Volume 75 Number 3
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Lies, Liars, and Lie Detection Richard Gray Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Fairleigh Dickinson University Truth and Lies Lying and Emotion Lying and Complexity Cues to deceit Hard-copy Analytical Procedures Detecting Lies Things to watch for Training for Lie Detection THERE IS A BODY of conventional wisdom that claims that you can tell who is lying and who is not. Some of the techniques work some of the time, some of them work under certain conditions. None of them works all of the time. This article reviews some distinctions about the difference between the behavior of liars and the behavior of truth tellers. It is not as simple as you might think. A discussion of lie detection must begin with the old saws: eye contact, fidgeting, and general nervousness. These have been immortalized by the Reid method (with the addition of strange posture changes and covering the eyes or mouth) as indicators of deception (Inbau, Reid, Buckley & Jaynes, 2004). The Reid method is a well-known set of tools for interrogation that begins with an assessment of the offender's credibility and progresses on through a series of techniques to obtain a confession. While many law enforcement officials believe the Reid method to be the gold standard for such work, scientific evidence suggests that the basic tools proponents of the method recommend for determining the trustworthiness of an offender are faulty. In fact, when police officers cited these techniques as the means they used to detect deception, their performances as lie detectors got worse (Mann, Vrij and Bull, 2004; Mann, Vrij, Fisher & Robinson, 2008). The basic ideas—that a liar won't look you in the eye, that they are more nervous than truth tellers and that they will fidget and adopt odd postures—have a certain intuitive appeal. In fact, many of these behaviors are associated with feelings of guilt, nervousness, and lack of respect. They assume an unsophisticated liar who is emotionally dependant and in a preexisting relationship with the questioner. The other place where these signs may be valuable is for short periods where an otherwise well-prepared liar has not rehearsed some part of the story and has to think up something on the spot. Outside of these situations, these nostrums become highly unreliable. None of these supposed indicators is supported by any of the scientific literature (Bond & dePaulo, 2008; Man, Vrij & Bull, 2004; Spoorer & Schwandt, 2007; ten Brinke & Porter, 2009). As noted, looking you in the eye is not necessarily an indication of lying. Parents and people in