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Not the main point of the article, but I found this quote interesting. "...police officers could significantly improve their ability to detect false statements
by uxamanda 6y ago
Not the main point of the article, but I found this quote interesting.
"...police officers could significantly improve their ability to detect false statements if suspects were asked to give their alibis in reverse order."
This is similar to a technique we use in user research – not to catch someone in a lie, but to help them remember what actually happened. If you ask someone "what is your morning routine like", they tend to forget a lot of details and gloss over things that were difficult / tedious. If you ask them to recount backwards from "how did you arrive here today", they will give you a clearer picture. Not sure it works in all cases, but I use it on myself when I really want to remember a sequence of events.
- sukilot 6y agoIt's also the best way to find where you lost something.
- shrimpx 6y agoIntuitively, to me, it’s because it’s sorted “new to old” so the first events are fresher in memory and can be recalled vividly, making the most recent older event likely to be recalled vividly by association, etc. As opposed to starting with the oldest event which is dimmer in memory along with its associations. I think liars are easier to catch when they recite events in reverse because they visualized their lies in chronological order, like when memorizing a poem. They could become immune to the reverse trick if they practiced their lies in reverse.
- gooseus 6y agoYou can also use a similar trick when editing your writing, read your work backwards and you're more likely to catch errors you would otherwise have skimmed over by reading forward.