The more you practice a lie, the better you get at it, say the results of a new study (http://www.frontiersin.org/Cognitive_Science/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00488/abstract).
一份最新的研究发现，你说谎越多，你就越擅长说谎。
Published Nov. 12 in the journal Frontiers in Cognitive Science, the study found that, after 20 minutes of practicing their cover story, liars could respond just as quickly and easily to lies as to the truth. Moreover, they were no more likely to slip-up on falsehoods than on the truth.
在十一月十二号的期刊Frontiers认知科学这一栏目里，研究发现，在经过十二分钟练习说谎过后，那些说谎者能够像说真话一样容易并且反应迅速。还有，他们对于说假话也不会认为是一种罪过了。
"After a short time of training, people can be very efficient at lying, " said Xiaoqing Hu, a study co-author and psychology doctoral candidate at Northwestern University. "The difference between lying and being honest has been eliminated after the training."
胡小青是西北大学心理博士研究生，也是这一调查的其中一位作者，她说：“在经过一段时间的训练过后，人们在说谎就比较容易了。经过训练，说谎与诚实的界限似乎没有了。”
Though people lie for myriad reasons, it's no easy task. Lying takes a lot of brainpower because it requires holding contradictory information in mind, while inhibiting the urge to tell the truth. Children are terrible liars and only improve as they mature. And several studies have found that people take longer to tell a lie than to tell the truth.
尽管人们因为种种原因会说谎，但说谎并不是一件简单的事情。因为说谎需要消耗大量脑细胞。一方面说谎者需要把与事实相反的信息记住脑里，一方面还要抑制说出真相的冲动。另外几份研究也发现说谎话比说真话更不容易。
"Lying is a difficult, because honesty is the default communication mode, " Hu told LiveScience.
胡告诉”LiveScience"说：“说谎并不容易，因为诚实这一道德使他们在说谎时受到阻碍。
But past studies mostly tested people's ability to offer a deception with no practice. In real life, criminals usually practice and perfect their alibis before facing a police interrogation.
但过去的研究大多数都是在没有训练的情况下就测试人们说谎的能力。在现实生活中，犯罪分子通常都是在警察审问之前进行练习并不断完善他们不在场的说辞。
Hu and his colleague wanted to see how lying changed with practice. They asked 16 people to essentially play at espionage by remembering three facts for a false identity: their new name, a new date of birth and a new hometown.
胡和他的同事想知道说谎是怎样在练习中得到变化的。他们让十六个人在扮演间谍时记住三个他们知道的事实并把它们说成变成虚假的身份证明，如他们的名字，出生日期，以及出生地。然后研究人员问这些志愿者问题，如：这是你吗？并要求这些志愿者回答时按“是”或“否”按钮。研究人员记录他们的回答时间以及准确率。
The liars were then asked to practice lying by pressing "yes" whenever a fact from their false identity appeared and "no" when true details were presented. (A control group of 16 people performed the same trial, but answered yes to the truth.)
然后说谎的人被要求每当出现与虚假信息符合时要按“是”按钮，与事实相符的时候按"否“。（而另外一组的十六个人也做相同的实验，但是在回答与事实相符的问题按”是“的按钮）
"We think that, psychologically, the people basically learned that this is not me and the fake identity is me, " Hu said.
胡说：”我们认为，在心理的角度上分析，受试的人已经基本上接受了那个不真实的“我”的信息了。”
The team is currently studying whether other measures of lying, such as polygraph machines or EEG brain wave measurements, can reveal practiced deception, or whether lies are completely undetectable using current methods, he said.
研究队伍现在正研究到底其它的测谎方式，如测谎仪，脑电图测试脑电波，真的能够测出那些经过训练的说谎人吗？或者说，那些现在正在使用的测谎仪式真的就完全测不出谎言吗？
"But in the real world, after a crime, there is usually a delay between the crime and the interrogation, " giving the criminal a chance to practice their falsehood, he said.
他说：“在现实生活中，犯罪人士往往在犯罪过后和进行审问之间有一段时间滞留，而这给了犯罪分子机会练习他们如何说谎。
Hu's team is currently studying whether people can improve their lies when asked to provide a false memory of events — for instance, when creating an alibi after a burglary.
胡的团队现在正在进行另一项研究，比方说，当说谎者记住一系列虚假事件的时候，要在入室抢劫的时候提供不在场的证据，这样是否会提高他们的说谎技能。
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