Quirkology (9 page)
Authors: Richard Wiseman
So why are people so bad at detecting deceit? The answer lies in the work of psychologists such as Charles Bond, a professor from Texas Christian University.
14
Bond has conducted surveys into the sorts of behaviors that people associate with lying. Unlike some psychological research, his work doesn’t involve asking a few hundred American university students to check off boxes on a form. Instead, he has asked thousands of people from more than sixty countries to describe how they go about telling whether someone is lying. People’s answers are remarkably consistent. From Algeria to Argentina, Germany to Ghana, Pakistan to Paraguay, almost everyone thinks that liars tend to avert their eyes, nervously wave their hands around, and shift about in their seats.
14
Bond has conducted surveys into the sorts of behaviors that people associate with lying. Unlike some psychological research, his work doesn’t involve asking a few hundred American university students to check off boxes on a form. Instead, he has asked thousands of people from more than sixty countries to describe how they go about telling whether someone is lying. People’s answers are remarkably consistent. From Algeria to Argentina, Germany to Ghana, Pakistan to Paraguay, almost everyone thinks that liars tend to avert their eyes, nervously wave their hands around, and shift about in their seats.
There is, however, one small problem. Researchers have spent hours upon hours carefully comparing films of liars and truth-tellers. Trained observers sit in front of a computer and watch digitized videos again and again. On each showing, the observers look out for a particular behavior, such as a smile, a blink, or a hand movement. Each time they see what they are looking for, they press a button and the computer records their responses. Each minute of footage takes about an hour to analyze, but the resulting data allows researchers to compare the behavior associated with a lie and the truth, and thus uncover even the subtlest of differences. The results are clear. Liars are just as likely to look you in the eye as truth-tellers, they don’t move their hands around nervously, and they don’t shift about in their seats (if anything, they are a little more static than truth-tellers). People fail to detect lies because they are basing their opinions on behaviors that are not actually associated with deception.
So, what are the signals that really give away a liar? To answer the question, researchers have searched for reliable differences between the behavior of liars and truth-tellers. The answer, it seems, is in the words we use and the way in which we say them.
15
When it comes to lying, the more information you give away, the greater are the chances that some of it will come back to haunt you. As a result, liars tend to say less, and to provide fewer details, than truth-tellers. Look back at the transcripts of the interviews with Sir Robin. His lie about
Gone with the Wind
contains about forty words, whereas the truth about
Some Like It Hot
is nearly twice as long. Now take a look at the level of detail in the two interviews. In the first interview, he presents a very general description of the film, merely stating that it is a classic with great characters. When he tells us the truth, however, he provides far more detail, describing a scene in which actor Tony Curtis tries to resist being seduced by Marilyn Monroe.
15
When it comes to lying, the more information you give away, the greater are the chances that some of it will come back to haunt you. As a result, liars tend to say less, and to provide fewer details, than truth-tellers. Look back at the transcripts of the interviews with Sir Robin. His lie about
Gone with the Wind
contains about forty words, whereas the truth about
Some Like It Hot
is nearly twice as long. Now take a look at the level of detail in the two interviews. In the first interview, he presents a very general description of the film, merely stating that it is a classic with great characters. When he tells us the truth, however, he provides far more detail, describing a scene in which actor Tony Curtis tries to resist being seduced by Marilyn Monroe.
When it comes to the language of lying, this is just the beginning. Liars often try to distance themselves psychologically from their falsehoods, and so they tend to include fewer references to themselves, and their feelings, in their stories. Again, Sir Robin’s testimony provides a striking illustration of the effect. When he lies, Sir Robin mentions the word “I” just twice, whereas when he tells the truth he says “I” seven times. In his entire interview about
Gone with the Wind,
Sir Robin only once mentions how the film makes him feel (“Very
moving . . . ”
), compared to the several references to his feelings when he talks about
Some Like It Hot
(“It gets
funnier
every time that I see it . . . ”; “There are all sorts of bits . . . I
love . . . ”
; “[Curtis is] so
pretty
. . . so
witty . . . ”
).
Gone with the Wind,
Sir Robin only once mentions how the film makes him feel (“Very
moving . . . ”
), compared to the several references to his feelings when he talks about
Some Like It Hot
(“It gets
funnier
every time that I see it . . . ”; “There are all sorts of bits . . . I
love . . . ”
; “[Curtis is] so
pretty
. . . so
witty . . . ”
).
Then there is the issue of forgetting. Imagine someone asking you a series of questions about what you did last week. It is probable that you wouldn’t be able to remember many of the trivial details and, being the honest person you are, would admit to your memory lapse. Liars tend not to do this. When it comes to relatively unimportant information, they seem to develop super-powered memories and often recall the smallest of details. In contrast, truth-tellers know that they have forgotten certain details and are happy to admit it. Sir Robin’s interviews illustrate the point. There is only one instance when he admits that he cannot remember a detail, and it is when he tells us the truth about not being able to recall the first time he saw his favorite film,
Some Like It Hot.
Some Like It Hot.
Research has yet to confirm exactly why body language is often so misleading and the language of lying so revealing. One theory is that because eye contact and hand movements are easy to control, liars can use these signals to convey whatever impressions they want. In contrast, trying to control the words we use, and the way we say them, is much harder; for this reason, a person’s use of language becomes a far more reliable guide to the truth.
Whatever the theory, the simple fact is that the real clues to deceit are in the words that people use. So do people become much better lie detectors when they listen to a liar, or even just read the transcript of a liar’s comments? I have to own up to a little falsehood of my own. I didn’t tell you the whole truth about the experiment with Sir Robin. Like all good deceivers, I didn’t actually lie to you, I just left out some important information.
The television experiment was just one small part of a much bigger study. On the same day the BBC program was aired, we also played just the soundtrack of the two interviews on a national radio station. Roger Highfield, the science editor, also arranged for the transcripts to be printed in the
Daily Telegraph.
Each time, listeners and readers were asked to guess which interview they thought contained the lies and to register their opinions by telephoning one of two numbers. Thousands of people were kind enough to participate. Although the lie-detecting abilities of the television viewers were no better than chance, the newspaper readers were correct 64 percent of the time, and the radio listeners scored an impressive 73 percent accuracy rate. When it comes to detecting lies, people are better off listening than looking.
Daily Telegraph.
Each time, listeners and readers were asked to guess which interview they thought contained the lies and to register their opinions by telephoning one of two numbers. Thousands of people were kind enough to participate. Although the lie-detecting abilities of the television viewers were no better than chance, the newspaper readers were correct 64 percent of the time, and the radio listeners scored an impressive 73 percent accuracy rate. When it comes to detecting lies, people are better off listening than looking.
The experiment with Sir Robin is far from being the only study to illustrate that people’s lie-detecting abilities are increased by encouraging them to listen rather than to look. One of the more unusual pieces of research in the area was done by Glenn Littlepage and Tony Pineault from Middle Tennessee State University.
16
These researchers carried out their study using one of the best-known, and longest-running, game shows on American television.
To Tell the Truth
involved three contestants each claiming to be the same person. This trio was interrogated by four celebrity panelists who tried their best to uncover who was genuine and who was bluffing. After they had made their decisions, the host asked the truth-teller to stand up and reveal all. This show became a part of American popular culture, and it formed the basis for the opening sequence of the film
Catch Me If You Can.
16
These researchers carried out their study using one of the best-known, and longest-running, game shows on American television.
To Tell the Truth
involved three contestants each claiming to be the same person. This trio was interrogated by four celebrity panelists who tried their best to uncover who was genuine and who was bluffing. After they had made their decisions, the host asked the truth-teller to stand up and reveal all. This show became a part of American popular culture, and it formed the basis for the opening sequence of the film
Catch Me If You Can.
Littlepage and Pineault taped various editions of the show. In one of the episodes, three women claimed they were experts on the Middle Ages; in another, three men said that they had been asked by the People’s Republic of China to discover the remains of a prehistoric “Peking Man.” The researchers then showed the clips to groups of people. One group watched the show as normal, hearing both the sound and seeing the images. Another group heard only the soundtrack of the shows; a third saw only the images. The results demonstrated the importance of the language of lying. Those who saw just the images were terrible at spotting the bluffing contestants, whereas those who heard just the soundtrack were surprisingly skilled at working out who was about to be revealed as the truth-teller.
It is time to test your new lie-detection skills. A few years ago, a science show called
The Daily Planet,
which aired on the Canadian Discovery Channel, asked me to help conduct another national lie-detection experiment. They persuaded one of my childhood heroes, the Hollywood actor and comedian Leslie Nielsen (star of
Airplane, Naked Gun,
and
Police Squad!
), to be our guinea pig. Nielsen was interviewed twice by the show’s host, Jay Ingram. In each interview, Nielsen was asked about his favorite food. As with the Sir Robin experiment, one of the answers was a complete pack of lies and the other was the honest truth. Can you spot the lie this time?
The Daily Planet,
which aired on the Canadian Discovery Channel, asked me to help conduct another national lie-detection experiment. They persuaded one of my childhood heroes, the Hollywood actor and comedian Leslie Nielsen (star of
Airplane, Naked Gun,
and
Police Squad!
), to be our guinea pig. Nielsen was interviewed twice by the show’s host, Jay Ingram. In each interview, Nielsen was asked about his favorite food. As with the Sir Robin experiment, one of the answers was a complete pack of lies and the other was the honest truth. Can you spot the lie this time?
Interview 1What is your favorite food?What is my favorite food? What is my favorite food? And I can take my pick out of absolutely anything? Hmm . . . boy, that’s a toughie, I tell you. It really depends. I guess . . . my favorite food is ketchup.Ketchup! Why do you like ketchup so much?I don’t know. I think I am one of those people who is capable of putting ketchup on absolutely anything, or everything, whichever way you want to look at it. Yes, ketchup.I am thinking really mainly about something that is a holdover from the time when I was a little boy. You know, how you go looking for it—you say, “Hey, Mommy, give me a piece of bread and jam.” And I remember the time when my mother, she said, “We don’t have any jam, Leslie, we don’t have any jam.” I said, “But, but, but.” And she said, “I’ll give you something.” And she had a piece of bread and butter, and she put ketchup on it. And smoothed it over and so on. I’m addicted to it, and, I know I would catch myself, when I was . . . if I was feeling good around the house, no matter what it is, and I got hungry, I would head for the refrigerator and get out a piece of bread and butter and put ketchup on it. It made me feel even better.
Interview 2So, Leslie Nielsen, what is your favorite food?It’s becoming a favorite for me . . . it’s at the head of my list . . . I’m really only going by what comes into my mind first. And . . . you know, sour cream.You take a dollop of sour cream and you put it on guacamole, for example, or . . . I think it is because I have got into a Mexican tinge here, and I can remember my mother, for example, when I was a kid, she would eat a tomato sandwich with mayonnaise on it. Well mayonnaise, later on, it looked like sour cream, it would be the last thing in the world that I would want to touch.And . . . errr . . . so I really stayed away from it, but today . . . it’s a very unusual flavor, and you can get it more or less low fat, which I am very careful and cautious about, and it is a new taste for me, but it is something that I am growing very rapidly to like very much—sour cream.
As you might already have guessed, Leslie loves ketchup and hates sour cream. The transcripts contain the linguistic patterns that are typical of lying and truth telling. First, the lie is far shorter than the truth—Leslie used about 220 words when he spoke about ketchup and roughly 150 when he described his “love” of sour cream. The transcripts also contain evidence of the “psychological distancing” associated with lying. When Leslie tells the truth, he uses the word “I” seventeen times, compared to just nine times when he lies. Also, the truth contains a fairly detailed description of the type of childhood experience that he associates with ketchup, with several descriptions of his emotions (“I’m
addicted
to it . . . ”; “If I was
feeling good . . .
”; and “It made me
feel even better . . .
”). In contrast, Leslie’s lie is far more factual (about how you can use it, that it has an unusual flavor, and it is low fat), and contains only a single and slightly strange reference, right at the very end of the interview, to how it makes him feel (“It is something that I am growing very rapidly to like very much . . . ”).
addicted
to it . . . ”; “If I was
feeling good . . .
”; and “It made me
feel even better . . .
”). In contrast, Leslie’s lie is far more factual (about how you can use it, that it has an unusual flavor, and it is low fat), and contains only a single and slightly strange reference, right at the very end of the interview, to how it makes him feel (“It is something that I am growing very rapidly to like very much . . . ”).
Once you know the telltale signs associated with the language of a lie, detecting deceit becomes much easier. The most reliable signs of lying are in people’s voices and in their unconscious choices of language: the lack of key details in their descriptions; the increase in pauses and hesitations; the way liars distance themselves from their deceit by avoiding self-references such as “I”; the failure to describe their feelings; and the way liars seem to remember minute information that truth-tellers forget. Learn to listen for the secret signals and the thin veil of deception is lifted. Suddenly you see what people really think and feel, and the world becomes a very different place. Honestly. Trust me on this one.
MONA LISA,
FRESHLY GUILLOTINED HEADS, AND THE SCHOOL SISTERS OF NOTRE DAME
Do the results of the studies conducted with Sir Robin Day and Leslie Nielsen mean there are no telltale signs of deception that can be detected in people’s body language and facial expressions? Not exactly. In fact, there are ways of spotting deception by using your eyes rather than your ears; you just have to know exactly what you are looking for. Let’s consider one of the most common, and frequently faked, forms of nonverbal behavior: the human smile.
We all smile, but few of us have any insight into the complex psychology underlying this seemingly simple behavior. Do you smile because
you
are happy, or to let
other people
know that you are happy? This apparently straightforward question has generated fierce debate among researchers. Some have argued that the smile is driven almost entirely by an inner feeling of happiness; others have claimed that it is a social signal designed to let those around you know how you feel. To help settle the issue, Robert Kraut and Robert Johnston, professors from Cornell University, decided to compare the amount people smiled when they were happy but alone with when they were equally happy but with others.
17
After much deliberation, they hit upon the perfect place to conduct their study: a bowling alley. They realized that when bowlers rolled their balls down the lane and got a good score, they tended to be alone and happy. When they turned and faced their fellow bowlers, however, they would be just as happy but now they were interacting with others.
you
are happy, or to let
other people
know that you are happy? This apparently straightforward question has generated fierce debate among researchers. Some have argued that the smile is driven almost entirely by an inner feeling of happiness; others have claimed that it is a social signal designed to let those around you know how you feel. To help settle the issue, Robert Kraut and Robert Johnston, professors from Cornell University, decided to compare the amount people smiled when they were happy but alone with when they were equally happy but with others.
17
After much deliberation, they hit upon the perfect place to conduct their study: a bowling alley. They realized that when bowlers rolled their balls down the lane and got a good score, they tended to be alone and happy. When they turned and faced their fellow bowlers, however, they would be just as happy but now they were interacting with others.
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