Lying in a Foreign Language
A Moment of Science

Lying in a Foreign Language

B2Upper-intermediateSeptember 28, 20262 min

Lying in a Foreign Language

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Sentence 7 of 12 · 0:24

A little background first.

,

because both lying and speaking in a foreign language makes your brain work harder.

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B2

B2 · Upper-intermediate

Comfortable if you already follow TV news

A1 19%A2 38%B1 29%B2 14%C1 0%
  • 86% of the words are B1 or easier.
  • 163 words a minute: natural, fairly fast speech.
  • 9 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

Transcript

The opening of the episode. The whole transcript is in the player.

0:00

Hey, Yael, do you think this hat makes my head look funny? No. Did you just say no in French? Is that because my hat looks kind of like a beret or for some other reason?

0:16

Well, Don, because it might be easier to lie in a foreign language. A little background first. According to the cognitive load hypothesis, lying should be harder in a foreign language because both lying and speaking in a foreign language makes your brain work harder.

0:36

But according to the emotional distance hypothesis, lying should be easier in a foreign language because speaking in a foreign language is less emotionally arousing than speaking in your native tongue, so the stress you feel while lying gets dampened. To see which hypothesis went out, psychologists had participants lie or tell the truth while

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