New Study Says Lying Salespersons Are More Successful Than Honest Salespersons

Liar liar, you’re hired!

By Ashley Mazerolle, Marketing —

We are taught from a young age that lying is bad. But a new study from Chicago Booth found lying to be an asset in certain job positions.

What kind of jobs? Selling jobs.

The research says you’re more likely to have success with a lying sales person than an honest one. The study “Deception as Competence: The Effect of Occupational Stereotypes on the Percetion and Proliferation of Deception,” was ran by Emma Levine from Chicago Booth and Briana Gunia from Johns Hopkins Hospital.

While we aren’t advocates for lying, we believe in being honest, companies do hire deceptive people—frequently.

Companies Exposing Themselves to Great Risks

“Companies expose themselves to greater risk by hiring deceivers.” How was this proven? They asked participants to rank 32 occupations where the employee would need to persuade one to purchase what they were selling.

They then focused on the top three occupations known to have a high selling orientation: advertising, sales, and investment banking; and the bottom three: accounting, non-profit, and consulting.

The results? Participants thought liars would have more success in the high-selling roles than the bottom-selling roles. “We found that people don’t always disapprove of liars,” said Levine. “Instead, they think liars are likely to be successful in certain occupations—those that do a lot of high-pressure selling.”

Are All Salespeople Liars?

I’m not saying that all salespeople are liars, nor am I saying that liars choose sales as an occupation. What I am suggesting is in order to weed out the liars, would be to have pre-employment screening utilizing EyeDetect®. EyeDetect® is the first breakthrough technology that can spot a liar by simply analyzing the eyes. EyeDetect® is a next-generation lie detector. It measures subtle changes in the eye to detect deception. It’s already being used to screen employees, parolees, immigrants, law enforcement officials, and job applicants—to protect against corruption.

EyeDetect® uses an eye tracker to catch data and works according to validated scientific research that proves that this tracking of eye behavior can measure if a person is being deceptive. Unlike the polygraph, this test is 100% computer based and algorithm-driven, leaving no room for human bias or administration to skew the results. Learn more about EyeDetect® here.

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Photo by / Cytonn Photography