People are truthful by default. In theory, this should create a fair and honest world with fewer heartbreak, less crime, better education, and bigger tax refund. Yet here we are, seemingly trapped in a political enterprise where liars get to lead and fools follow.
We can all lie, indeed, even a squirrel or a 2-year-old child. You can blame evolution—or thank it, whichever side you’re on. But humans lie for a reason. While those clever rodents act purely on instinct—digging several holes as decoy to confuse thieving squirrels from getting their food—humans, even more clever, lie by choice.
However, humans’ proclivity to lie, which starts in early childhood, does not always lead to actual lying. As we navigate the social world, we begin to understand that lying is bad behavior that results in punishment. Whether it be a spanking, or an hour kneeling on salt, the repercussions of lying instill in us a great need to be truthful.
Now, if humans are actually more inclined to tell the truth, then “who are the people for whom the truth is not the default?” This is the question raised by communication scholars on the nature of lying. A recent study on deception found that personality may be an important predictor of telling lies, especially if the person exhibits some elements of the dark triad.
In psychology, the dark triad is represented by three aversive personality traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. A Machiavellian personality is characterized by a cynical disregard of rules in order to indulge in one’s pleasures and gains. Driven by self-interest, a person who scores high on this trait exploits power to abuse and lord over subordinates.
Narcissism is another trait typical of people with excessive self-importance and a constant hunger for praise. Due to its egocentric nature, a narcissistic personality may initially appear overconfident and charismatic. But as we look deeper into the core of the person, we find someone who neither understands nor cares about others’ feelings.
Closely linked to narcissism is psychopathy, which is also marked by a lack of empathy. These two personalities tend to exhibit the manipulative behavior that makes prolific liars. What sets them apart, however, is the motivation. While narcissism is actuated by an overinflated ego, psychopathy is driven by the absence of conscience. Psychopaths are more capable of hurting people without feeling shame or remorse. Narcissists, on the other hand, just tend to regard others’ lives as irrelevant.
Dark triad and strongmen
We have seen, in recent times, the rise of political leaders defined by these dark, uncompromising, and, oddly, populist personalities. There’s US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Yet even more interesting are the ex-presidents whose power-tripping led to their own downfall: Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte.
In September 2025, Bolsonaro was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup to reclaim power after his defeat in Brazil’s 2022 presidential election. Six months earlier, on March 11, 2025, Duterte was arrested and flown to The Hague in the Netherlands for crimes against humanity. His trial is set for November. If proven guilty of murder and attempted murder, he may be imprisoned for 30 years.
Meanwhile, last January, US forces captured Maduro on narcoterrorism charges. Maduro, a former labor leader turned despot, served as Venezuela’s president for over a decade. In his indictment, he was accused of “cocaine-fueled corruption to flourish for his own benefit, the benefit of members of his ruling regime, and for the benefit of his family members.”
Here, we are looking at an unsettling trend where the dark triad masquerading under the modern archetype, the strongman, rules world politics. Worse still, their strongman power, despite being bloodied by crimes and corruption, gets all the more stronger with the combined forces of their political allies, followers, troll farms, and bots.
Democracy under attack by liars
High dark triad traits among top political leaders tend to polarize in-group political parties, according to a 2025 paper published in the European Journal of Political Research. This effect is largely influenced by the partisan’s proximity and shared ideologies with the ruling political elites. What this means is that very close supporters of dark triad candidates bring the highest level of polarization, as seen in contemporary democracies in the West, and they are ripping the public apart. This may explain why we are seeing divisive propaganda happening in this part of the world.
The findings also suggest that voters tend to prefer dark-personality politicians whom they perceive as “dominant candidates”––or as aggressive as they see themselves to be.
While the study “cannot prove that it is the dark personality of politicians [or their voters’] that causes affective polarization to move upward,” the authors have set the groundwork linking the “potentially nefarious intersection between uncompromising leaders, democratic deconsolidation and affective polarization.” These insights make even more sense as we bear witness to our Philippine democracy being assaulted by dark-triad politicians and their supporters. We may not know for certain where our Filipino politicians sit on the dark triad, but their actions clearly reveal their motives.
Politicians don’t lie on a whim. They lie because they decided the payoff justifies overriding whatever moral principle they have left. For them, lying is a conscious, calculated choice. They understand politics as a high-risk, high-reward trade where a positive image is the ultimate selling point. Dishonesty might eventually catch up with them, sure, but telling the truth only places them at an even greater disadvantage. In this kind of trade, truth is too lean a currency to ever buy them the high life. Besides, truth, though valuable, is not as profitable as lying.
Think about this: If being elected to public office earns these politicians a minimum pay of ₱658 a day on a no-work, no-pay basis, no security of tenure, no “allocable funds,” would they still do it and squander billions of pesos in an election campaign just to become president, senator, or congressperson?
Neuropsychiatric examination
During the 13th Congress, then Sen. Rodolfo G. Biazon (now deceased) filed Senate Bill No. 1305, or the Improved Qualifications Act of 2004, requiring “any person running for an elective national or local position to undergo a neuropsychiatric examination” before filing a certificate of candidacy. The bill passed on the first reading and was referred to the committee on constitutional amendments, where it still sits.
If neuropsychiatric testing is required for police officers and serves as a pre-employment qualification for both government and private-sector personnel, then why aren’t our political candidates, especially our top bosses, not taking the same test?
Every functional government needs sane, sensible leaders who can think clearly and who possess, at the very least, some degree of empathy and goodwill toward ordinary people. But given the current qualifications for elective officials, even a psychopath who can read and write may run for public office if he or she so pleases. Consequently, we risk electing criminal-minded individuals who can pass and bend laws at their pleasure while getting handsomely paid on our taxes.
We deserve more trustworthy people in public office, but the ongoing political crisis forces us to think that government institutions serve merely as breeding ground for lying politicians.
Lying is contagious
In his book “Beyond the Big Lie,” PolitiFact founder Bill Adair raises one crucial question sitting quietly at the back of every political journalist’s mind but never asked: “Why do politicians lie?” Here is America—home of the Founding Fathers, seat of Western democracy and civil rights movement—and, still, politicians lie for a living. Adair calls this phenomenon an “epidemic of political lying.” And the internet has made it all worse.
Neuroscience tells us that self-serving dishonesty affects not only the person who is lying but also the people receiving the lies (that means you, the innocent observer). Through repetition, reinforced by everyday exposure to lies, we are inadvertently compromising not just our morals but also our mental and physical well-being. It’s like second-hand smoke, but for the brain. Our brains have to work harder to process these lies due to interference in our neural pathways. Anyone can be at risk, even those who silently withhold the truth.
According to a team of researchers at University College London and Duke University, dishonesty escalates greater when it benefits oneself and not others. Self-serving dishonesty, as exemplified by dark politicians, causes a weakening of the brain’s response to emotions and threats, and this may have behavioral consequences extending to other domains like decision-making and violent behavior. It is even unfortunate that one little lie can spawn sinister acts of aggression because the way our brain adapts to dishonesty makes it easier for us to do bad things. (Needless to look any further than Congress for proof.)
Political lying breeds corruption, and corruption breeds more lies. This cycle is not only neurologically damaging to the people but also contagious to the whole of society. Given the sheer scale of deception, mutating virally across the web through strains of fake news and AI, we may have entered a pandemic of political lying that even an honest majority cannot seem to contain. We must oust all the big liars and take back our power.
In the Philippines, one major trial begins in July, with more prosecutions on the horizon. The Filipino people have every reason to hope in the sight of 4,000 truth-seekers marching on Edsa, waving white ribbons. CS
