May 18, 2007
Book Excerpt: The Truth About Lying & Laughing
...when it comes to lie detection, the public might as well simply toss a coin. It doesn't matter if you are male or female, young or old; very few people are able reliably to detect deception. The results suggest that we can't even tell when our partners are being economical with the truth.
We're in good company. Psychologist Paul Ekman from the University of California, San Francisco, showed video tapes of liars and truth-tellers to various groups of experts, including polygraph operators, robbery investigators, judges and psychiatrists, and asked them to try to identify the lies. All tried their best. None of the groups performed better than chance.
So why are people so bad at detecting deceit?
more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,2060839,00.html
[an edited extract from Quirkology, by Richard Wiseman, to be published next month by Macmillan]
thanks http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/
~With jokes.
[photo not from above]
Posted by Stubbornson at May 18, 2007 05:40 PM