Lying

Bird Dog over at Maggie's passes along this study about lying. It is a topic I am quite interested in if it's got real data. In my field were usually more concerned with whose story was accurate, rather than who is telling the truth and who is lying. This is because some of the stories came from the mentally ill, who were psychotic or emotionally biased so strongly as to make their stories unreliable, but not necessarily lying. Some were lying.  So were some of the families providing us with information or occasionally, even the agencies involved. But mostly it was different slants, perspectives, and desires, which over time bent the information. It was best to be aware of the possibility of lying, but attribute variances in stories to other causes.

Still, there were times when it was important, or times when we simply learned that someone was lying, even though we had not sought the info. I heard many people - I even had to go to inservices - tell me with great confidence that they knew how to detect lying.  Some would say that they just had an intuitive goof feel for this, others that they had been trained. I figured there was probably some training out there that was founded on real information, but because so much of what I heard was pretty obviously bogus I just tuned it all out. Maybe the people in the spy business had some real info, but law enforcement certainly didn't, and teachers and social workers had great confidence but poor results as well. 

I had an advantage because I sometimes had outside information, even information from years ago, at my fingertips, so I didn't need to try and guess whether someone was lying. But this allowed me to evaluate the people claiming to detect lies as well. "He's claiming to have $4M, but when I asked him what his investments were he wouldn't tell me." Well, he lives in a house worth $2.3M and his mother says he owns it. (He might think what his investments are are none of your business, too.) I would doubt everyone but not disbelieve anyone. If someone came in claiming to have been abused I would consider even some unlikely scenarios possible, because I had seen them be true.  But I also thought this might be calculated, because I had seen that as well. 

Heck, I sometimes have something come out of my mouth and wonder if I am still sure about it, and certainly don't trust my own motives. But I have also said some unbelievable things that were in fact true. Including about my motives. I think.

There was often a focus on eyes, or hands, or posture. I'm not saying that all of these are not true.  I don't know and don't care.  I do know that some of them are, and don't know who to trust, so I trust no one. There is a text evaluation training that purports to detect lying, and some law-enforcement communities swear by it. I thought I had posted on it about five years ago but can't find it. I think I read about it in National Review. Police detectives will try to use it in court if the defense attorney isn't savvy. It has no independent supporting verification behind it.  None. I recall one aspect was red-flagging people using synonyms instead of the same words over and over again in longer written statements. This meant they were lying. Well, some of us were taught that this was just better writing and have been doing it automatically since oh, fifth grade or something. It's ludicrous.

I have heard people claim that if people say too much it's a sign of lying. Ah. So you don't like people who talk too much. Thanks a bunch. Sorry if the truth hurts. I even know a researcher whose work sometimes suggests this, even though the actual papers only identify something consistent with the above - people who put in a lot of vaguer verbiage but are short on specific details in their ongoing reports are more likely to be cooking the books. (The experimental evidence for that limited proposition looked pretty good, and seems quite believable.  But it's not the same thing as marking people down for mere quantity.  Quantity is apparently good in some settings.)

I did have one red-flag that I developed over years, and would say it to teams I worked with behind closed doors.  I would never use it in court or in a report, and with all such strictly observational data, someone might come along next week with a better-evidenced theory that incorporates it. You may not have much cause to use it, and remember, there's no research behind this but I found it a good red flag. When people are formulating an answer, they will sometimes raise their eyes slightly and look at the wall/horizon, not directly at you. Observing my own mind when I do this, I concluded that they are choosing among some alternatives of what to say. How should I put this? What tack should I take? Should I mention my sister's involvement or not? Nothing wrong with that. As their eyes drifted higher they seemed to be considering more possibilities, and my internal observation seemed consonant with this. Man! I have no idea where to start here. I could go in so many directions explaining this to them.  

Now they could be getting into the territory of deception here, of choosing too carefully how to say something. But that is in no way automatic. People stare off into space to answer or explain something all the time. But extending that increased-choices idea, when people were looking straight up at the ceiling, when they were supposedly talking to you but were leaning back in the chair and had their hands behind their head, they were choosing from an infinite number of possibilities. That is, no real filters anymore. That is, lying. I even tried it on myself, but couldn't get there. (Perhaps I find a 20% level of deception sufficient!) 

Spinning their swivel chair only confirmed it. That was actually where I started this theory, from the other end, of noticing that the swivelers and ceiling-lookers were often lying and trying to figure out what that meant.