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.Learning how badly they did forced these professionallie catchers to give up the rules-of-thumb many of them hadbeen relying on.They became a lot more cautious aboutjudging deception from demeanor.I further cautionedthem about the many stereotypes people have about how totell whether someone is lying such as the idea that peoplewho fidget or look away when they talk are always lying.On the more positive side I showed them how to use thelie-checking list described in chapter 8 (page 241) on somereal-life examples.And I gave a lot of emphasis, as I do inearlier chapters, on how emotions can betray a lie, and howto spot the signs of those emotions.I showed them dozensof facial expressions very briefly, at one-hundredth of asecond, so they could learn to spot micro facial expressions Lie Catching in the 1990s 285easily.I used videotaped examples of various lies on whichthey could practice their newly learned skills.In September 1991, our findings on these professionallie catchers were published.2 It turned out that only oneoccupational group did better than chance the U.S.Se-cret Service.A little more than half of them scored at orabove 70 percent level accuracy, nearly a third reached 80percent or more.Although I cannot be certain why theSecret Service did so much better than the other groups,my bet is that it is because many of them had done protec-tion work watching crowds for any sign of someone whomight menace the person they were protecting.That kindof vigilance should be very good preparation for spottingthe subtle behavioral clues to deceit.It is amazing to many people when they learn that allof the other professional groups concerned with lyingjudges, trial attorneys, police, polygraphers who work forthe CIA, FBI, or NSA (National Security Agency), themilitary services, and psychiatrists who do forensic workdid no better than chance.Equally astonishing, most ofthem didn't know they could not detect deceit from de-meanor.Their answer to the question w^ asked before theytook our test about how well they thought they would dowas unrelated to how well or poorly they actually did, aswas their answer to the same question asked immediatelyafter they completed the test.I was surprised that any of these professional lie catch-ers would be very accurate in spotting lies, since none ofthem had any prior experience with the particular situa-tion nor with the characteristics of the liars they saw.I haddesigned the situation shown in the video to approximatethe plight of the mental hospital patient who is concealingher plans to take her life, to win freedom from medicalsupervision so she can carry out her act.She must conceal 286 Telling Liesher anguish and convincingly act as if she is no longerdepressed.(See discussion in pages 16-17 and 54-56.)Strong negative emotions felt at the moment were coveredwith a veneer of positive emotion.Only the psychiatristsand psychologists should have had much experience withthat situation, and they as a group were no better thanchance.Why should the U.S.Secret Service do so well inspotting this type of deceit?*It was not obvious to me ahead of time, but thinkingabout our findings suggested a new idea about when it willbe possible to detect deceit from behavioral clues.The liecatcher does not need to know as much about either thesuspect or the situation if strong emotions are aroused.When someone looks or sounds afraid, guilty, or excitedand those expressions don't fit what the words say, it is agood bet the person is lying.When there are many speechdisruptions (pauses, "umhh," and so on), and there is noreason why the suspect should not know what to say, andthe suspect usually does not talk that way, the suspect isprobably lying.Such behavioral clues to deceit will besparser whenever emotions are not aroused.If the liar isnot concealing strong emotions, successful lie detectionshould require that the lie catcher be better versed in thespecifics of the situation and the characteristics of the liar.Whenever the stakes are high, there is a chance that thefear of being caught or the challenge of beating the liecatcher (what I call duping delight, page 76) will allowaccurate lie detection without the need for the lie catcherto have much knowledge about the specifics of either the*Perhaps the professional groups we tested might have done much better if wehad given them a lie to judge which was specific to the situation they usually dealwith.We may have only learned who are the good lie catchers regardless ofsituational familiarity, not who are the good lie catchers when operating in theirusual terrain.I think that is not so, but only further research can rule thatpossibility out. Lie Catching in the 1990s 287situation or the suspect.But, and it is an important but,high stakes will not make every liar afraid of being caught.Criminals with experience in getting away with it won'thave such fear, nor will the philanderer who has succeededmany times in concealing his past affairs, nor the practicednegotiator.And high-stakes lies may make some innocentsuspects who fear being disbelieved appear to be lying,even when they are not.(See the discussion of Othello'serror on pages 170-73.)If the liar shares values with and respects the target ofthe lie, there is a chance that the liar will feel guilty aboutlying, and that behavioral signs of that guilt will betray thelie or motivate a confession.But the lie catcher must avoidthe temptation of thinking too well of herself, presumingrespect to which she is not entitled.The distrustful orhypercritical mother must have the self-knowledge to real-ize that she has those characteristics and therefore shouldnot presume her daughter will feel guilty about lying toher.The unfair employer must know that he is seen asunfair in the eyes of his employees, and cannot rely uponguilt signs to betray their deceptions.It is never wise to trust one's judgments about whethersomeone is lying without any knowledge about the suspector the situation.My lie-catching test did not give the liecatcher any opportunity to become familiar with each per-son that had to be judged.Decisions about who was lyingand who was truthful had to be made based on seeing eachperson only once, with no other information about thatperson.Under those circumstances very few people wereaccurate.It was not impossible, just difficult for most.(I'llexplain later how those who were accurate were able tomake this judgment with so little information.) We haveanother version of our test which shows two examples ofeach person.When lie catchers can compare the person'sbehavior in two situations, they are more accurate, al- 288 Telling Liesthough even then most do only slightly better than chance.3The lie-checking list in chapter 8 should help in esti-mating whether in a high stakes lie there will be useful,misleading, or few behavioral clues.It should help in deter-mining whether there will be detection apprehension,deception guilt, or duping delight.The lie catcher shouldnever simply presume that it is always possible to detectdeceit from behavioral clues.The lie catcher must resist thetemptation to resolve uncertainty about truthfulness byoverestimating his own ability to spot a lie.Although the Secret Service was the only occupationalgroup which did better than chance, a few people in everyother group also scored highly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]