What to Do When You Know Youre Being Lied to
Story highlights
- Researchers are mastering the art of questioning to reveal when people are lying
- The new technique has improved lie detection rates from 58% to 72%
(CNN)What were you lot doing betwixt 10 and 11 a.m. yesterday?
Once you call up this, could you lot depict it in reverse guild starting midway through that hour?
How yous'd go on to provide this information would reveal a lot nearly you. Not only would the details describe your life or your morning routine, the person listening to your response could use them to decipher how much of it is true.
Your response could easily let slip if you're lying.
"[It'due south about] outsmarting the liars," said Aldert Vrij, professor of applied social psychology at the University of Portsmouth. "[Nosotros] ask questions, or requite instructions, that are more difficult to answer or address by liars than truth tellers."
For years, Vrij has been researching the best means to establish when people are being deceptive -- particularly during a police interrogation.
"Research shows that techniques aimed at outsmarting liars are successful," he said.
Vrij long agone veered away from watching people sweat and using polygraphs to developing prove-based means of interrogation. By training authorities across a range of countries, lie detection rates in his trials accept risen to 72%, up from 58%. This has the potential to save billions of pounds worth of resources spent on investigating crimes; cybercrime alone is estimated to cost the global economy more than than $400 billion.
The approach is known as "cognitive load interviewing" and involves asking questions, setting tasks inside them and demanding more detail, which essentially means overloading someone's brain every bit they provide information. Equally they respond, they inevitably drop verbal cues of any deception.
"Truth-tellers are often more than detailed than liars," said Vrij.
Whereas liars tend to say as picayune as possible.
When someone has something to hibernate, they volition also be more than probable to justify what they practise say, exist on the lookout for a reaction, and use fragmented sentences when they can, according to research conducted by R. Edward Geiselman, professor of psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Another strategy is to repeat the question and speak slowly to buy time and create a story. "[Once they take it], they will spew it out faster," Geiselman said in a comment. "Truthful people will not dramatically alter their speech charge per unit inside a single judgement."
This insight can help officials get the answers they need, through cognitive interviews.
The cognitive interview
Getting answers comes downwardly to what y'all enquire, how yous ask it and listening advisedly to the answers.
This includes setting challenges in add-on to the questions, such as having someone tell their story backward while instructing them to be every bit detailed as they tin can.
"Increase the cognitive load to push them over the border," Geiselman said.
This is thought to exit people having to think heavily while sticking to their story and simultaneously watching you for your reaction, but this is just ane part of the arroyo. Post-obit swiftly is the need to encourage interviewees to say more and ask unexpected questions, co-ordinate to Vrij.
"I like encouraging interviewees to say more, as it addresses two important issues at the same fourth dimension: information technology makes interviewees provide more information ... and results in cues to cant," Vrij said.
Another tactic is asking someone to describe an event that constabulary can verify, to then obtain bear witness for information technology occurring, such as asking their whereabouts and tracking down CCTV footage. "Truth-tellers give more verifiable detail than liars," Vrij said. "[In addition], it focuses on show to demonstrate whether someone is telling the truth or lying."
No truth in sweat and machines
When well-nigh people think of someone lying, they envision sweating, lack of center contact and rapid centre rate, all detected by hooking the person upwards to a polygraph machine.
Just Vrij and Geiselmen steer clear of these strategies.
"[They] are based on arousal and feet and the idea that liars are anxious," Vrij said. "The problem is that truth-tellers can also exist very anxious in interview settings due to the fear of not existence believed."
Vrij adds that there are also many myths around behavior and deception that are not diagnostic and are not supported by show for their accuracy. He argues this communicative approach, looking for verbal cues of deceit, is more than reliable.
It has now been adopted by police force, war machine and intelligence agencies worldwide, co-ordinate to the Economic and Social Research Quango, which funded Vrij to bear his enquiry.
"[Cerebral interviews] are pretty much all that works reliably," Gieselman said. "All else you find out at that place is simply serpent oil by folks trying to earn a living teaching something nigh detecting deception for a buck."
If y'all find yourself caught in a lie -- be it to a police officer or your partner -- set up for your brain to exist tested more you lot could ever look.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/01/health/become-a-human-lie-detector/index.html
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