"Is he lying?" Odds are, you'll never know. Although people have been communicating with one another for tens of thousands of years, more than 3 decades of psychological research have found that most individuals are abysmally poor lie detectors. In the only worldwide study of its kind, scientists asked more than 2,000 people from nearly 60 countries, "How can you tell when people are lying?" From Botswana to Belgium, the number-one answer was the same: Liars avert their gaze.
"This is ... the most prevalent stereotype about deception in the world," says Charles Bond of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, who led the research project. And yet gaze aversion, like other commonly held stereotypes about liars, isn't correlated with lying at all, studies have shown. Liars don't shift around or touch their noses or clear their throats any more than truth tellers do.
Source and ©: CBS, Science News, Carrie Lock
This topic is a frequent issue of discussion on the following courses:
BTEC Professional Award in Workplace Investigation and Interviewing, 23-25 April, UK
Crime Prevention and Security Design, UK, 25-29 June, UK
ASIS CPP Certification Intensive Preparation Programme, UK, 3-19 September
The latter, which is based on the POA Manual, is quite rigid in its approach, arguing that there are definite indicators that a person is lying, verbal and non-verbal.
My experience differs slightly. While there are some people who, under pressure of interview, display obvious lie signs, I have seen the same signs displayed by truthful people who are put into a stress situation (such as an interview). I have also interviewed many liars who have displayed absolutely no tell-take signs at all, sometimes because they are accomplished liars, or sometimes because they don’t accept that what they have done was dishonest. Since childhood, for example, we are given toys and encouraged to be imaginative!
Your views and experiences?
More on the original CBS article at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_5_166/ai_n6205884/
