Sorting fact from fiction in statements by President Donald Trump and members of his administration can be demoralizing and cringe inducing. The ratio of untruths to truths is astonishing—and many of the lies seem almost pointlessly cruel.

Trump lies at a pace that’s puzzling. What conceivable purpose could this behavior serve? And why are his most transparent lies so enthusiastically parroted by his underlings?

My aim in this article is not to engage in partisan lie shaming, but rather to better understand human nature. Why do people—and especially large groups of people—spew and cling to falsehoods?

As we’ll see, the distinction between truth and untruth is fuzzy at the edges, and discussions about the nature of truth can quickly spiral into rarefied philosophizing. In this article, we’ll entertain the centuries-old philosophical question, “What is truth?” only to the degree that’s useful in helping clarify my main thesis—which is that both truth and lies serve overarching social purposes. The better we understand those purposes and the choices entailed in pursuing them, the better we’ll understand ourselves, each other, and the society around us—and the better we will navigate the Great Unraveling which lies before us.

The Social Usefulness of Lies

Lies told by individuals typically serve some immediate need—often to avoid blame or to improve one’s status in the eyes of others. However, lies also serve a larger social function arising from human social evolution.

Kaivan Shroff hinted at that function in a recent article about Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, whose untruthful statements to the press are widely documented. What’s interesting is Shroff’s speculation on why McLaughlin lies so much:

The reason McLaughlin and other people who speak on behalf of the administration say things on television that are demonstrably false is not to try to convince ambivalent people of the merits of Trump’s policy decisions. Persuasion is not their objective. Their objective is instead to offer a demonstration of loyalty to the president and his political project—costly loyalty: The price is their own credibility. The more indefensible a claim, the clearer the signal.

Shroff is saying that, for McLaughlin, status within her social group—i.e., the Trump administration—outweighs accuracy or veracity.

Shroff’s explanation dovetails nicely with the discussion of social evolution in my book Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival. As humans developed prodigious linguistic ability, we evolved to become an ultra-social species. There are many other social species (ants, bees, chimps, chickens, crows, and more), but symbolic language greatly amplifies sociality, heightening both its advantages and costs.

Lacking language, many other species still engage in deception (like the mimic octopus, which impersonates toxic sea creatures to discourage its potential predators). But language opens the door to fiction, exaggeration, and just plain fibbing on a scale that no other creature can begin to match. Also, our main targets for deception aren’t other species, but members of our own kind who use the same language.

The biggest advantage of sociality is that greater cohesion among individuals makes any given group more powerful vis-à-vis other groups of similar size. While increased cohesion yields a payoff for the group, there is also a payoff for individual members: Acceptance by a cohort confers a sense of security. Alone, life is dangerous and hard. But if you’re with a tribe, there’s the sense that others have your back. Indeed, we all tend to feel strong psychological pressures to align with any social group in which we want to maintain membership.

Lying is not the only possible demonstration of group loyalty. In “big god” religions, tithing, self-flagellation, and long pilgrimages emerged long ago as signs of sincere dedication to the faith. The key factor in such signs was their costliness: The more costly the demonstration, the greater the payoff in proof of group loyalty and therefore status in the group.

A price of entry for at least for some religious and political groups is belief in absurdities. Examples range from Christianity’s doctrine of the virgin birth to Stalin’s requirement that his followers give credence to his personal infallibility (George Orwell famously satirized such political gullibility mandates in his 1948 novel, 1984, wherein the sole function of the government’s “Ministry of Truth” was to create false historical records and news to align with the Party’s ever-changing narrative).

Absurdities are an affront to common sense, so believers must expend constant effort to justify them. This need for justification creates an employment niche for apologists. Theologians’ justifications for absurdities and contradictions in sacred texts have ranged from simple literalism (“the Bible tells me so”) to earnest hunts for allegorical and metaphorical meaning. For example, Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong says the virgin birth isn’t so much a fact as a teaching story meant to symbolize a new beginning for humanity. Such metaphorical interpretations relieve the anxiety that results from too much effort spent justifying an absurdity; in effect, they offer membership in the group at a discounted rate. Nevertheless, the absurdity still stands as a gateway test of group membership.

The Usefulness of Fact-Checking

The problem with lies is that, if you believe them, you can bump into things. If you believe a lie that there is no wall in front of you when there is in fact a wall, a few forward steps can induce severe cognitive dissonance. And if the collision occurs at a brisk gait, you might get a bloody nose or worse.

Here’s a familiar real-world example. In 2002 and 2003, members of the George W. Bush administration repeatedly made the case that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction and that the United States must therefore attack the country and overthrow its government. Bombers flew, troops invaded, hundreds of thousands died, and Saddam Hussein’s regime fell. But the war is now generally regarded as having been a grave mistake and a strategic failure due to the ensuing destabilization of the region. The supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were never found, and Americans’ trust in government never recovered.

Individually and collectively, we need an accurate understanding of reality if we are to survive and thrive. Sometimes that’s easy: Facts can be plain to see and agreed upon by nearly everyone. Other times they can require hard work, math, and instrumentation to ascertain—and they may still remain controversial.

While factual truths are fragile and evolving, they are essential to a free society, serving as a necessary anchor for public opinion.

As important as microscopes, telescopes, and other sensory augmentations of the modern era are to grasping reality, certain mental habits and methodologies are even more essential. Those habits and methodologies have a history. Indigenous peoples used logic routinely, and the basic functions of reason have been observed in many nonhuman species. Aristotle (4th century BCE) has long been credited with the invention of formal (i.e., written) logic, but thinkers in India and China made independent similar contributions that were arguably as early. Later, Middle Eastern philosophers added mathematical rigor to the process of disciplined thinking. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the founders of modern science applied logic to the assessment of evidence from the natural world using a method that rigorously tests hypotheses—the scientific method. This method differs profoundly from the usual procedure of political or legal debaters, who gather and present evidence that supports their thesis. Scientists instead continually look for evidence to disprove their hypotheses, so they can improve or replace them.

Science has produced immense amounts of reliable information about the world and about us. However, scientists are still human and still susceptible to political and social influences. As Thomas Kuhn explained in his groundbreaking book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), major breakthroughs in science occur as the result of a long accumulation of anomalies that cannot be explained by existing theories. However, despite the existence of these anomalies, until a clearly better theory comes along scientists often tend to close ranks around the existing theory.

This happened, for example, in the field of geology, which in the 19th century was confronted by evidence of vast changes to rocks and ecosystems throughout hundreds of millions of years........

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