Although it’s natural for everyone to lie at some point in our lives, it can become a serious issue if someone keeps lying frequently. There are lots of different types of liars, among them pathological liars and habitual liars lie most often. These two types of liars have similarities and differences.
Understanding their behaviour is crucial as they can damage anyone’s personal and work life significantly. Let’s get to know the nature of the pathological and habitual liars, the differences between them, and their diagnosis, management or treatment as well.
What Is a Pathological Liar?
Pathological liars can’t control their lying behaviour as it stems from an inner urge to fabricate everything from reality. Most times they lie without any immediate benefit or obvious reasons as lying becomes a habit to them.
It is because of underlying psychological challenges. Even though they don’t tell the truth, their lies are usually very complex and convincing. So, others usually can’t think that what they’re hearing is a lie.
What Is a Habitual Liar?
As the name suggests, habitual liars lie out of habit, routine, or practise where there is usually no underlying psychological disorder like a pathological liar. This habit of lying is more like a learnt behaviour to navigate through different challenges more smoothly.
Also, unlike pathological liars, habitual liars have goals in their minds while lying. The goal can be to be a hero in others’ eyes, to avoid responsibilities, to gain advantages, etc. But lying is so frequent and natural for them that people usually don’t catch it when they’re lying.
Key Differences Between Pathological and Habitual Liars
Here are some key differences between pathological and habitual liars you need to understand. Before that, see the following table for a quick overview of the differences.
| Pathological Liars | Habitual Liars |
| They don’t have any clear motivation for lying. | They have motivations and goals behind lying. |
| They have little awareness of lying. | They are well aware of their lies. |
| Creates a more complex impact | They create no impact. |
| Pathological lying indicates mental health issues. | Habitual lying is a learnt behaviour. |
| Pathological liars display a pervasive pattern of deceit. | They have specific context to get something. |
Motivation for Lying
For pathological liars, falsehood comes without any clear motivation at all. They don’t even have any clear reason behind their lies, and they don’t understand why they’re actually lying.
On the other hand, habitual liars usually lie with some motivation and goals in their mind. However, they can keep lying like breathing air, just as pathological liars lie frequently.
Awareness and Control
Pathological liars usually have little to no awareness and control over their lying as they lie impulsively without even thinking. That’s why even though they don’t want to lie, the lies usually come out of nowhere, and they understand that they are lying after telling the lies.
Conversely, habitual liars are well aware of why they are lying and how they are going to lie. They usually don’t need to plan beforehand; they can lie instantly with their goals in mind. Also, they can control how much they want to lie or when to stop lying.
Impact of Lies
Since the nature of lies of pathological liars differs from that of habitual liars, their impacts also differ. As the pathological liar lies without thinking, it creates a more complex web of deceit that is too difficult to maintain or get rid of. That’s why pathological lies create significant challenges in both personal and social life.
On the contrary, habitual liars don’t face much negative impact because of their lies, as they are thoroughly thought out and calculated to manipulate people or situations. That’s why the situation doesn’t become very complex, as they can control when to lie and when to tell the truth.
Psychological Basis
The psychological underpinnings of pathological lying often suggest a deeper disorder or mental health issue, such as personality disorders. This connection implies that pathological lying is not just a bad habit but a manifestation of more significant psychological challenges.
In contrast, habitual lying is more likely to result from learnt behaviour or a habit developed over time. While not exclusively the case, habitual lying doesn’t always stem from an underlying psychological disorder, making its treatment and management different from that of pathological lying.
Pattern and Frequency
Both types of liars exhibit frequent lying, but the pattern and nature of their lies vary. Pathological liars display a pervasive pattern of deceit that spans various aspects of their lives, indiscriminately lying about both important and trivial matters. This omnipresent nature of lying underscores the severity of their condition.
Habitual liars, while also lying frequently, tend to do so within more specific contexts or situations where they perceive a benefit to lying, making their deceit somewhat more predictable but not necessarily less damaging.
Relationships and Trust
Trust issues are a common consequence for both pathological and habitual liars, impacting their ability to maintain healthy, stable relationships. However, the unpredictable and often more intricate web of lies spun by pathological liars can lead to more severe disruptions in personal and professional relationships.
Habitual liars, by managing to keep their deceit to areas less central to their core personal relationships, might maintain some level of stability in their close relationships, though the trust eroded can still have lasting effects.
Diagnosing Pathological and Habitual Lying
Here’s a deeper look into how professionals approach the diagnosis:
Understanding the Behaviour
The first goal when dealing with pathological or habitual lying is to understand the character and nature of the lying patterns of that particular person. This entails obtaining more specific information about the way, the manner and the reasons behind the use of the falsehoods.
Psychologists may sit down with the person and discuss with him or her some questions concerning their behaviour. They may also talk to other family members or close friends if at all in order to get an overall view of the behaviour.
Assessing the Impact
Another crucial consideration when making a diagnosis is assessing the consequence of deception in different spheres of a client’s life, such as personal, professional, and mental health.
Pathological lying has various drastic negative impacts on one’s personal and interpersonal life. On the other hand, in the case of habitual lying, the effects are somehow confined to certain areas or contexts.
Identifying the consequences of the lying behaviour enables one to have a clue about the magnitude of the lying behaviour observed.
Differentiating From Other Conditions
Pathological and habitual lying can sometimes be symptoms of other psychological conditions, such as personality disorders, bipolar disorder, or ADHD. Part of the diagnostic process involves ruling out these conditions or determining if lying is a component of a broader psychological issue.
This differentiation is crucial for ensuring appropriate treatment and management of the underlying causes.
Identifying Motivations and Patterns
A key factor in diagnosing these types of lying is identifying their motivations. As we mentioned earlier, pathological liars may lie without clear reasons or even against their own interests. However, habitual liars typically have identifiable motives, such as avoiding consequences or enhancing their self-image.
Understanding these motivations and the patterns of lying behaviour is critical for diagnosis.
Considering the Spectrum of Lying
Recognising that lying exists on a spectrum is important in the diagnostic process. Not all frequent or compulsive lying meets the criteria for being labelled as pathological or habitual in a clinical sense.
Professionals must carefully consider the individual’s history, the context of their lie, and the presence of any other mental health symptoms before making a diagnosis.
Utilising Psychological Evaluations
Sometimes, personality tests (for example, questionnaires or psychometric tests) are used in order to get more information about the mental disorder, personal characteristics and abusive potential of the person.
Despite their potential to give significant information, these tools do not serve as diagnostics but rather do embrace an analysis.
Conclusion
It is crucial to identify and trace inherent lying pathologies to simple every day lying habits. Both of these behaviours are not difficult to overcome, provided you make the effort.
Though both pathological and habitual lying have different reasons and motivations, proper diagnosing and treatment can heal them. We suggest that people who face such problems get adequate treatment and get rid of the situation with time.
