How to tell if someone is lying?

[pschmom1]

Ok, I thought that this would be a great place to ask this question. My fiance is a police officer and he was trained to watch someones eye movement in order to predict if they were telling the truth or not. He says that people that are recalling info will look up and to the left, if they are lying they will look up and to the right, and if they are debating a though or thinking about something (I can't remember this one specifically) they will look down. I was just curious if anyone knew about this b/c I would think this is a psychology type of question. I would love to hear your opinions. By the way, this is a little weird for me b/c even though I don't lie to him, I think he is watching my eye movements and it's super weird.

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[JatPenn]

I'm not sure about the validity of the eye-watching method. I would think many populations, especially APD/Psychopathy, would be more skilled in deceitful facial phenomenology.

 

[clinpsychgirl]

I also think that for a certain percentage of lefties (not all), this "rule" is reversed.

 

[hot4gradschool]

Ok, I thought that this would be a great place to ask this question. My fiance is a police officer and he was trained to watch someones eye movement in order to predict if they were telling the truth or not. He says that people that are recalling info will look up and to the left, if they are lying they will look up and to the right, and if they are debating a though or thinking about something (I can't remember this one specifically) they will look down. I was just curious if anyone knew about this b/c I would think this is a psychology type of question. I would love to hear your opinions. By the way, this is a little weird for me b/c even though I don't lie to him, I think he is watching my eye movements and it's super weird.

who's left and right? is it from the officer's point of view or the person?

 

[psychgeek]

Unfortunately there is no good evidence to suggest these techniques work in an applied setting. Consulting firms sell interrogation workshops to police promising that they will be taught to detect deception with up to 80% accuracy. Police use these techniques and believe they work because they are able to “detect” lies told by their suspects that are later confirmed to be false. The problem with this is base rates. A majority of suspects lie so any technique that produces a good number of deceptive hits will seem like it works because the chances of a lie are greater than the chances of a completely truthful statement. (As a side note: it is awfully convenient that these experts never give people a way to detect truthful statements. If they did, the people who used them would soon discover that the technique failed much of the time)

The result of this is that police officers have unwarranted confidence in their ability to predict deception and may coerce suspects into providing false confessions. A recent issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest (I think Kassin was one of the authors) may be of interest if you want more information.

 

[lia792]

Hey, it's weird. I was just remembering today how a few years ago, I was in a situation where I heard some dramatic stories and did not know if they were true. I wondered when I would get the life experience to know when somebody is lying and telling the truth. Well, lately, I have been lied to. They were both circumstances where I didn't need to verify the truth, my own knowledge of the situation, while limited, and of this person's previous statements made it obvious to me that I was hearing a lie.

What I am trying to say is that there is no ONE method. What works in determining the truth is reliance on one's own skills and the available certainties. Watching the eyes of the accused can lead to some interesting results, but it should be coupled with other techniques in order to be dependable. In the end, we don't really know what the truth is. We don't have the bird's eye view of it all to know if what was claimed at the end of everything to be true actually was, in fact, true.

 

[pschmom1]

Thanks everyone. Thats basically what I thought about the situation but I wan't sure if there was any proof from the psychology aspect. And to hot4gradschool, it is the persons right or left, not the officers.

 

[docjohng]

Yeah, unfortunately if you look at the research literature into how well we can predict whether people are lying or not, there's basically no better than chance to show that we can determine that. I know a lot of so-called "proven" techniques are out there, but none of them have any backing by the research.

Humans generally can't tell when another human is lying. Especially if another human has been trained in common "tells" that poker players look for in the uninitiated. If you know what not to do, you can pretty much give a stone face that gives away nothing.

John

 

[Quynh2007]

hi, i know this is an old thread, but I had to comment. A study on who can tell liars the best showed that police officer, etc (people who need to discern who is lying and not) are not better than a college student (and that is being able to discern lying at a CHANCE LEVEL). The ONLY people who did better (66% correct) are those that work in secret services. For the study that did this, consult Ekman & MacDonald (1991).

here are some interesting definitions:
othello error: mistaking the stress caused by accusation as stress due to lying

brokaw beliefs: believing there is one tell-tale sign of lying and relying on it exclusively

microexpressions: flashes of mood or expressions automatically displayed that are present for a few millisecond before a more controlled "social" expression is displayed

 

[Roxystar4]

Ok, I thought that this would be a great place to ask this question. My fiance is a police officer and he was trained to watch someones eye movement in order to predict if they were telling the truth or not. He says that people that are recalling info will look up and to the left, if they are lying they will look up and to the right, and if they are debating a though or thinking about something (I can't remember this one specifically) they will look down. I was just curious if anyone knew about this b/c I would think this is a psychology type of question. I would love to hear your opinions. By the way, this is a little weird for me b/c even though I don't lie to him, I think he is watching my eye movements and it's super weird.

Actually, for purposes of this phenomenon, left indicates lying, and right indicates recall.
http://www.blifaloo.com/info/lies_eyes.php

 

[PublicHealth]

Actually, for purposes of this phenomenon, left indicates lying, and right indicates recall.
http://www.blifaloo.com/info/lies_eyes.php

Science has come a little farther than that...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/..._uids=16436822&query_hl=4&itool=pubmed_docsum