchio syndrome”
Ki Ha Myung, the main character of the story, has a father who is a firefighter. His father disappeared after a tragic fire and explosion at a factory that killed all the firefighters there. Only his father disappeared, causing his father to be immediately blamed for the tragedy.
No matter how hard he tried to prove his father’s innocence, no one believed him because of the influence of news and the testimonies of eyewitnesses who suffered from Pinocchio’s disease, making all his efforts in vain.
The truth is, the witness with Pinocchio syndrome didn’t lie, but he didn’t tell the truth either. Because what the witness said was something he misunderstood. But that misunderstanding destroyed the hero’s family to pieces.
Is Pinocchio Syndrome Real?
After watching the Pinocchio series until the end, many people must have wondered if the disease that the heroine has is real. Because if it is real, people who have this disease must suffer from being unable to lie, and hiccuping every time they lie seems too much for one person to bear.
“Fortunately, liars are the only ones who have this disease.”
Choi in ha’s hiccuping lie is just a disease in the series. In reality, our world doesn’t have such a disease. But we have some symptoms that will show physically when people lie, called the ” Pinocchio effect “.
“The wooden puppet Pinocchio in the fairy tale was cursed to have a long nose every time he told a lie.”
Psychologists at the University of Granada in Spain called the Pinocchio Effect. They found that when people lie, the temperature around their nose and the inside of their eyes increases. People who are anxious or depressed also have higher temperatures around their face.
The reason why the nose of a liar becomes hot is because of the work of the brain’s insula, which determines and regulates the temperature of various parts of the body. When a person tells a lie, this part of the brain works harder than usual, causing the temperature of some parts of the body to rise.
“Americans tell about 11 lies a week, and three during short conversations.”
According to a survey in the United States, 60% of Americans need to tell a lie every 10 minutes to stay in a conversation. They lie about 11 times a week and are likely to tell up to 3 lies during a short conversation. In order to keep up with these liars, we need to find ways to catch them lying, which can be divided into 3 main groups.
Polygraph : A polygraph detects changes and body responses while speaking, but it does not tell whether the speaker is lying or not because it only processes the body’s responses for a short period of time.
Observation is the process of detecting a liar by their behavior, gestures, body language, words, and speech patterns, such as raising their hands to cover their mouths when they lie, fidgeting, looking down, speaking in a lowered voice, or not moving their upper body.
Studying the relationship between brain activity and lying, researchers concluded that when people lie, the temperature of the nose and the muscles around the inside of the eye sockets increase significantly.
“Because our bodies never lie.”
The most obvious thing about the Pinocchio effect is that no matter how well you tell a lie, or how often you tell yourself a white lie, your body will always judge it honestly. If you lie, your nose and eye sockets will heat up. Like the wooden puppet Pinocchio, every time he lies, he can’t avoid having his nose stick out until he tells the truth.
Conclusion
Lying is a behavior that can occur in all genders, every day. Each age group has different motivations for lying. As children, we may lie because we cannot distinguish between truth and lies. As adults, we may lie to protect ourselves from the truth that we cannot accept. Or sometimes we may lie with good intentions, such as to spare the feelings or feelings of others.
But the truth is, our bodies don’t understand the complexity of human thought that much. They are honest with the truth. Every time we lie, our bodies secretly reveal the truth.
“We can lie to anyone, but we can’t lie to ourselves.”
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