This is a pretty random thought I had today and it seems kind of intuitive and obvious and perhaps there is plenty of written material about it already, but… People generally respond with anger when their dishonesty is called out.
I was thinking in my head of a hypothetical situation. Let’s say something incredibly unlikely happened, especially as it pertains to human behavior.
Or better yet, I have a real example.
I was in a club in Paris a handful of years back with my friends. On this trip, I had been regularly using an over-the-top French accent based largely on Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast.
I was chatting with a French girl at the bar (in English), asking her for a drink recommendation. After one question I asked her, she responded with,
“I’m sorry, I can’t understand you. Your British accent is too strong.”
Now, this by itself is pretty funny. I’m not sure where she learned English that my accent is “too British” for her. Given that I’m from middle America.
Unfazed, I instead repeated my original question, but this time using my ridiculous French accent.
It worked!
She understood me immediately and didn’t seem to notice that I had done anything unusual.
Now, it’s kind of a strange story and there’s a lot you could unpack here. But back to my original point, I’ve told this story before and people have questioned its veracity.
I did not feel even a speck of anger at that response. I understand why people would question whether it really happened, but I know 100% that it happened exactly like that, so I have the confidence to withstand such skepticism.
And in my experience, people telling the truth virtually never respond to skepticism with anger.
Obviously, if their true story is intended to determine a course of action and people are resistant because they don’t believe it, that could be frustrating and they may get angry.
But especially in low-stakes situations, an honest person should never really be angry.
People who are lying, however, seem to get angry all the time. I assume it’s because such a strong emotional response is likely to quell any criticism. People are unlikely to press the issue seeing the response they are getting.
But like with most situations, the most emotional and heated person is probably not right.
I see a lot of videos and other content of weight lifters being questioned about whether they are “Natural” or not. Many of them respond immediately with anger when questioned about it.
Especially the ones who are obviously not natural.
But to a truly natural lifter to have people questioning, it’s actually a compliment. It means they’ve gotten so big and strong without steroids that people literally cannot believe they did it naturally.
They have the confidence that they are 100% right, and it doesn’t bother them that people question it.
I think that in general, anger or emotional reactions that seem inappropriate for the situation are extremely strong warning signs that something else is going on. Perhaps that person is lying, maybe they are hiding something, or maybe they have some other emotional issue at stake that you are unaware of.
Or I suppose they could just be really unstable, too. But I generally try to avoid those types of people!