Why pinocchio nose grow

Washington wouldn't even lie about his child vandalism of cherry trees even if that story never really happened and Abraham Lincoln was "Honest Abe," a lifelong symbol of candor and integrity. It's probably the one thing everyone knows about Pinocchio: when he tells a lie, his nose grows.

Memorably, in the Walt Disney film, Pinocchio's wooden nose gets so long after a series of lies that it sprouts leaves, branches, and even a bird's nest. Today, novelty stores sell "Pinocchio noses" for Halloween costumes, and even The Washington Post's Fact Checker column rates untruths on a scale of one to four "Pinocchios. But that's not actually the full deal with Pinocchio's nose.

In the original novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi, the title character's nose grows four times. Twice are when he tells a lie—and in one of those cases he has to be bailed out by the "Blue-Haired Fairy," who sends a flock of woodpeckers to chip his nose back down to its normal size.

Scientists from the University of Granada have found that when a person is telling a lie, their nose actually shrinks from the drop in temperature. Based on these findings, the team has developed a lie detector test that monitors the temperature of the face to deter if a person is giving a false statement. Pinocchio, an animated puppet, is punished for each lie that he tells by undergoing further growth of his nose.

The series of lies Pinocchio tells is instructive. This she did to give him a severe lesson, and to correct him of the disgraceful fault of telling lies—the most disgraceful fault that a boy can have. According to a new study out of Spain, when someone lies, the blood drains out of their nose, which makes it about two degrees colder. Scientists have discovered that when a mental effort is made performing difficult tasks, being interrogated on a specific event or lying face temperature changes.

In addition, when we perform a considerable mental effort our face temperature drops and when we have an anxiety attack our face temperature raises. If he is lying, then he is making a false statement, which implies that his nose does not grow now. Lies that have long noses are those that are obvious to everyone except the person who told the lie, lies that make the liar look ridiculous. In either case, according to our often-deceitful fairy, lies are bad because they result in bad consequences for the liar.

And this conclusion of the fairy is noteworthy, because the vast majority of arguments against lying are made because lies are, so this line goes, unfair or harmful to the people who believe the liar. But it can also be—as another Italian, Machiavelli, advises—that lies should be avoided because they produce negative consequences for the liar. Try and do better in the future and you will be happy. And how glad I am that I have become a well-behaved little boy!

I still think there is some merit to this view, and I imagine it must be part of what Disney had in mind. Pinocchio is naughty, he lies, he breaks well-intentioned, sincerely meant promises, he gets into all sorts of difficulties—through hastiness, inexperience, and misjudgment.

Sound familiar? But he is nevertheless a hero in the end, he is goodhearted, he loves Geppetto, and the fairy nobly gives him his just reward, which is, after all, just to be an ordinary boy.