Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Stephens-Davidowitz shows that searches like “my mom beat me” went up in heavily affected areas-suggesting that abuse and neglect increased, but that cases went unreported or uninvestigated because of lessened resources.Ĥ) Abortion: Stephens-Davidowitz explains that searches about self-induced abortion are more common in states with restrictive abortion laws. For example, women are just as likely to ask Google why their husbands or boyfriends don’t want sex as men are to ask the same about their wives and girlfriends.Ģ) Prejudice: Stephens-Davidowitz argues that the prevalence of searches for racist terms and phrases reveals that there is a lot more explicit prejudice (as opposed to unconscious bias or systemic inequity) than traditional surveys suggest.ģ) Child Abuse: During the 2007-08 financial crisis, experts predicted a rise in child abuse and neglect only to be surprised by a downturn in cases. Similarly, Stephens-Davidowitz says that search results reveal truths about all kinds of topics that we have an incentive to lie about or hide in real life, such as:ġ) Sexuality: Stephens-Davidowitz says that, in addition to the data on gay men, search results cut against common stereotypes about sexuality. This suggests that search data is a more accurate-and honest-measure of gay male sexuality than traditional surveys. Also, the percentage of gay men as defined by search results is roughly stable from state to state. But, he says, if you look at searches on Google and on porn sites, the percentage of male users looking for gay porn (or asking how to tell if they’re gay) is much closer to that average. For example, Stephens-Davidowitz shows that in states whose laws oppose gay marriage, the percentage of self-reported gay men is much lower than the estimated average across the whole population. Google searches and other internet activity, on the other hand, reveal truths that might never come out in traditional data-gathering methods like surveys.

Stephens-Davidowitz argues that we’re often poor judges of our own thoughts and behaviors because we don’t want to acknowledge the less savory aspects of ourselves. Respondents will probably be more honest in an online survey than an in-person survey-but that still doesn’t solve the problem of self-deception.

Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz