Author: Bradley Bowen

ADULTS ARE DISHONEST
In general, studies of lying behavior indicate that college students lie more frequently on average, than the general adult population.  However, based on recent studies with larger sample sizes, the difference in average number of lies per day is fairly small between college students and the general adult population:

College students and adults
A common source of fascination is in the similarities and differences between college student samples and representative adult samples. As mentioned in the introduction, the general trend is that lying increases with age through childhood, peaks during the teen years, and then declines gradually with age. Despite maturation, the positive skew is maintained (Debey et al., 2015; Serota et al., 2010). Understanding the size and nature of these trends, however, requires considerable nuance. The difference was the largest in the original DePaulo et al. (1996) study where adults lied once per day and stu- dents twice per day. Depending on how one frames the results, this is a small difference of one lie per day or a difference of 100% with students lying twice as often as adults. If we rely on the much larger samples in the current study compared to Serota et al. (2010), the mean difference is more modest; 2.03 for students compared to 1.65 for adults.

Kim B. Serota, Timothy R. Levine & Tony Docan-Morgan (2021): “Unpacking variation in lie prevalence: Prolific liars, bad lie days, or both?“, Communication Monographs, DOI: 10.1080/03637751.2021.1985153
Thus, since I have already shown that college students are LIARS, it follows that adults, in general, are LIARS.  There is only a modest difference between how often college students lie and how often adults in general lie.
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Here is a nice summary statement about an important psychological study on this topic [emphasis added]:

For example, during a bogus experiment on ESP (a mind-reading task), people are presented with an opportunity to cheat in order to win a $50 prize.  When people are placed in such a situation, almost everyone cheats (90%) and then when confronted about their behavior, few tell the truth; only 9 to 20% of the individuals in these studies confess when questioned (see, Miller and Stiff, DeTurck and Miller).

What is really interesting about these findings is that the same results are obtained by different researchers working in different parts of the country.

[…]

Overall, the experimental evidence shows that when placed in the right (or wrong) situation, people are prone to lying, a behavior that starts at an early age, and people are very good at it.

“Experiments Show How Readily Adults and Children Will Lie When Given the Chance To Do So”
Miller, G. R., & Stiff, J. B. (1992). Applied issues in studying deceptive communication. In R. S. Feldman (Ed.), Applications of nonverbal behavioral theories and research (pp. 217-237). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Miller, G. R., & Stiff, J. B. (1993). Deceptive Communication. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
deTurck, M. A., & Miller, G. R. (1985). Deception and arousal: Isolating the behavioral correlates of deception. Human Communication Research, 12, 181-201.
deTurck, M. A., & Miller, G. R. (1990). Training observers to detect deception: Effects of self-monitoring and rehearsal. Human Communication Research, 16, 603-620.
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A large study of lying in the U.K. produced some useful information about the dishonesty of adults:

I will focus on the telling of “Big Lies” and ignore the telling of “White Lies”. [ NOTE: there was a good degree of agreement between the various people who participated in this survey as to what sorts of lies would count as “Big Lies” and what sorts of lies would count as “White Lies”, so this was NOT a purely subjective distinction.]
The study is based on a survey of people in the U.K. ages 18 and older: “After eliminating responses from 16- and 17-years-olds, the reanalysis” (in the article containing the above chart) “included 2,980 subjects.”
On the positive side 80.3 % of the people in this study indicated that on average they tell ZERO “Big Lies” per day.
However, on the negative side, that means that about 20% of the people in this study indicated that on average they tell 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or more “Big Lies” per day.  In my view, someone who tells a Big Lie on average once per day is clearly a DISHONEST person.  So, this study indicates that AT LEAST 20% of adults are DISHONEST.
However, the question that was asked of the subjects introduces a bias.  If the question had been “How many times do you tell a Big Lie on average over the course of one week?”  then a person could have answered “1 per week” which would be equivalent to telling a Big Lie at a rate of about 1/7 per day or .14 Big Lies per day, or a person could have answered “2 per week” which would be equivalent to telling a Big Lie on average at a rate of about 2/7 per day or .29 Big Lies per day.  But there was no option to indicate that one told Big Lies on average about once or twice every week.
The relevant options confronting a person who tells a Big Lie once or twice per week are either “0” Big Lies on average per day or “1” Big Lie on average per day.  Someone who only tells a Big Lie once or twice per week, will probably thus answer that, on average, they tell 0 Big Lies per day, because saying that they tell 1 Big Lie on average per day would significantly exaggerate how frequently they tell Big Lies.
That means that it is very likely that MANY of the people who claimed to tell a Big Lie on average 0 times per day believe that they tell one or two Big Lies on average each week.  The focus of the survey on Big Lies per day thus hides the fact that MANY of the 80% of subjects in this study who claimed to tell 0 Big Lies on average per day, believe that they in fact tell one or two or three Big Lies each week.  It seems to me that someone who tells a Big Lie on average each week is NOT a very honest person.  That means telling over 50 Big Lies in one year.  I would consider such a person to be DISHONEST.
Furthermore, people tend to LIE about how much and how often they do things that are considered to be wrong or bad.  People tend to UNDERESTIMATE and UNDERREPORT how much and how often they do things like telling Big Lies.   So, MANY people who report that they tell a Big Lie on average 0 times per day, might well IN FACT tell a Big Lie on average 1 time per day.  If just half of the 80% of subjects who reported telling 0 Big Lies on average per day actually tell 1 Big Lie on average per day, then that means that 40% of the people in this study should, in reality, be categorized as being just as DISHONEST as the 20% of people who admitted they tell at least 1 Big Lie on average per day. In that case, 60% of the subjects in this study would be clearly DISHONEST people.
If we simply assume that ALL of the subjects in this study answered the question honestly and accurately, then the conclusion would be that about 20% of adults tell AT LEAST 1 Big Lie on average per day, and it seems to me that means that one in five adults is clearly a DISHONEST person.  But presumably a large portion of the 80% of people who claimed to tell 0 Big Lies on average per day believe that they tell one (or two or three) Big Lies each week, making them DISHONEST too.
However, it would be NAIVE to simply accept that ALL of the subjects in this study answered the question honestly and accurately.  People tend to have a bias against remembering their bad behavior, and people tend to have a bias against honestly reporting how often they engage in behavior that is viewed as bad behavior.  So, we have good reason to believe that a significant portion of the people who were subjects in this study UNDERREPORTED the actual frequency of their telling Big Lies, and that a significant portion of the 80% of people who estimated that they tell 0 Big Lies on average per day, actually tell 1 or 2 Big Lies on average per day.
This study tells us what people REPORT about the frequency of their own lying, especially how frequently they tell “Big Lies”.  But since, at least in my view, telling 1 Big Lie on average per week is sufficient to consider a person to be DISHONEST, we really want to know what portion of adults tell at least 1 Big Lie on average per week.  The data in the graph from this study indicate that MORE THAN 20% of adults tell AT LEAST 1 Big Lie on average each week.  But the ACTUAL portion of adults who tell AT LEAST 1 Big Lie on average per week might well be much larger.
For example, if half of the 80% of subjects who claimed to tell an average of 0 Big Lies per day actually tell an average of 1 or more Big Lies per day, then we could add another 40% of the people in this study to the 20% who admit they tell AT LEAST 1 Big Lie on average per day (and thus are clearly DISHONEST), so that the conclusion would be that 60% of the people in this study are in fact, clearly DISHONEST people.  And if just half of the remaining 40% of people who claimed to tell an average of 0 Big Lies per day are people who actually tell an average of one or more Big Lies per week, then we could add another 20% of the subjects to the category of being DISHONEST people.  In this scenario, 80% of the people in this study would be reasonably considered to be DISHONEST people.
Granted that people who tell one or two Big Lies on average per week are LESS DISHONEST than people who tell one or two Big Lies on average per day, this is only a matter of degree, and telling about 50 Big Lies in one year is sufficient reason for considering a person to be DISHONEST.  In my view it is unreasonable to call a person “honest” when he or she tells one or two Big Lies per week on average.
The truth of the matter is very likely to be somewhere in between those two estimates.  It is very likely that SIGNIFICANTLY MORE THAN 20% of the people in that study are DISHONEST (i.e. tell a Big Lie on average at least once per week), and it is also likely that less than 80% of the people in that study are DISHONEST (i.e. tell a Big Lie on average at least once per week).  In any case, a large portion of adults (25-45%), and quite possibly the majority of adults (60-70%) are DISHONEST, based on this large study of people in the U.K.
Serota, Kim & Levine, Timothy. (2014). A Few Prolific Liars. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 34. 10.1177/0261927X14528804.
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ADULTS ARE CHEATERS
Although adults in the USA appear to be fairly honest about paying their taxes, and not cheating on taxes (compared with adults in other countries), adults in America often cheat on their spouses and lovers.

The most consistent data on infidelity come from the General Social Survey, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and based at the University of Chicago, which has used a national representative sample to track the opinions and social behaviors of Americans since 1972. The survey data show that in any given year, about 10 percent of married people — 12 percent of men and 7 percent of women — say they have had sex outside their marriage.

“Love, sex and the changing landscape of infidelity” NY Times, Oct. 28, 2008
There are two important qualifications to note about these statistics. First,  infidelity or “cheating” is considered bad behavior, and so people are biased against honestly reporting that they have engaged in such behavior, and against honestly reporting how often they have engaged in such behavior.  This is especially true when questions are asked of people in an interview, which is how the General Social Survey has been conducted:

Surveys conducted in person are likely to underestimate the real rate of adultery, because people are reluctant to admit such behavior not just to their spouses but to anyone.

In a study published last summer in The Journal of Family Psychology, for example, researchers from the University of Colorado and Texas A&M surveyed 4,884 married women, using face-to-face interviews and anonymous computer questionnaires. In the interviews, only 1 percent of women said they had been unfaithful to their husbands in the past year; on the computer questionnaire, more than 6 percent did.

“Love, sex and the changing landscape of infidelity” NY Times, Oct. 28, 2008
So, AT LEAST 5% of women who were interviewed in the above study LIED and claimed they had NOT been unfaithful in the past year, when in fact they had been unfaithful in the past year.  Women were more honest on anonymous computer questionnaires, but who is to say that they were fully and completely honest on those computer questionnaires?  The fact that MORE women were honest on computer questionnaires does not mean that ALL women were honest on the computer questionnaires.
The second qualification to keep in mind is that these statistics are about how many people were unfaithful or “cheated” in the previous year.  Each year about 10% of married people CHEAT on their spouse.  But most people are married for many years.  With each passing year one has more opportunities to CHEAT.  So, a spouse who is faithful for the first two years of marriage might well CHEAT during the third year of marriage.  So, the 10% figure is only a bottom-level baseline.  Since most marriages last for many years, the percent of spouses who CHEAT over the course of a marriage that lasts ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years is bound to be GREATER THAN just 10%!

…University of Washington researchers have found that the lifetime rate of infidelity for men over 60 increased to 28 percent in 2006, up from 20 percent in 1991. For women over 60, the increase is more striking: to 15 percent, up from 5 percent in 1991.

The researchers also see big changes in relatively new marriages. About 20 percent of men and 15 percent of women under 35 say they have ever been unfaithful, up from about 15 and 12 percent respectively.

“Love, sex and the changing landscape of infidelity” NY Times, Oct. 28, 2008
In recent studies 20% (or 1 in 5) married men under 35 REPORT that they have been unfaithful at some point in their marriage, and 28% of men over 60 REPORT having been unfaithful to a spouse at some point in their lives.  So, over the course of a lifetime, we can expect about 25 to 30% of men to be unfaithful to at least one spouse.
It appears that young women are now REPORTING being unfaithful almost as much as young men (15% vs. 20%).
So, in the future, we can expect 25% to 30% of women over 60 to REPORT having been unfaithful to a spouse at some point in their lives, like men over 60 now REPORT.
So, between 1 in 4 and 1 in 3 adults will CHEAT on a spouse at some time in their lives, if they get married and live to be 60 years old.  That is a significant portion of married people who will REPORT CHEATING in their marriages.  It is reasonable to believe that the ACTUAL portion of married people who CHEAT is larger than what people REPORT, so the reality is probably more like between 1 in 3 and 1 in 2 adults will CHEAT on a spouse at some time in their lives, if they get married and live to be at least 60 years old.
 
CONCLUSION
It is NOT just college students who are LIARS and CHEATERS.  Adults, in general, are LIARS and CHEATERS.  Virtually ALL adults tell lies from time to time, and somewhere between 25% and 75% of adults are DISHONEST because they tell Big Lies on a regular basis (one or more times per week).
When put in a situation where it is tempting to lie and cheat (for personal gain) with little chance of being detected ALMOST EVERYONE will lie and cheat, and then when questioned about this ALMOST EVERYONE will LIE and hide the fact that they lied and cheated.  This is virtually the SAME way that four and five-year-old children behave in similar experiments.
Also, a large portion of married people CHEAT on their spouses over the course of a lifetime, somewhere between 25% and 50% for those who marry and live to be at least 60 years old.
Adults in general are LIARS and CHEATERS, just like college students, just like high school students, just like children.

WHERE WE ARE
As part of my response to Peter Kreeft’s first three objections against the Hallucination Theory,  I want to point out two major problems with EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY:

• HUMAN MEMORY IS UNRELIABLE
• HUMANS ARE DISHONEST

In Part 13 of this series, I summarized key points from an excellent article on problems with eyewitness memory and identifications made by eyewitnesses.  The main conclusion of that article is that eyewitness testimony is UNRELIABLE because human memory is UNRELIABLE.  The evidence from that article provides solid justification for this conclusion.
In Part 14 of this series, I provided a summary of evidence for the view that YOUNG CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS ARE DISHONEST, and in this post, I will be providing evidence that YOUNG ADULTS (specifically college students) ARE DISHONEST.
 
COLLEGE STUDENTS ARE LIARS
If most people lie and deceive, and if people often lie and deceive,  then we have good reason to be skeptical.  We have seen in previous posts that most children lie and lie frequently,  and that most teenagers lie and cheat and do so frequently; it is now time to take a look at the behavior of college students.
A study of lying in everyday life was conducted in which one group consisted of college students and a second group consisted of community members (ranging from 18 to 71 years old).  The participants each kept a  journal for one week in which they were to write down each social interaction and each lie they told.
The results of the study were summed up this way [emphasis added]:

Lying Is a Fact of Daily Life
The studies reported here provide some of the first data, and by far the most extensive data, on some of the most fundamental questions about lying in everyday life. As we expected, lying is a fact of daily life. Participants in the community study, on the average, told a lie every day; participants in the college student study told two. One out of every five times that the community members interacted with someone, they told a lie; for the college students, it was one out of every three times. Of all of the people the community members interacted with one on one over the course of a week, they lied to 30% of them; the college students lied to 38% of the people in their lives. (p.991)

“Lying in Everyday Life“
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
1996, Vol. 70, No. 5, 979-995
Bella M. DePaulo – University of Virginia
Deborah A. Kashy – Texas A&M University
Susan E. Kirkendol – Pfeiffer College
Jennifer A. Epstein – Cornell University Medical College
Melissa M. Wyer – University of Virginia
Only one of the college students claimed to go a whole week without ever lying.  That one student, of course, might well have been lying in claiming to have never lied that week.  If the students in this study are representative of college students in general, then ALMOST ALL  college students lie, and MOST college students lie on a DAILY basis.
Another study compared a group of high school students with a group of college students.  In this study, the students were asked (in questionnaires) if they had lied to their parents on various topics (friends, alcohol/drugs, parties, money, dating, and sex) at least once in the past year.  Here is a summary of the results [emphasis added]:

Lying to parents was indeed a frequent behavior among the adolescents and emerging adults. Figure 1 shows the percentages of students who had lied to their parents about 6 different issues at least once within the past year. As can be seen, the percentage of high school students who had lied about the different issues ranged from 32 to 67% whereas for college students the range was 28–50%. Eighty-two percent of all students indicated that they had lied to their parents about at least 1 of the 6 issues during the past year. (p.105)

[The white bars represent high school students, and black bars represent college students]
It is worth noting that although college students in this study were less likely than high school students to report lying to their parents, a notable proportion of college students had lied to their parents at least once in the past year (ranging from 28 to 50% for the different issues). (p.109)
 
Another study lumps the high school students together with college students to report that 82% of the students lied to their parents on at least one of the six topics in the past year.   That means that MORE than 82% of high school students lied on at least one of the six topics, and that LESS than 82% of the college students lied on at least one of the six topics in the past year.
We know that 50% of college students lied to their parents just on the topic of money alone.  So, it is virtually certain that some significant portion of the remaining 50% of college students lied on one or more of the other topics.  Thus, although we cannot arrive at a specific number, it is very likely that somewhere between 60% and 70% of the college students lied to their parents about at least one of the six topics in the past year.
“The Right to Do Wrong: Lying to Parents Among Adolescents and Emerging Adults”
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Vol. 33, No. 2, April 2004, pp. 101–112
Lene Arnett Jensen,  Jeffrey Jensen Arnett,  S. Shirley Feldman,  and Elizabeth Cauffman
 
Another study of college students looked into how often such students lied on their Resumes [emphasis added]:

Abstract

This study explores how Linkedin shapes patterns of deception in resumes. The general self-presentation goal to appear favorably to others motivates deception when one’s true characteristics are inconsistent with their desired impression. Because Linkedin makes resume claims public, deception patterns should be altered relative to traditional resumes. Participants (n = 119) in a between-subjects experiment created resumes in one of three resume settings: a traditional (offline) resume, private Linkedin profiles, or publicly available Linkedin profiles. Findings suggest that the public nature of Linkedin resume claims affected the kinds of deception used to create positive impressions, but did not affect the overall frequency of deception. Compared with traditional resumes, Linkedin resumes were less deceptive about the kinds of information that count most to employers, namely an applicant’s prior work experience and responsibilities, but more deceptive about interests and hobbies. The results stand in contrast to assumptions that Internet-based communication is more deceptive than traditional formats, and suggests that a framework that considers deception as a resource for self-presentation can account for the findings.

[…]

On average, participants lied 2.87 (median = 3.00, SD = 1.79) times in their profile with a total of 341 lies. The frequency of deception was normally distributed.  One hundred and six participants (92.4 percent) reported at least one deception; the greatest number of lies was 8. There were no gender differences in deception frequency, t(117) = 0.53, p = 0.60.

“The Effect of Linkedin on Deception in Resumes”
Jamie Guillory, M.S., and Jeffrey T. Hancock, Ph.D.
CYBERPSYCHOLOGY, BEHAVIOR, AND SOCIAL NETWORKING
Volume 15, Number 3, 2012
92% of the college students in this experiment lied on their resumes.  There was an average of three lies in each resume.  So, if these students are representative of college students in general, then ALMOST ALL college students lie on their resumes, and MANY (perhaps MOST) lie multiple times on their resumes.
In conclusion,  there is scientific evidence that indicates that MOST college students lie on a DAILY basis, that MOST college students lie to their parents on one or more important topics each year, and that ALMOST ALL college students lie on their resumes.
 
COLLEGE STUDENTS ARE CHEATERS
Let’s look at some evidence on academic cheating by college students:
Understanding Academic Misconduct
Julia M. Christensen Hughes – University of Guelph
Donald L. McCabe – Rutgers University
Canadian Journal of Higher Education
Volume 36, No. 1, 2006, pages 49 – 63.
[Emphasis added]

[There is]…a growing body of primarily U.S.-based research that suggests academic misconduct has become commonplace amongst the majority of college and university students…(p.50)

 Results of U.S.-based studies have consistently shown that many students engage in academic misconduct in the completion of their academic work and that academic institutions and faculty have done little about it (see for example, Bowers, 1964; Hetherington & Feldman, 1964; Singhal, 1982; McCabe, & Trevino, 1993, 1996; Payne & Nantz, 1994; McCabe, Trevino, & Butterfield, 1999, 2001). (p.51)

 Rates of Engagement in Academic Misconduct (p.51-52)

 Purportedly, academic misconduct has always been with U.S.. It has been described in the higher education literature as “ubiquitous” (Pincus & Schmelkin, 2003); as an “epidemic” (Haines, Diekhoff, LaBeff, & Clark, 1986, p.342), a “perennial problem” (Davis, Grover, Becker, & McGregor, 1992, p.16), and “one of the major problems in education today” (Singhal, 1982, p.775). Such observations are primarily based on studies of undergraduate students at U.S. colleges and universities (both private and public), using a variety of data collection techniques (e.g., self report surveys, in-depth interviews, experiments), and differing sample sizes (e.g., from less than one hundred students in a single department to thousands of students on multiple campuses).

 Although they vary in methodology, these studies have consistently found that the majority of undergraduate students have engaged in some type of misconduct in the completion of their academic work. For example, in Bower’s (1964) seminal multi-campus study involving over 5000 students from 99 U.S. campuses, three out of four students reported engaging in at least one of 13 questionable academic behaviours, with 39% of students reporting having engaged in “serious test cheating” (e.g., copying during an exam with or withoutthe other student’s knowledge, using crib notes, helping someone else to cheaton a test or exam) and 65% reporting having engaged in “serious cheating on written work” (e.g., plagiarism, fabricating or falsifying a bibliography, turningin work done by someone else, copying a few sentences of material without footnoting).

 In a similar 1990-1991 study involving over 6,000 students across 31 small to medium sized U.S. campuses, McCabe and Trevino (1993) found that as many as two out of three students reported engaging in at least one of 14 questionable behaviours and that almost 20% of students reported engaging in 5 or more such behaviours. In this case, 64% of students were found to have engaged in serious test cheating and 66% in serious written cheating.

 Smaller, single campus studies have also reported high rates of academic misconduct. For example, Hetherington and Feldman (1964) used an experimental design in which 78 psychology students at one U.S. state university were presented with multiple opportunities to cheat on actual course exams. More than half (59%) of the students exhibited some form of cheating, the vast majority (87%) of whom were observed to cheat multiple times. Payne and Nantz (1994) used in-depth interviews to study the cheating behaviours of 22 business students in a medium-sized, U.S., state university. Nineteen (or 86%) of the students admitted to having cheated in their college work. Finally, Singhal (1982) surveyed 364 engineering students at a U.S. state university; 56% of students reported having cheated. 

Understanding Academic Misconduct
Julia M. Christensen Hughes – University of Guelph
Donald L. McCabe – Rutgers University
Canadian Journal of Higher Education
Volume 36, No. 1, 2006, pages 49 – 63.
Some of the data from the above-mentioned studies are shown in the following table (click on the image below to get a clearer view of the table):

The table above is from page 223 of the following article:
“Cheating in Academic Institutions: A Decade of Research”
Donald McCabe – Rutgers University
Linda Travino -Pennsylvania State University
Kenneth Butterfield – Washington State University
ETHICS & BEHAVIOR 11(3) , 219-232.
A review of a large number of studies on cheating by college students produced similar percentages:

 “Bernard E. Whitley, Jr.(1998:238) reviewed 107 studies related to cheating among college students and found an average of 70.4 percent of students had cheated, 43.1 percent had cheated on examinations, 40.9 percent had cheated on homework assignments, and 47 percent had plagiarized.”  (p.491)

COLLEGE STUDENTS AND ACADEMIC DISHONESTY
NATHAN W. PINO, PH.D.
WILLIAM L. SMITH, PH.D.
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Georgia Southern University
Coll Stud J 37 no4 D 2003
NOTE: The original paper referenced above was:

Much of the evidence about cheating by college students is obtained by anonymous questionnaires answered by college students.  But we already know that college students have a significant inclination to lie, so they might also be lying even on anonymous questionnaires about cheating.  There is evidence that college students do in fact under-report their own cheating on these anonymous questionnaires.
One study published back in 1987 noted that the use of a method called Randomized Response Technique yielded significantly higher cheating report rates when compared with standard anonymous questionnaires:

Abstract [emphasis added]

Academic cheating behavior by university students was surveyed using the randomized response technique (RRT) and by conventional anonymous questionnaire methods. RRT is a survey method that permits sensitive information to be collected but that precludes associating the respondent with a particular response to a survey item. The estimated proportions of students who have engaged in cheating behaviors were, in general, larger using RRT.  Moreover, this result is consistent with earlier findings for other sensitive behaviors. That under-reporting is a serious problem with anonymous questionnaires is supported by the fact that the anonymous questionnaire estimates ranged from 39% to 83% below the RRT estimates. Furthermore, using a covariate modification of RRT, there was a distinct inverse relation between students’ estimated grade-point average and the tendency to engage in cheating behavior. While these results have direct implications for estimating cheating behavior in higher education, more broadly, they raise serious concerns about the use of anonymous questionnaires when survey topics are sensitive.

“Improved estimation of academic cheating behavior using the randomized response technique”
N. J. Scheers, C. Mitchell Dayton
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00991933
Research in Higher Education
1987, Volume 26, Issue 1, pp 61-69
Another reason that conventional anonymous questionnaires might result in minimizing the amount of cheating by college students is the problem of volunteer sample biases [emphasis added]:

Reported rates of cheating may significantly underestimate the threat to academic integrity in universities due to volunteer sample biases. To vary the incentive states of the participants, we sampled using: 1) a 126 item questionnaire solicited through campus email, 2) a 33 item questionnaire solicited the same way, and 3) a questionnaire that offered course credit. Course-credit participants were more likely to report a cheating behavior (80.7%) than the long questionnaire (68.5%) or the short questionnaire (56.3%), both of which offered no tangible reward. We also asked subjects to respond regarding the cheating behavior of a person that they know best in two different research designs. In both designs, participants reported less cheating for themselves than they did for others. The hypothesis that we underestimate cheating through volunteer sampling was clearly supported. (Contains 4 tables.)

“Under Reporting of Cheating in Research Using Volunteer College Students”
Miller, Arden; Shoptaugh, Carol; Parkerson, Annette
College Student Journal
v42 n2 p326-339 Jun 2008
 
CONCLUSION
We have seen that data from the past several decades consistently shows that most college students cheat on either tests or written assignments or both.  70% is a conservative figure, but given that most of the data is self-reported cheating by college students, whom we know frequently lie, and given that there is empirical evidence that volunteer sample bias and use of conventional anonymous questionnaires results in significant underreporting of cheating, the actual percentage of college students who cheat may well be in the 80% to 90% range.
College students are CHEATERS.
MOST college students lie on a DAILY basis.
MOST college students lie to their parents on one or more important topics each year.
ALMOST ALL college students lie on their resumes.
College students are LIARS and CHEATERS.
 

WHERE WE ARE
I am currently examining Peter Kreeft’s third objection against the Hallucination Theory.  His first three objections are all concerned with the TESTIMONY of WITNESSES, namely EYEWITNESSES.  The first three objections by Kreeft thus evoke the centuries-old idea of proving the resurrection of Jesus in a court trial.  If we take that idea seriously, though, Kreeft’s first three objections become a pathetic joke.  
Objection #3 is about “Five Hundred Witnesses” who allegedly had an experience of the risen Jesus at the same time and the same place.
In Part 12 of this series, I began taking this idea (of a court trial about the resurrection) seriously, by walking through modern procedures and criteria for a careful and proper “initial investigation” of a murder (or other serious crime).  Witnesses in a murder trial are NOT just randomly grabbed off the street and put on a witness stand.  There is usually an initial investigation, where the crime scene is carefully examined and evidence collected and documented, and where witnesses are usually identified and briefly questioned by a police officer or by a detective, and later there is usually a follow-up investigation where key witnesses are interviewed further by a detective.
Before a witness ever takes the stand, both the prosecution and the defense have access to notes and recordings of previous investigations of the crime scene and interviews of the witnesses, sometimes two or three interviews of key witnesses, and so the lawyers have a good idea of what the witnesses will say if and when they testify in court, and they have a good idea of the credibility of the testimony of each witness.  Defense lawyers can also investigate suspects, circumstances, and witnesses to gather evidence that might help to defend their client against the murder charge.
Before I continue with a discussion about what a careful and proper “follow-up investigation” involves, and whether any such investigation took place relative to the alleged event where five hundred people had an experience of an alleged appearance of Jesus,  I want to point out two major problems with EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY:

• HUMAN MEMORY IS UNRELIABLE
• HUMANS ARE DISHONEST

In Part 13 of this series, I summarized key points from an excellent article on problems with eyewitness memory and identifications made by eyewitnesses.  The main conclusion of that article is that eyewitness testimony is UNRELIABLE because human memory is UNRELIABLE.  The evidence from that article provides solid justification for this conclusion.
In this post, I will provide a summary of evidence for the view that HUMANS ARE DISHONEST, which gives us another good reason to conclude that eyewitness testimony is UNRELIABLE.
 
VERY YOUNG CHILDREN ARE LIARS

Babies not as innocent as they pretend

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent     12:01AM BST      01 Jul 2007 

Following studies of more than 50 children and interviews with parents, Dr Vasudevi Reddy, of the University of Portsmouth’s psychology department, says she has identified seven categories of deception used between six months and three-years-old.

 Infants quickly learnt that using tactics such as fake crying and pretend laughing could win them attention. By eight months, more difficult deceptions became apparent, such as concealing forbidden activities or trying to distract parents’ attention.

By the age of two, toddlers could use far more devious techniques, such as bluffing when threatened with a punishment.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3298979/Babies-not-as-innocent-as-they-pretend.html
 
There seems to be some SKEPTICISM about the idea that very young children are involved in deception and lying.  So, I think we should take a closer look at some important facts and evidence on this question about very young children. One of the key studies on this question was published in 2013, in an article called “Emergence of Lying in Very Young Children” (Developmental Psychology © 2013 American Psychological Association 2013, Vol. 49, No. 10, 1958–1963). The authors are Angela D. Evans (Brock University) and Kang Lee (University of Toronto and University of California, San Diego).
Here is a summary of this article [emphasis added]:

ABSTRACT

Lying is a pervasive human behavior. Evidence to date suggests that from the age of 42 months onward, children become increasingly capable of telling lies in various social situations. However, there is limited experimental evidence regarding whether very young children will tell lies spontaneously. The present study investigated the emergence of lying in very young children. Sixty-five 2- to 3-year-olds were asked not to peek at a toy when the experimenter was not looking. The majority of children (80%) transgressed and peeked at the toy. When asked whether they had peeked at the toy, most 2-year-old peekers were honest and confessed to their peeking, but with increased age, more peekers denied peeking and thus lied.

However, when asked follow-up questions that assessed their ability to maintain their initial lies, most children failed to conceal their lie by pretending to be ignorant of the toy’s identity. Additionally, after controlling for age, children’s executive functioning skills significantly predicted young children’s tendency to lie. These findings suggest that children begin to tell lies at a very young age.

The first sentence of this abstract supports my general claim:  “Humans are dishonest.”   The first sentence of the article cites research supporting this claim:

 Lying is a pervasive behavior in the adult world (DePaulo, Kashy, Kirkendol, Wyer, & Epstein, 1996). 

The second sentence cites previous research which supports the claim that young children tell lies  (at least from 42 months and on, i.e.  children from 3.5 years old on up):

Furthermore, children, as young as 42 months, have been found to lie in laboratory settings for a variety of reasons (Evans, Xu, & Lee, 2011; Polak & Harris, 1999; Popliger, Talwar, & Crossman, 2011; Talwar & Lee, 2002). 

The issue, according to these psychological researchers,  is whether children younger than 3.5 years old tell lies.  In other words, Do very young children tell lies?   Their conclusion, based on a psychological experiment was:  YES.  Furthermore, they concluded that not only do 2-year-old children tell lies, but that the tendency to tell lies increases significantly between 2 years of age and 3 years.  The primary evidence presented in the article concerns an experiment conducted with very young children [emphasis added]:

Children were invited to play a guessing game. A toy was placed behind them (e.g., a duck), a noise associated with the toy was made (e.g., quacking), and the children were asked to guess the name of the toy. After the children successfully guessed the first two toys, the experimenter told children that she needed to get a storybook and that the next toy would be placed on the table with the noise playing but that they were not to turn around while the experimenter retrieved the storybook. The toy was placed on the table, and a musical card played music unrelated to the toy so that children could not accurately identify the toy. Due to the young age of the children, the experimenter did not leave the room but instead went to a corner (in front of the child) and rummaged through a bin with her back to the child. Hidden cameras captured whether children peeked. After 1 min, the experimenter closed the bin loudly and stood up to indicate that she was done and was about to turn around. The experimenter then turned around and immediately covered the toy with a cloth. Children were classified as either peekers (peeked at the toy) or nonpeekers (did not peek at the toy). As a measure of whether children understood that they were not supposed to peek, children’s behavior at the moment that the experimenter stood up was coded. Of the children who peeked at the toy, 86.5% (N _ 45) of children returned to their seated position with their back to the toy, indicating that they understood the rule and remained in this position while the experimenter covered the toy. …

To assess whether children would tell the truth or a lie about their peeking behavior, the experimenter asked, “While I was getting the book, did you turn around and peek at the toy?” If they peeked and admitted peeking, they were classified as a confessor. If they peeked but denied peeking, they were classified as a lie teller. Then, to examine whether children were able to maintain verbal consistency between their initial statement and subsequent statements (i.e., semantic leakage control) they were asked, “What do you think it is?” Children who blurted out the name of the toy were classified as revealers. Children who concealed their knowledge by either feigning ignorance (e.g., saying “I don’t know”) or guessed another toy were classified as concealers.

Evans and Lee analyze the results of this experiment and draw some conclusions about very young children [emphasis added]:

The present study investigated the emergence of lie-telling behaviors in children between 2 and 3 years old. We examined the development of the lie-telling behaviors, and the relation between lie-telling and children’s executive functions. With regards to children’s lie-telling behavior, consistent with studies with older children (Polak & Harris, 1999; Talwar & Lee, 2002, 2008), the majority of 3-year-olds who peeked lied. In contrast, only a quarter of the 2-year-olds lied to conceal their transgression. Consistent with our hypothesis, we established experimentally that 2-year-olds will spontaneously tell lies. We also found that between 2 and 3 years of age, the tendency to lie dramatically increases, which mirrors the developmental trend of children between 3 and 12 years (Talwar et al., 2007; Talwar & Lee, 2002, 2008).  …

In the conclusion, Evans and Lee suggest that the increase in lying from age 2 to age 3 does not represent a decline in morality, but rather is an indication of increasing cognitive ability [emphasis added]:

In summary, we demonstrated for the first time experimentally that children begin to tell lies as young as 2 years of age, but most 2-year-olds are still highly honest. Within a 1-year span, children become more inclined to lie about their transgression. In line with studies involving older children, we found that executive functioning skills played an important role in lie telling. Furthermore, the results of the present investigation suggests that rather than younger children simply being more morally inclined to tell the truth, they may simply be less able to tell lies due to their executive functioning skills.  …

Lying increases significantly as very young children become better able to lie.
So, do young children tell lies? Clearly, they do.  What about very young children (ages 2 to 3), do they tell lies? Thanks to Evans and Lee, we can now answer that question with a fair degree of confidence: YES they do.  And by the age of 3, they have a very significant tendency to lie.
Sixteen of the oldest children in this study were from 43 to 48 months old (3.6 to 4 years old).  Ten of those children peeked at the toy, and nine of the ten who peeked lied, that is, 90% of the children who peeked in this older group lied about it! The portion of the younger groups who lied ranged from 25% to 33% of those who peeked.  The overall percentage was 40% of all the young children in this study who peeked lied about it. (this data from Table 1 in the article).
 
YOUNG CHILDREN ARE LIARS
If an adult person is not mentally ill and not mentally disabled, then he/she will answer YES to the following questions:
1. Do children sometimes lie?
2. Do teenagers sometimes lie?
3. Do college students and young adults sometimes lie?
4. Do adults sometimes lie?
I take it to be UNCONTROVERSIAL that children, teenagers, young adults, and adults SOMETIMES tell lies.
There might be some who disagree about the claim that VERY YOUNG children tell lies (i.e. children who are only two or three years old), but my discussion above provides significant evidence to support this answer: YES, even VERY YOUNG children will sometimes lie, and by age three MOST children will lie when they have disobeyed an adult and are questioned about this.
So, if we all agree that children, teenagers, young adults, and adults sometimes lie, then why am I writing posts on this question?  Because the real question is not whether people of various age groups SOMETIMES lie; rather, the real questions are these:

• How MANY people lie and deceive?
• How OFTEN do people lie and deceive? 
• How EASILY do people lie and deceive? 
• What MOTIVATES people to lie and deceive?

My main point is that MOST children lie, MOST teenagers lie, MOST young adults lie, and that MOST older adults lie. Another point I want to make is that children OFTEN lie, teenagers OFTEN lie, young adults OFTEN lie, and older adults OFTEN lie.   Scientific research can confirm or disconfirm these claims, and scientific research can inform us of the DEGREE to which lying and deception are common human behaviors.  The MORE  people that lie, the more skeptical we ought to be.  The more OFTEN people lie, the more skeptical we ought to be.  The more EASILY people will tell lies, the more skeptical we ought to be.
The scientific study that I focused on above examined the behavior of VERY YOUNG children.  The results of that study show that children as young as two years old will tell lies.  In fact,  between 25% and 33% of the younger children who ‘transgressed’ by disobeying the rule to not peek (at a toy placed behind them) before being asked to guess what sort of toy it was (based on sounds coming from the toy)  lied and said that they had not peeked.
The children who were about three years old in that study who ‘transgressed’ lied at a significantly higher rate (MOST of the peekers that age lied).  Sixteen of the oldest children in this study were from 43 to 48 months old (3.6 to 4 years old).  Ten of those children peeked at the toy, and nine of the ten who peeked lied, that is, 90% of the children who peeked in this older group lied about it!
But what about older children, children from ages four to ten?  Perhaps as children grow up, they become more aware of the wrongness of lying and deception, and more aware of social conventions against lying and deception,  and more aware of the implications and consequences of lying and deception.  So, it is possible that lying and deception decline as children get older and become more mature.
We need to turn to scientific research to find out whether the strong tendency to lie at around three years of age declines, or increases, or stays the same, over the following years of childhood (i.e. from age four to age ten).
Kang Lee, who was one of the psychological researchers who authored the article that I discussed in the previous post, has done a lot of research on lying and cheating and truth-telling by children.  One article, in particular, discusses research in recent decades about children lying:  Child Development Perspectives © 2013 The Society for Research in Child Development (Volume 7, Number 2, 2013, Pages 91–96).
“Little Liars: Development of Verbal Deception in Children” by Kang Lee, University of Toronto[emphasis added]:

ABSTRACT

Lying is common among adults and a more complex issue in children. In this article, I review two decades of empirical evidence about lying in children from the perspective of speech act theory. Children begin to tell lies in the preschool years for anti- and prosocial purposes, and their tendency to lie changes as a function of age and the type of lies being told. In addition, children’s ability to tell convincing lies improves with age. In the article, I highlight the central roles that children’s understanding of mental states and social conventions play in the development of lying. I also identify areas for research to be done to develop a more comprehensive picture of the typical and atypical developmental courses of verbal deception in children.

In the introduction of this article, Lee notes that “No research on lying was conducted between the early 1900s and 1980 (Lewis, Stanger, & Sullivan, 1989).”  But this changed in recent decades.
In the article, Lee synthesizes data from several psychological experiments and provides a chart that indicates the percent of ‘transgressors’ or children who do something contrary to directions given by an adult and who then lie and indicate that they did not disobey the directions given by an adult:

We can see that there is a significant increase in the percent of children who lie about their violation of the rule or instruction given by an adult.  At age two only about 30% of ‘transgressors’ lie.  At age three it jumps up to about 55%, and by age four about 75% of transgressors will lie.  Then there is a smaller increase between age four and five, so that at five about 80% of transgressors lie.  Then the trajectory levels out and stays in the range between 80% and 85% for ages six through ten.
These empirical studies of lying indicate that MOST children who are three years of age or older will lie when they have broken a rule or disobeyed direction given by an adult.  Furthermore, this tendency to lie increases significantly between age two and age five, and then levels out at a high percentage (between 80% and 85% of transgressors will lie), from age five to age ten.
So, we do NOT see the tendency to lie DECREASING as children grow older.  Rather, it appears that the tendency INCREASES as they learn how to become better at the ‘skill’ of lying and deceiving others.  By age five children become fairly skilled at lying and will very frequently lie, at least when they have disobeyed a rule or directions from an adult (‘transgression’), and they will lie even when there is no threat of punishment or no significant reward at stake (which is the case in these experiments).  Clearly, young children between age 3 and age ten are LIARS.  They do not just lie SOMETIMES.  MOST young children ages three to four years old will lie when they have disobeyed a rule or directions from an adult and are questioned about this.  Between ages five and ten only a tiny minority (15 to 20%) of those who have disobeyed a rule or directions from an adult will be truthful and admit this when questioned.
Very young children (two to three years old) are often LIARS, and MOST young children three to four years old who have disobeyed a rule or directions will lie about this, and over 80% of children who are between five and ten years old who have disobeyed a rule or directions from an adult will lie about this.  Children are LIARS, and they don’t just lie sometimes.  They lie frequently, and the better they get at telling lies, the more frequently they tell them.
 
YOUNG CHILDREN ARE CHEATERS TOO

At 5-6 years of age many children cheat if the opportunity arises. In one study of this age group, 84% knew that cheating was not allowed. However, 56% cheated.

http://www.glass-castle.com/clients/www-nocheating-org/adcouncil/research/cheatingbackgrounder.html
 
TEENAGERS ARE DISHONEST
One good reason why we should be skeptical is that people often lie, deceive, and cheat.
This is not just my personal opinion. This is a FACT, a fact established by scientific observation and research. I have presented factual scientific data showing that very young children lie, and that elementary age children lie frequently. Now it is time to look into how much teenagers lie, deceive, and cheat.
I take it as an obvious truth that teenagers sometimes lie and deceive and teenagers sometimes cheat.   So, an important question is HOW MUCH do teenagers lie and deceive and cheat?
 
One psychologist who has studied this question is Nancy Darling.  Here are some important findings from one of her studies about teenagers [emphasis added]:

In the last few years, a handful of intrepid scholars have decided it’s time to try to understand why kids lie. For a study to assess the extent of teenage dissembling, Dr. Nancy Darling, then at Penn State University, recruited a special research team of a dozen undergraduate students, all under the age of 21. Using gift certificates for free CDs as bait, Darling’s Mod Squad persuaded high-school students to spend a few hours with them in the local pizzeria.

Each student was handed a deck of 36 cards, and each card in this deck listed a topic teens sometimes lie about to their parents. Over a slice and a Coke, the teen and two researchers worked through the deck, learning what things the kid was lying to his parents about, and why.

“They began the interviews saying that parents give you everything and yes, you should tell them everything,” Darling observes. By the end of the interview, the kids saw for the first time how much they were lying and how many of the family’s rules they had broken. Darling says 98 percent of the teens reported lying to their parents.

Out of the 36 topics, the average teen was lying to his parents about twelve of them. The teens lied about what they spent their allowances on, and whether they’d started dating, and what clothes they put on away from the house. They lied about what movie they went to, and whom they went with. They lied about alcohol and drug use, and they lied about whether they were hanging out with friends their parents disapproved of. They lied about how they spent their afternoons while their parents were at work. They lied about whether chaperones were in attendance at a party or whether they rode in cars driven by drunken teens.

Being an honors student didn’t change these numbers by much; nor did being an overscheduled kid. No kid, apparently, was too busy to break a few rules. And lest you wonder if these numbers apply only to teens in State College, Pennsylvania, the teens in Darling’s sample were compared to national averages on a bevy of statistics, from academics to extracurriculars. “We had a very normal, representative sample,” Darling says.

[Excerpted from:  “Learning to Lie” by Po Bronson, published Feb 10, 2008,  New York Magazine]
 
Nancy Darling made  a couple of comments worth noting about the above-mentioned study:

Most kids lie to their parents sometimes. For example, in a study we did of 121 high school students, 120 of them listed at least one area they lied to parents about. And that last teen told us they agreed with their parents about everything. (I’m not sure I believe them.) We’ve replicated these findings with thousands more kids in four countries on three continents.

(“Is Your Teen Trustworthy?” Psychology Today,  Published on July 9, 2011)
 
Another indication of teenage deception is the fact that while many teenagers drink alcohol, parents are generally unaware that their teenage child drinks alcohol [emphasis added]:

 Abstract: This study included 199 White mother-adolescent dyads and 144 White father-adolescent dyads. All adolescents reported regular alcohol use, yet less than one third of parents were aware of their adolescents’ drinking. […]

Despite public concern and media hype surrounding drug use by adolescents, studies have confirmed that American adolescents’ use of some illicit drugs, including cocaine, hallucinogens, and heroin, is minimal. In a 1995 national survey, only from 1% to 4% of eighth, 10th, and 12th graders reported using any of these substances in the previous 30 days. The use of other substances during the month preceding the study was more prevalent, with from 9% to 21% of students reporting marijuana use and from 19% to 34% reporting cigarette use. Alcohol use was even higher, with 25% of eighth graders, 39% of 10th graders, and 51% of 12th graders reporting that they drank in the previous month(Johnston, O’Malley, & Bachman, 1996). Public attention has been misdirected at adolescents’ use of illicit drugs, even though licit drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco, cause more deaths in the United States than all other drugs combined (Ellickson, 1992) and may, in the long run, pose a greater risk to the developing adolescent and more harm to society (Kandel, Single, & Kessler, 1976; Newcomb & Bentler, 1989).

[…]

Even though some adolescents experiment with alcohol without becoming regular users (Kandel et al., 1978), few studies have recognized this distinction and focused on adolescents who are regular drinkers. (For exceptions, see Barnes & Farrell, 1992; Barnes et al., 1994). To avoid confounding experimentation with regular use, this study focuses only on adolescents who were using alcohol on a regular basis.

[…]

The subsample derives from a study of eighth to 12th graders (n = 1,227) and their parents (n = 1,176) from three school districts In urban, suburban, and rural settings in a single Midwestern county between December, 1994, and May, 1995.

[…]

Parents’ beliefs about their adolescents’ alcohol use.
Parents responded to the question, “How likely is it that your child currently drinks alcohol?” in one of seven categories. (See Table 1.)

Parents’ beliefs about alcohol use by their adolescents’ close friends.    
Parents responded to the question, “How likely is it that your child’s close friends currently drink alcohol?” in one of seven categories. (See Table 1.)

Parents’ awareness of their adolescents’ alcohol use.
Previous studies have concluded that adolescent self reports of alcohol use on anonymous or identifiable surveys are valid and reliable (Malvin & Moskowitz, 1983; Mensch & Kandel, 1988). Because this study included only adolescents who reported the regular use of alcohol, parents were classified as either unaware or aware of their adolescents’ use of alcohol based on their response to a question regarding beliefs about the adolescent’s alcohol use. Parents were coded unaware if they responded that the adolescent was somewhat, very, or definitely unlikely to be drinking alcohol. Parents were coded aware if they responded that the adolescent was somewhat, very, or definitely likely to be drinking alcohol or that they were not sure. The response, not sure, was classified in the aware category because parents typically underestimate adolescent alcohol use, and this uncertainty indicates some suspicion that the adolescent is using alcohol. (The percentages are reported in the results.)

[…]

Parental Awareness of Alcohol Use by Their Adolescents and Their Adolescents’ Close Friends
This first set of analyses confirmed our hypothesis that the majority of mothers and fathers would be unaware of their adolescents’ alcohol use. Although all adolescents included in this study reported using alcohol at least once a month, only 29% of mothers were aware of their adolescents’ alcohol use. Moreover, few aware mothers were definite when asked about the likelihood that their adolescents currently were using alcohol. Only 5% responded “definitely”: 4%, “very likely”; and 6%, “not sure.” The largest group of aware mothers, 1552, responded that their adolescents’ alcohol use was “somewhat likely.” Despite adolescents’ reports of regular use of alcohol, the majority of mothers, 71 %, were unaware. Most were quite certain that their adolescents were not currently using alcohol. Specifically, 26% of the unaware mothers responded “definitely not,” and 33% responded “very unlikely”; only 12% of the mothers responded that their adolescents’ use was “somewhat unlikely.”

We obtained similar results for fathers. Only 31 % were aware that their adolescents were currently using alcohol. Few aware fathers were certain about their adolescents’ use. Only 2% responded “definitely”; 4%, “very likely”; and 6%, “not sure.” The largest group of aware fathers, 19%, responded that their adolescents’ alcohol use was “somewhat likely.” Despite adolescents’ reports of regular alcohol use, 69% of fathers were unaware. The majority were quite certain that their adolescents did not currently drink alcohol. Specifically, 24% of unaware fathers responded “definitely not,” and 29% responded “very unlikely”; only 16% of the fathers responded “somewhat unlikely.”

[“Other Teens Drink, But not my Kid“: Does Parental Awareness of Adolescent Alcohol Use Protect Adolescents from Risky Consequences?” (1998).
Karen Bogenschneider, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Ming-Yeh Wu, Soochow University
Marcela Raffaelli, University of Nebraska – Lincoln
Jenner C. Tsay, University of Wisconsin
University of Nebraska – Lincoln, Faculty Publications, Department of Psychology. Paper 116, 5-18-1998]
For teenagers who report regular alcohol use,  about 70% of their parents are UNAWARE that their teenager is currently using alcohol.  This suggests that many of these teenagers are involved in lying and/or deceiving their parents, at least about their use of alcohol.
 
TEENAGERS ARE CHEATERS
The view that teenagers often lie and cheat is also supported by a survey of 43,000 high school students conducted by the Josephson Institute [emphasis added]:

Survey highlights: while 89 percent of students believe that being a good person is more important than being rich, almost one in three boys and one in four girls admitted stealing from a store within the past year. Moreover, 21 percent admitted they stole something from a parent or other relative, and 18 percent admitted stealing from a friend.

On lying, more than two in five said they sometimes lie to save money (48 percent of males and 35 percent of females). While 92 percent of students believe their parents want them to do the right thing, more than eight in ten confessed they lied to a parent about something significant.

Rampant cheating in school continues. A majority of students (59 percent) admitted cheating on a test during the last year, with 34 percent doing it more than two times.  One in three admitted they used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment.

“As bad as these numbers are, they appear to be understated,” said Michael Josephson, president of the Institute and a national leader in ethics training. “More than one in four students confessed they lied on at least one or two survey questions, which is typically an attempt to conceal misconduct.”

Josephson said the results of this survey, conducted in 2010, are slightly better than those of the 2008 survey.

Josephson Institute of Ethics’ Report Card for 2010
Note:  In a 2012  survey conducted by the Josephson Institute, the percent of lying, stealing, and cheating reported by high school students decreased somewhat.
 
A survey of 24,000 high school students produced results similar to the above Josephson Institute survey [emphasis added]:

Don McCabe, a professor at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey, has conducted much of the research on cheating in U.S. schools since 1990 and says cheating on tests in high school is on the rise.

In his survey of 24,000 students at 70 high schools, 64 percent of students admitted to cheating on a test, 58 percent admitted to plagiarism and 95 percent said they participated in some form of cheating, whether it was on a test, plagiarism or copying homework.

Problem is, he said, some students don’t think of it as cheating, or they try to justify their behavior.

“They feel a test is unfair and they feel it’s OK to cheat,” he said. “Maybe they had something to do that night and didn’t study. Another big issue is fairness — they feel that they are getting left behind.”

(“Students’ cheating takes a high-tech turn” by Jeremy P. Meyer, The Denver Post, POSTED:   05/27/2010 )
 
Various studies of Middle School and High School students show that cheating by teenagers is very common:

…The results of the 29th Who’s Who Among American High School Students Poll (of 3,123 high-achieving 16- to 18-year olds – that is, students with A or B averages who plan to attend college after graduation) were released in November, 1998. Among the findings:

• • 80% of the country’s best students cheated to get to the top of their class.
  • More than half the students surveyed said that they don’t think cheating is a big deal.
  • 95% of cheaters say they were not caught.
  • 40% cheated on a quiz or a test
  • 67% copied someone else’s homework

According to the results of a 1998 survey of 20,829 middle and high school students nationwide conducted by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, 70% of high school students and 54% of middle school students said they had cheated on an exam in the last 12 months. …

Middle School:
Most research shows that cheating begins to set in during the middle school years (ages 11 – 13). According to The Josephson Institute of Ethics, “The evidence is fairly clear that cheating begins in the middle school fairly seriously and escalates in the higher grades, 10th, 11th and 12th grades, because that’s when the stakes are highest. It doesn’t seem as if it’s necessarily a dispositional thing, like they’ve never thought of cheating before. It’s that there isn’t much reason to cheat in the elementary school.”

According to Jacobs, research at this age shows that middle schoolers are motivated to cheat because of the emphasis placed on grades. In one study, 2/3 of middle school students report cheating on exams; 90% copy homework. Furthermore, even those who say that cheating is wrong, will cheat. The bottom line: If a child’s goal is to get a good grade, he is more likely to cheat.

High School:
Research has shown that the incidence of academic cheating among high school students has risen to all-time highs. The studies conducted by Who’s Who Among American High School Students, as well as those conducted by The Josephson Institute, are just a few of the many that demonstrate the problem. In addition, a 1997 Connecticut Department of Public Health survey of 12,000 students showed that 63% of 11th graders and 62% of ninth graders reported cheating on an exam in the previous 12 months.

[…]

According to Stephen Davis, a psychology professor at Emporia State University in Kansas: “about 20% of college students from across the nation admitted to cheating in high school during the 1940’s. That percentage has since soared, with no fewer than 75% and as many as 98% of 8,000 college students surveyed each year now reporting cheating in high school – and the majority admitting doing it on several occasions.

http://www.glass-castle.com/clients/www-nocheating-org/adcouncil/research/cheatingbackgrounder.html
 
Most teenagers lie and deceive.  Most teenagers are dishonest with their parents on several topics.  Most teenagers cheat in school, either on tests or on assignments.  Most teenagers who regularly drink alcohol manage to hide this from their parents.  Those are the facts.  Teenagers are LIARS.  They are DISHONEST.
To Be Continued…
 

WHERE WE ARE
I am currently examining Peter Kreeft’s third objection against the Hallucination Theory.  His first three objections are all concerned with the TESTIMONY of WITNESSES, namely EYEWITNESSES.  The first three objections by Kreeft thus evoke the centuries-old idea of proving the resurrection of Jesus in a court trial.  If we take that idea seriously, though, Kreeft’s first three objections become a pathetic joke.  
Objection #3 is about “Five Hundred Witnesses” who supposedly had an experience of the risen Jesus at the same time and the same place.
In Part 12 of this series, I began taking this idea (of a court trial about the resurrection) seriously, by walking through modern criteria for a careful and proper “initial investigation” of a murder (or other serious crime).  Witnesses in a murder trial are not just randomly grabbed off the street and put on a witness stand.  There is usually an initial investigation, where the crime scene is carefully examined and evidence collected and documented, and where witnesses are usually identified and briefly questioned by a police officer or by a detective, and later there is usually a follow-up investigation where witnesses are interviewed further by a detective.
So, before a witness ever takes the stand, both the prosecution and the defense have access to notes and recordings of previous interviews of the witnesses, sometimes two or three interviews of a witness, and so the lawyers have a good idea of what the witnesses will say when they testify, and they have a good idea of the credibility that the testimony of each witness will have.
Before I continue with a discussion about what a careful and proper “follow-up investigation” involves, and whether any such investigation took place relative to the alleged event where five hundred people had an experience of an alleged appearance of Jesus,  I want to point out two major problems with EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY:

• Human memory is UNRELIABLE
• Humans are DISHONEST

 
EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY IS UNRELIABLE BECAUSE HUMAN MEMORY IS UNRELIABLE
Professional detectives have been working at solving murders and other serious crimes since the mid-1800s.  So, why did the Department of Justice think law enforcement needed new guidelines for careful and proper investigation of murders and other serious crimes around 1998?  One big motivation is that many people who were convicted of murder and other serious crimes on the basis of EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY were later proven to be INNOCENT by the use of DNA evidence.  This had become a serious concern by that time:

An excellent article on the unreliability of human memory is Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases by Cara Laney and Elizabeth F. Loftus.  The main conclusion of this article is that eyewitness testimony is NOT reliable:

Notice some of the different ways that eyewitness memory can be corrupted:

a. leading questions
b. misinterpretation of events
c. conversations with co-witnesses
d. the expectations of the witness for what should have happened

 
If an eyewitness is exposed to misinformation after the event (e.g. in a misleading question) that can corrupt the memory of the eyewitness (This is known as the “misinformation effect”):

 
Discussions of an event between eyewitnesses to the event increase the Misinformation Effect:

This article also describes a study in which a group of people is shown a brief video, but because of the use of polarized glasses, they actually are watching two different versions of the video, some in the group see one video, and others see a video that has some significant differences from the first one.  The subjects are asked to answer a dozen memory questions about the movie after discussing those questions with each other, and then to answer another twenty questions on their own.  Four of the dozen questions that the subjects discuss together are about details that differed between the two versions of the video, and eight of the twenty questions that they answered individually are about details that differed between the two versions of the video.  There was a significant impact on the reliability of memory on the questions that were discussed by the group prior to answering those questions:

False memories of events that did not happen can be implanted into a person’s mind fairly easily:

More recent experiments have shown that false memories can be created in a significant portion of the subjects and in some experiments, false memories were created in most of the subjects.  In one study, subjects were exposed to advertisements about Disneyland that featured the cartoon character Bugs Bunny being present at Disneyland.  As a result, some subjects became convinced that they had personally seen the Bugs Bunny character at Disneyland, but that cannot have actually happened, because Bugs Bunny is a Warner Brothers cartoon and has never been a Disney cartoon character nor a character portrayed at Disneyland.
This article also discusses the unreliability of eyewitness identification of culprits.  This is relevant to the claim that hundreds of eyewitnesses experienced an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus, because in order for a person to claim to have seen the risen Jesus, that person must have IDENTIFIED a person (or an experienced visual image of a person) as being Jesus of Nazareth.  The evidential value of such testimony is based upon that IDENTIFICATION.  Merely seeing a person in town or in a church service is of no significance to the question at issue if that person was NOT Jesus of Nazareth.  So, the reliability or unreliability of eyewitness IDENTIFICATION of persons is of direct relevance to the claim that hundreds of people experienced an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus.
There are a number of factors that often lead to UNRELIABLE eyewitness IDENTIFICATIONS:

Let’s consider the above factors in relation to the claim that hundreds of people experienced an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus:

a. poor vision
b. poor viewing conditions
c. stressful witnessing experiences
d. too little time to view the person who needs to be identified
e. too much delay between witnessing and identifying
f. being asked to identify a person from a race other than the race of the witness

a. Did an objective investigator determine for each one of the alleged eyewitnesses whether he/she had good vision or poor vision?
There probably was no objective investigator of this event.  Furthermore, even if there were an objective investigator, it seems unlikely that this investigator would have tracked down hundreds of alleged eyewitnesses and inquired about the quality of their vision.  So, it is very unlikely that an objective investigator checked on the vision of hundreds of witnesses to an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus.  In any case, we have no information about the quality of the vision of the hundreds of alleged eyewitnesses.
b. Did an objective investigator determine whether the viewing conditions at the time and place of this event were good or bad viewing conditions?
There probably was no objective investigator of this event.  Furthermore, even if there were an objective investigator, it seems unlikely that this investigator would have carefully investigated the quality of viewing conditions that existed at the time and place of this alleged event.  So, it is very unlikely that an objective investigator carefully investigated the quality of viewing conditions that existed at the time and place of this alleged event.  In any case, we have no information about the viewing conditions at the time and place of this alleged event.
c. Did an objective investigator determine that the circumstances for these hundreds of alleged eyewitnesses during the event were NOT stressful circumstances for them?
There probably was no objective investigator of this event.  Furthermore, even if there were an objective investigator, it seems unlikely that this investigator would have carefully investigated the circumstances during the event to determine whether they were stressful circumstances for the alleged eyewitnesses.  So, it is very unlikely that an objective investigator carefully investigated the psychological circumstances of the alleged eyewitnesses that existed at the time and place of this alleged event.  In any case, we have no information about the psychological circumstances of the eyewitnesses at the time and place of this alleged event.
Presumably, there was no threat of violence at the time, like there would be in the case of witnessing a murder.  However, if this event took place during a Christian worship service, there might well have been significant emotional factors at the time of this event.  Early Christians often spoke in tongues and “prophesied” and performed faith healings.  Early Christian worship was probably more like Pentacostal worship than the calm and well-ordered worship services in Catholic and mainstream protestant Churches that we see today.  So, if this event took place during a Christian worship service, which seems likely, then there might well have been a great intensity of religious fervor and emotion that would have impacted both the interpretations of the eyewitnesses and their memories of this event.
d. Did an objective investigator determine whether there was enough time or too little time to view the key person who was identified (namely the person who was thought to be the risen Jesus)?
There probably was no objective investigator of this event.  Furthermore, even if there were an objective investigator, it seems unlikely that this investigator would have carefully investigated the amount of time that each of the hundreds of witnesses viewed the person who they believed to be the risen Jesus.  So, it is very unlikely that an objective investigator carefully investigated whether there was enough time or too little time to view the person who was thought to be the risen Jesus.
In any case, we have no information about how long each of the hundreds of witnesses “saw” or experienced this alleged appearance of the risen Jesus.  It could have lasted for just one second, or just a few seconds, or for a minute, or a few minutes, or for longer.  We just don’t know.
e. Did an objective investigator determine for each alleged eyewitness whether there was too long of a delay between seeing this person (or experiencing an image of a person) and identifying that person as being Jesus of Nazareth?
There probably was no objective investigator of this event.  Furthermore, even if there were an objective investigator, it seems unlikely that this investigator would have carefully investigated the amount of time between when each of the hundreds of witnesses viewed the person in question and the time when that witness concluded that this person was  Jesus of Nazareth.  So, it is very unlikely that an objective investigator carefully investigated the amount of time between when each of the hundreds of witnesses viewed the person in question and the time when they concluded that this person was  Jesus of Nazareth.
In any case, we have no information about the amount of time between when each of the hundreds of witnesses viewed the person in question and the time when that witness concluded that this person was  Jesus of Nazareth.  Some people might have immediately concluded that the person was Jesus of Nazareth, other people may have drawn this conclusion an hour after the event, some may have drawn the conclusion a day later, a week later, or a month later.  We just don’t know.
There were no photographs or videos or line-ups of suspects to view later.   So, there was NEVER a formal identification in the way that IDENTIFICATION occurs in modern criminal investigations.  There were no pictures of Jesus to show to the alleged eyewitnesses, and there was no physical Jesus of Nazareth available to put into a lineup of similar-looking Jewish peasants.  So, modern standards and processes of IDENTIFICATION could NOT have taken place for this event.
However, some or all of the alleged eyewitnesses might not have identified the person in question as being Jesus of Nazareth immediately, during the event.  If a witness did NOT immediately recognize the person in question as being Jesus of Nazareth, then there was a gap in time between seeing this person (or experiencing an image of a person) and IDENTIFYING that person as being Jesus.  In those cases, it would be important to know HOW LONG that gap of time was between seeing and identifying.  We have no information about whether there was such a gap in time between seeing and identifying, no information about how many witnesses experienced a delay between seeing and identifying, and no information about how long this gap of time was for each of the various hundreds of alleged eyewitnesses.  We just don’t know.
f. Did an objective investigator determine for each of the hundreds of alleged eyewitnesses whether Jesus of Nazareth was from a race other than the race of the witness?
There probably was no objective investigator of this event.  Furthermore, even if there were an objective investigator, it seems unlikely that this investigator would have carefully investigated whether Jesus of Nazareth was from a race other than the race of the witness.  This is a concern based on the modern scientific study of problems with eyewitness identificatiton.  So, it is very unlikely that an objective investigator carefully investigated whether Jesus of Nazareth was from a race other than the race of the witness.
In any case, we have no information about the race, or races, of the alleged eyewitnesses.  We just don’t know their race or races.  These alleged eyewitnesses might well have all been Greeks or Romans who had converted to Christianity, and thus none of them would have been Palestinian Jews.  In that case, their identifications of a man as being Jesus of Nazareth, who was a Palestinian Jew, would be suspect.
There is one very important factor that has not been touched on by the article on problems with eyewitness memory: prior familiarity with the person in question.
g. Did an objective investigator determine for each of the hundreds of alleged eyewitnesses whether they had previously seen and met Jesus of Nazareth before he died?
This is the crucial problem with Paul’s testimony about his alleged experience of an appearance of the risen Jesus.  Paul never met the historical Jesus prior to Jesus’ death.   So, Paul was in no position to correctly and reliably IDENTIFY any person as being Jesus of Nazareth.  Paul’s testimony, the only firsthand testimony that we have, of an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus is WORTHLESS because Paul did not know what Jesus looked like.
So, an absolutely crucial question about these alleged hundreds of eyewitnesses of an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus is whether ANY of them had seen and met Jesus of Nazareth before Jesus died.  If these people did not live in Palestine, then it is unlikely that they had seen and met Jesus of Nazareth before he died.  In that case, their eyewitness IDENTIFICATION of the man who appeared to them in this event as being Jesus of Nazareth would be WORTHLESS, and thus their testimony, like Paul’s testimony, would be WORTHLESS.  The fact that they saw some person who they believed to be Jesus of Nazareth would NOT provide significant evidence that this person was in fact Jesus of Nazareth.
 
CONCLUSION
It is becoming more and more clear that the analogy with a court trial shows the “eyewitness” evidence for the resurrection of Jesus to be a pathetic joke.   If we compare modern murder investigations by professional detectives and the court trials that depend on those investigations with the evidence offered by Christian apologists, it becomes painfully obvious that the evidence they provide is extremely weak and dubious, nowhere even close to being the sort of strong evidence needed to establish the occurrence of a supernatural event or miracle.
Eyewitnesses in a murder trial are not simply pulled off the street and put onto the witness stand.  The crime scene and witnesses of the crime are initially investigated by a professional police officer and/or homicide detective, and key witnesses are investigated and interviewed again in more depth by a professional detective, and this initial gathering of information and testimony occurs prior to any court trial, prior to any witness being called to testify.  By considering modern criminal investigations and court trials, especially concerning serious crimes like murder, we can clearly see that there is no serious chance that an actual court trial would ever lead to the verdict that Jesus rose from the dead.