Are We Lying More?

Jeff Hancock spends his days looking at the lies we tell one another online and in real life—and figuring out why, exactly, we do lie, and when it matters. He studies sociopaths, language patterns, deception, and trust. Hancock is the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab and a professor at Stanford University; he’s also a Canadian and an optimist. Trust, he suggests, may be not declining but, perhaps, evolving.