With Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz criticized for exaggerating his military service, NPR’s Steve Inskeep talks to psychologist Holly Cole about why humans tend to embellish stories.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
I don’t mean to shock you, but when politicians tell a story, they may not always tell the absolute truth. Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz faced criticism when he talked about regulating assault weapons.
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TIM WALZ: We can make sure we don’t have reciprocal carry among states. And we can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.
(CHEERING)
INSKEEP: Walz got in trouble for saying he carried weapons in war. During 24 years in the National Guard, he did carry weapons and was deployed overseas during a war but not in a war zone. The campaign says Walz misspoke.
On the other ticket, former President Trump recently gave a news conference where NPR counted 162 false claims, exaggerations, unlikely predictions and much more. The truth is many human beings improve the stories they tell. So we called Holly Cole, a psychologist at Wesleyan College who studies our relationship with the truth.
Why is it that people embellish stories?
HOLLY COLE: I do think it’s fairly natural. My research has really focused on the fine line between outright lying about previous experiences and exaggerating previous experiences for entertainment’s sake.
INSKEEP: Give me an example. What’s the difference between lying and exaggerating?
COLE: Well, I’m sure you have friends like this – I definitely do – who, like, exaggerate about every story. So if you’ve had a friend who might tell you a wild story about going fishing and catching a 20-pound catfish that fought back, when in reality, it was more like 5 pounds and perhaps easy…
INSKEEP: Yeah.
COLE: …In that situation, the exaggeration kind of makes the narrative more pleasant, entertaining and maybe even self-disclosing if your friend truly sees themselves as, like, an epic fisherman.
INSKEEP: Self-disclosing mean it reveals something about the person who’s not telling the truth exactly.
COLE: Yes.
INSKEEP: OK.
COLE: You can clearly go too far, right? Like, if your friend tells you that they caught a great white shark at the lake, you’re probably going to find that off-putting.
(LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: I rescued a child from the great white shark that I caught in the lake by firing a gun at the oxygen tank in…
COLE: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: Wait, wait, wait, wait. That’s the movie “Jaws.” Sorry. I’m so sorry.
COLE: Oh, you’re going to need a bigger boat.
INSKEEP: I am going to need a bigger boat…
COLE: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: …To contain this exaggeration. Or did that become a lie when I got to that point?
COLE: Yes, I do think you crossed that line, right? So there is this amazing fine line between the exaggeration and lying where people are entertained and generally feel closer to the storyteller if it’s exaggerations. But if it goes into lying – outright lying – people tend to find that off-putting and don’t really like the narrator.
INSKEEP: I want to focus on several parts of that. First, why would it draw me closer to someone who is BS-ing (ph) and maybe I even kind of sense that they are?
COLE: (Laughter) I would say part of it is that we like to hear entertaining stories, right? We don’t want to be bored. And so by making their story more entertaining, they’re actually kind of doing something altruistic. They’re caring about who you are as a person…
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
COLE: …And making sure you’re not entirely bored.
(LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: I love this. I love this. I mean, obviously, we’re talking about human beings, and it’s a wide range of human beings and behaviors. We shouldn’t generalize too much. But I wonder if there are incentives when you’re in politics to be a little more proficient at exaggeration.
COLE: I bet they are. I feel like politicians are given this very difficult task of playing both contextual roles, of trying to form close relationships with voters. And telling entertaining stories is a great way to do that. But they’re also expected to be historically factual. So they’re kind of playing this weird in-between where they have to try to be accurate and entertaining.
INSKEEP: Tim Walz, Democratic vice presidential candidate, said at one point that he carried a weapon of war in war. But he wasn’t in Iraq. He wasn’t in Afghanistan. So what is that? Is that an exaggeration or a lie?
COLE: I did watch the video. And I’m not sure that it was a lie in the slightest. I think it might have been just a slipup. But for the sake of argument, let’s just assume it was intentional. And so if he intentionally lied there and said it this way intentionally – thinking it was false – then his lie there was to emphasize in a quick manner that in his past, he has had direct, real-world experience with firearms, which in and of itself is not a lie. He has had a lot of experience with firearms.
He may have exaggerated this point in the eyes of many people who assumed when he said in war, he meant in Iraq or Afghanistan when in actuality that was not his intent. It was not to maliciously mislead people into misinformation. Rather, it was a shortcut to get the point across about who he is as a person and where he stands on gun issues. This distinction could be considered a factual lie but a narrative truth.
INSKEEP: Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate, says this is the worst economy that anybody has ever seen.
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DONALD TRUMP: We have a very bad economy right now. We could literally be on the throes of a depression – not recession, a depression.
INSKEEP: What does that count as?
COLE: I would say that’s an outright lie, yes, because he has data and facts behind it that he has been shown, presumably. And when a person lies about data-backed facts, then it really seems like there are only two options – they are disconnected from reality, or it’s a direct attempt to mislead people and, in that case, voters.
INSKEEP: What about if he says that and people feel that connects with their narrative, that they feel bad about the course of the United States right now, and they’re paying a lot more for groceries and everything else?
COLE: I think then that’s their narrative truth. But they’re not the one telling the story.
INSKEEP: So he’s still responsible…
COLE: Yes.
INSKEEP: …For it, even if some people accept it.
COLE: Yes. And also, his context gives him more responsibility as a presidential candidate.
INSKEEP: It seems to me, as an observer, that if you say something that is a little off or a lot off, you get more attention. More people respond. You become the center of conversation. And whatever your essential issue is that you wanted to raise – immigration, the economy, whatever it is – gets more attention because you spoke wrongly about it.
COLE: Yes, I could absolutely see that. I do think you might see that backfire too at some point. I think the lies would eventually become moot. So when a politician constantly tells lies that are completely historically inaccurate, especially without any altruistic intent, then that person may actually become a source that people just expect to lie.
INSKEEP: Well, Holly Cole of Wesleyan College, I want to tell you I’ve done approximately 11 million interviews. And this is the very, very best interview that we’ve ever done.
COLE: Oh, that’s a very sweet of you.
(LAUGHTER)
COLE: I’m sure you say that to all your interviewees (laughter).
INSKEEP: OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. But I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you very much.
COLE: I really enjoyed it, too. Thank you very much for having me.
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