Asian man’s research and theorizing on Asian lying:

“Europeans are generally more honest than Asians, despite the fact that honesty and intelligence correlate.”

“I ran a BMA a year ago to detect which variables were the most robustly associated with honesty between races. Individualism was the trait most linked with honesty, not intelligence or any other of the variables I tested.”

“About how this relates to conformity: on the surface, Asians are more conformist than Whites. More likely to wear masks, be quiet in class, and whatnot. But that's external conformity: Asians are more comfortable with inconsistencies between the inside and outside.”

“But Whites are more likely to conform internally, to adopt values, beliefs, or religions that involve sending more reliable and costly internal signals than simple external ones.”

“re the individualism thing, I don't think honesty causes individualism or vice versa, rather they're part of the same underlying phenotype, which is discomfort with inconsistency between the internal and external.”

—

Imo, pretty compelling.

Those of us who deeply care about truth have a terribly hard time even conceiving those who don’t at all.

You can see it all the time, e.g. when someone says “why would that person even lie?”

— They ask why someone would do something so painful, not realizing that for some people, lying brings zero pain at all.

Clearly, just as the 1st law of behavioral psychology predicts, it’s highly biological.

And clearly, this is an extremely political-correctness-sensitive question, but this also one of the most fascinating.

Are far more people than we realize, simply wired to lie, and experience lying entirely different than we do?

Yes, sure looks like it.