Tag Archive for Detecting Lies

So Which People Are Good At Detecting Lies?

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

At this point in the chapter it might seem out of place to admit that some individuals can actually detect lies better than chance, but this is true, and has been backed up empirically through research. Studies have shown that while the rest of the world is limited to fifty percent, or the same accuracy as that which would occur by chance, the CIA (central intelligence agency) scores seventy-three percent, sheriffs sixty-seven percent, psychologist sixty-eight percent whereas the secret service scores sixty-four percent.

So why do the experts have an advantage over the layman? Well, part of the explanation lies in experience. The group of psychologist was chosen due to their special interest in lying and lie detection, not to mention their willingness to participate in a two day seminar covering various topics related to lying and lie detection. Each group including the psychologists, the CIA, and the secret service all have an interest in lie detection coupled with the training to back it up. Experts are drawing on information from many facets about a person, including their paraverbal and nonverbal language as well as other cues as we have covered which is unlike regular lay-people who have little if any experience in analyzing people, let alone the ability to repeatedly test their skills. Because lie detection and reading people is a huge part of their occupations, they get a lot of practice and feedback.

Personality characteristics might also play into the ability to detect lies. For example, empathy, sensitivity to social cues, and conscientiousness can all help in reading people more accurate because it allows a person to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. Experts are also more aware of the truth bias, which we covered earlier, and so can properly adjust for this phenomenon. It is important to conclude on these matters that the accuracy, while impressive in relation to ordinary people, is still far from perfect. While the experts are far from perfect, they do give us some hope that lie detection is more than a chance operation. No doubt, by reading this chapter alone, you will be able to make huge strides in reading others, perhaps not pegging every liar dead on the spot, but the cues in this chapter will help you at least identified those who are worthy of a second look.

Above: Paul Ekman talks about microexpressions.

The Most Common Gestures Associated With Liars

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

As we have seen liars are difficult to detect and sometimes body language is more of a distraction than a help, however, as mentioned throughout, most people still rely on visual cues and identify (at least in their mind) liars through their body language. While these cues are only sometimes useful in detecting lies, they are always valuable as cues to avoid if the desire is to appear honest and trustworthy in the eyes of others. In other words, here is a list of cues to avoid emitting yourself!

Police As Lie Detectors

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

In a 2004 study out of the University of Portsmouth by Samantha Mann, Aldert Vrij and Ray Bull it was found that police officers were sixty-five percent accurate in detecting lies when they watched the proceedings of an interrogation. This success rate is significantly higher than that which could arise by chance alone and also shows that familiarity with the subjects can have a role in increasing accuracy. Most research thus far has used college students, but this shows that police who frequently deal with suspects might have an advantage reading them over reading others. By a similarly notion, this advantage would theoretically be non-existent for police officers in a business meeting or with regard to a salesperson on a car lot, unless they had particular experience with such matters. This study does tell us that familiarity with the subject and the context can help us in detecting lies.

Police manuals give the impression that officers who interview suspects often, are good lie detectors, despite of course the vast research that says otherwise. When the researchers qualified their observations however, they found some surprising findings. Officers who named visual cues such as those mentioned in Inbau’s research, mentioned previously, which forms part of the manual on lie detection for police, such as gaze aversion, unnatural changes in posture, self touching, mouth and eye covering were less likely to be accurate in reading others. In fact, these cues proved counterproductive. Specifically, female participants who claimed to use Inbau’s cues most often where poorer at detecting truths, than the males who did not. In particular, gaze aversion was unhelpful and in fact distracting when analyzing for truth. So despite the moderate success of officers at detecting lies, there still remains severe shortcomings because it was not necessarily due to observations of body language or other anything else that could be described, catalogued, and hence put to use. If an inherent skill amounts to a sixty-five percent success, but one can’t describe that skill in a way that makes it useful to other people, then it simply appears like a hunch. Hunches are not reliable, nor do they meet the scientific principle of reproducibility or have predictive (useful) qualities.