Sam Sommers

Sam Sommers, professor of psychology at Tufts University and author of Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World, looks at how the where, when and who influence actions and attitudes. 

People go to great lengths to fabricate military service. 4 out of 5 people claiming they served in Vietnam did not. Pulitzer Prize winning historian Joseph Ellis was famously exposed in 2001 for claiming to have served in Vietnam although he never even went. The Stolen Valor Act, a 2006 law which made it a federal misdemeanor to wear, manufacture or claim unearned military medals, was recently ruled unconstitutional by a Denver judge. But what drives people to lie about military service?