Article # 32 Deception Detection by Carrie Lock
The main point of this article is that there is really no unique signal of a lie. For more than three decades, research has shown that most people are poor detectors of lies. In a study that asked more than 2,000 people from 60 different countries, people were asked how they spot a liar. Most people had the same answer: “Liars avert their gaze”. This however, is an incorrect stereotype along with others such as liars shift around, touch their noses, and clear their throats. These characteristics are actually not correlated with lying whatsoever. Researchers have done many lab studies and have now identified certain behaviors that liars more commonly tend to exhibit. Liars tend to move their arms, hands, and fingers less, change the pitch in their voice, and blink less than truth tellers. However, the difference between a lab setting and a police investigation is huge. Liars need to be tested in an environment where the stakes are high and there is an incentive to make a good case. Aldert Vrij of the University of Portsmouth in England has been looking at lies by suspects in police interrogation rooms. Vrij reviewed police recorded videotapes in which 16 suspects charged with offenses like arson and murder told lies and truths about their involvement in the crime. Police used forensic evidence, witness accounts, and suspect’s eventual confessions to determine the events. This way, Vrij knew who was lying and what about, and was therefore able to analyze the behaviors of the liars in a high-stake situation. The evidence the author uses to back up her point lies in the result of this experiment. “The differences between lying and truth telling were largely individual: Some suspects looked away more while lying than while telling he truth, and others increased their degree of eye contact.” In contrast to her main conclusion, Lock described other experiments that tested professional sleuths like police officers,...