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Read a book on this and this seems to corroborate much of what I read. One of the most interesting and simple techniques discussed was the order in which people
by mankyd 11y ago
Read a book on this and this seems to corroborate much of what I read. One of the most interesting and simple techniques discussed was the order in which people recounted their stories.
The example given is an employee who is consistently late for work. If you ask them to recount why they are late one day, a liar will tell you the story linearly: "I woke up, ate breakfast, hopped in the car, was on my way, minding my own business, then someone hit my car. I got out to trade insurance ... [etc]".
A truth teller jumps around, usually starting with the climax "Someone hit my car on the way in. I then realized my insurance was expired. I had just been going through my bills the previous night ...".
This is easily ascribed to the fact that the liar is either making the story up as they go or are repeating a rehearsed lie. A truthful person can jump around easily because they are recounting distinct memories.
- caminante 11y ago> This is easily ascribed to the fact that the liar is either making the story up as they go or are repeating a rehearsed lie. A truthful person can jump around easily because they are recounting distinct memories. Alternatively, the liar's experienced, good at his craft, and more capable of jumping around.
- mankyd 11y agoCertainly. It's not a perfect or fool proof method. Nothing is. It's simply a piece of evidence to look for.
- learc83 11y agoThat's the problem with this technique. The false positive rate is likely pretty high, and without knowing the prior probability that the person is lying, the technique could be worse than useless.
- mankyd 11y agoYou would never convict someone of deceit based on any liar-detection methodology. They're simply tools used to warrant further investigation. There will be truth-tellers who fail this test, but you find nothing conviction worthy. They'll be fine. There will be liars who pass this test. Hopefully you catch them later by other means, just as you would have otherwise. And of course, there will be those who pass who are never caught. This tool does not make that any worse.
- learc83 11y ago>This tool does not make that any worse. If the false positive rate is too high and the prior probability a given person being interviewed actually lied, then the test is actively harmful. I.e., if a positive result is more likely a false positive, then you end up wasting investigation resources. In this case you'd have been better off just flipping a coin to decide if someone warranted more investigation. >There will be truth-tellers who fail this test, but you find nothing conviction worthy. They'll be fine. Tell that to all the people who lost jobs, or spent months of their life under investigation because of failed polygraph tests.
- mankyd 11y agoI actually failed my poly - several times :) I should of course mention that not everyone uses these tools correctly. I suppose that could be harmful. But then again, if an investigator is simply looking for a reason to find someone guilty, then the accused is eff'ed either way.
- caminante 11y agoFor sure. I assume the detection technique works pretty well, even against "better" liars. That said, I've encountered folks that are so good at being slippery that you almost have to admire their skill.
- simonh 11y agoOnly if they are aware of this technique and purposefully and skillfully prepare to defeat it. That turns out to be harder than you'd expect for methods like this. The methods used by Israeli security agents to profile travelers at airports have been well known for decades, but even so are still very effective.
- aluhut 11y agoHow do you measure it it has been effective when the successful liar passes the test and is not defined as such?
- frandroid 11y agoYou raise an interesting conundrum, but you can tell of a certain success rate by the number of liars who eventually confess to lying or are found to have been lying.
- sageikosa 11y agoThey could be lying about whether they were lying in the past.
- frandroid 11y agoWe're talking about legal contexts here. Almost no one, unless coerced/brutalized by police/DAs, admits to crimes they did not commit. And the you have the thing where you can verify their admission of guilt with corroborating details.
- rdtsc 11y agoThere have many many many cases of individuals getting behind bars because they have been coerced to plead guilty and confess to crimes that they never committed. "unless coerced/brutalized by police/DAs" is not really exceptional, once in a decade, type case, sadly it is rather routine.
- agumonkey 11y agoAnybody just a little bit "smart" and lying knows that one has to be subtle and non linear. Trying to convince is already failing.
- iamsohungry 11y agoThe best liars use the exhonerative voice to avoid telling a story about themselves at all: "Bags are subject to search" means "We will search your bags". "A shooting involving Tacoma County Police left two suspects dead" means "Tacoma County Police shot two suspects."
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- danso 11y agoHuh? I'm not disputing that institutions carefully use the passive voice to clean their prose of negative connotations...but the two examples you mention are not "lies" 1. I've seen the "bags are subject to search" phrase many times, including the public library. I cannot remember the last time my bag was searched, even at the airport when the search is differentiated from the usual scan. So that phrase is definitely not a cover-up for "We will" 2. Again, not a lie. And I don't mean in the "not technically a lie". There are many cases where there is a shootout involving police and the cause of the suspect's death is ultimately determined as suicide. So the "A shooting involving..." phrase is perfectly acceptable in a breaking news update when no determination has yet been made.
- bpchaps 11y agoPrinciple of Charity, my friend. I'm not really sure where you got a negative vibe from his comment. It was more of a comment on how effective word-choice is on someone's symamantic tree.
- subliminalzen 11y agoBy using the exonerative voice, a liar avoids committing to a particular narrative. They can easily back away from a statement by saying "I only said baggage is subject to being searched. I didn't say they were searched." That said, I don't think the exonerated voice is a particularly skillful one. A careful listener can easily pick up on that.
- iamsohungry 11y ago
- baddox 11y agoOr the person is telling the truth and still deliberated about how to tell the story. I would probably do that.
- DennisP 11y agoWhat was the book?
- mankyd 11y ago"Liespotting" by Pamela Meyer http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/liespotting-pamela-meyer/1103073202 http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/liespotting-pamela-meyer/110... http://www.amazon.com/Liespotting-Proven-Techniques-Detect-Deception/dp/0312611730/ http://www.amazon.com/Liespotting-Proven-Techniques-Detect-D... I won't oversell it and tell you that the book turns you into a human polygraph. It simply surveys what is known about deception and human behavior and how you can apply that to your interactions with others.