{"id":73167,"date":"2024-06-13T00:00:49","date_gmt":"2024-06-13T04:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=73167"},"modified":"2024-06-13T00:00:49","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T04:00:49","slug":"why-were-so-bad-at-spotting-lies-most-of-us-only-perform-slightly-better-than-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/why-were-so-bad-at-spotting-lies-most-of-us-only-perform-slightly-better-than-chance\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we\u2019re so bad at spotting lies \u2013 most of us only perform slightly better than chance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t have to be in the middle of an election campaign to be concerned about your ability to spot a lie.\u00a0Psychology research suggests<\/a>\u00a0people lie at least once a day.<\/p>\n

A 2006 review of 206 papers found that we are\u00a0little better then chance<\/a>\u00a0at guessing whether something is a lie or not, 54% to be exact.<\/p>\n

Some lies are told to make others feel better. I wouldn\u2019t mind if someone wanted to tell me, \u201cYou\u2019re such a brilliant psychologist.\u201d Most lies however, are\u00a0for the benefit<\/a>\u00a0of the person telling the lie.<\/p>\n

We learn to lie young, typically between the ages of\u00a0two and three<\/a>. More successful\u00a0lying in childhood<\/a>\u00a0takes a little longer and requires a more developed ability to understand others\u2019 mental states.<\/p>\n

You also need good working memory to be convincing, so that you can remember the lie. Brighter children seem to lie most often and most selfishly.<\/p>\n

By adulthood we are, it seems, well practised.<\/p>\n

There are no tell-tale signs of lying per se, but there may be indicators of negative emotion associated with telling a lie (anxiety, guilt, shame, sadness, fear of being caught) even when the liar is\u00a0trying to conceal them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These sometimes leak out in micro-expressions,\u00a0brief facial expressions<\/a>\u00a0lasting a fraction of a second or squelched expressions where the liar covers the emotion with a mask, usually a fake smile.<\/p>\n

You can tell a fake smile because it doesn\u2019t involve the muscles around the eyes and leaves the face quickly. Genuine smiles\u00a0fade more slowly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the thing about possible nonverbal indicators of deception is most of us would need to replay the behaviour in slow motion to spot them.<\/p>\n

Facing up to the truth<\/strong><\/h4>\n

But what about avoiding eye contact,\u00a0believed globally<\/a>\u00a0to be a deception cue. My mother always said that she could tell when I was lying because I couldn\u2019t look her in the eye. She would move closer and ask what I\u2019d been up to the night before.<\/p>\n

Eye contact is not a useful indicator of deception. Eye contact is affected\u00a0by our cognitive activity<\/a>\u00a0even when we\u2019re telling the truth. For instance, by planning our speech or accessing memory.<\/p>\n

Also, we all know that\u2019s what people look out for. And liars know to control it. Good liars can maintain eye contact when lying by planning their lie in advance and building their lies on fragments of the truth and real situations.<\/p>\n

Eye contact is also affected by interpersonal distance. It\u2019s difficult to maintain eye contact when someone is sitting close-up and staring at you (like my mother). This is the\u00a0intimacy equilibrium model<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Certain behaviours signal intimacy, like distance, eye contact and topic of conversation. If interpersonal distance changes, we balance this by unconsciously moderating the others. So when my mother moved in for the interrogation, I looked away and she got the evidence she was looking for.<\/p>\n

This is a type of\u00a0confirmation bias<\/a>. It\u2019s not just that you look for evidence to confirm your hypothesis, you unconsciously influence the very behaviour you\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t just apply to my mother.\u00a0A 1978 study suggested<\/a>\u00a0that police officers in interrogations move closer to suspects they think are guilty. The suspect looks away, and \u2026 guilty as charged! Observers don\u2019t notice the changed distance.<\/p>\n

But confirmation bias isn\u2019t just about seating arrangement. We make instant and unconscious judgements of trustworthiness in a face quickly\u00a0in everyday life<\/a>\u00a0(about one-tenth of a second). Once we\u2019ve decided that someone looks trustworthy, we may unconsciously search less for cues to deceit.<\/p>\n

Lie detection is fraught with biases and good liars know how to exploit them. They know what we\u2019re looking out for and that\u2019s what they control. Good eye contact, masking smile, well-prepared speech with few hesitations. They can also convince themselves of the essential truth of the lie.\u00a0Self-deceit<\/a>\u00a0reduces any emotional response.<\/p>\n

For my new book\u00a0Lies, Lying and Liars: A Psychological Analysis<\/a>\u00a0I studied many expert liars and how they use our intuition against us. For example, in judging a lie we need a baseline of behaviour to detect any deviations.<\/p>\n

Expert liars aim to disrupt this. One of my informants (with something to hide) said that when he was stopped by the police he pretended to be really angry and a bit unstable to throw them off course.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s personality. There\u2019s no point in searching for micro-expressions of guilt, shame, sadness, or fear, if that\u2019s\u00a0not how they feel<\/a>\u00a0inside. Some people enjoy lying. It\u2019s exciting, they don\u2019t care about the consequences. Any micro-expressions in these cases will be positive.<\/p>\n

Not a bit of wonder expert liars feel emboldened.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Geoff Beattie is Professor of Psychology at Edge Hill University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You don\u2019t have to be in the middle of an election campaign to be concerned about your ability to spot a lie.\u00a0Psychology research suggests\u00a0people lie at least once a day. A 2006 review of 206 papers found that we are\u00a0little better then chance\u00a0at guessing whether something is a lie or not, 54% to be exact. […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[434979],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-73167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-expert-liars"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy we\u2019re so bad at spotting lies \u2013 most of us only perform slightly better than chance - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/why-were-so-bad-at-spotting-lies-most-of-us-only-perform-slightly-better-than-chance\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why we\u2019re so bad at spotting lies \u2013 most of us only perform slightly better than chance - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You don\u2019t have to be in the middle of an election campaign to be concerned about your ability to spot a lie.\u00a0Psychology research suggests\u00a0people lie at least once a day. 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