The work of researchers from the Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev in Israel and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands focuses on ethical decision making. When it comes to explaining the biological foundations of lying, however, there is very little scientific knowledge.
The researchers therefore designed an experiment to investigate this. A group of 60 male participants either received a dose of oxytocin or a placebo, and were then split into teams of three.
The teams were asked to predict the results of 10 coin tosses. If a participant correctly guessed coin tosses then this would earn his team more money, to be divided among the members.
Rather than the participants' predictions being measured objectively, however, they were asked to toss the coin and self-report whether their prediction was correct or not.