Who can catch a liar?

When I wrote this book, I thought that the methods I was studying that people use to hide the strong emotions experienced at the time of uttering a lie have little to do with the lies of diplomats, politicians, criminals, or spies. I was afraid that professional verifiers — police, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents, judges, psychologists and psychiatrists working in the government — might be overly optimistic about their ability to tell lies from truth by behavioral signs. I had a desire to advise those whose work requires the assessment of truthfulness or deceit, not to trust anyone who claims to be able to judge deception on the basis of behavioral signs, which in the system of criminal law are called an image of action. I wanted to warn them not to rely too much on their own insight.
Now I have irrefutable evidence that I was right in warning professionals to be more careful in making judgments about lies and truth. But I also discovered that my fears are somewhat exaggerated. To my surprise, it turned out that some experts are perfectly aware of the lies on behavioral signs. I learned what kind of people they were and how they learned this. And now I have reason to believe that my knowledge of lies and emotions also applies to certain cases of fraud in politics, criminal law and intelligence.
Perhaps I would never have known about it if I had not already written this book. Usually a professor of psychology who does experimental research in a laboratory does not meet with people working in the criminal law system or in the world of intelligence and counterintelligence. These professional verifiers did not learn about me from my scientific publications, which have been published for twenty years now, but from the newspapers that published reports about my work in connection with the publication of the book. Soon I was invited to direct seminars for city, state, and federal judges, lawyers, police, and lie detector detectors of the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, Drug Enforcement Agency, US Secret Service, and the US Army, Navy, and Air Force.
For these people, a lie is not a theoretical question. They take their work and my advice very seriously. They are not like students who take the word for the professor just because he gives them marks and is the authority who wrote the book. In this audience, my scientific regalia put me in a rather disadvantageous position. My listeners needed real life examples that they could immediately use in their work. I could tell them how difficult it is to catch a liar, but they had to make decisions tomorrow, and they could not wait for the results of further research. They wanted to get any help I could give them, with the exception of warnings, to be more careful, but they were very skeptical of my advice.
But, oddly enough, these people turned out to be much more flexible than representatives of the scientific world. Compared with the majority of members of university academic councils, they showed much greater willingness to revise the principles of their work. Once at lunch, one judge asked me if he should make a rearrangement in the courtroom to see not the witness’s head, but his face. Such a simple thought never crossed my mind. Since then, speaking to the judges, I always make such a proposal, and many judges have already made rearrangements in the courtrooms.
A secret service agent told me how difficult it is to distinguish truth from a lie, when a man after his threats against the president suddenly declares that all this is not serious and that his main goal was only to impress a friend. The agent’s face was literally twisted with horror when he recalled how Sarah-Jane Moore, recognized not as a real killer, but “crazy”, was mistakenly released on September 22, 1975, and only a few hours later shot President Gerald Ford. I told the agent that at my seminars I can offer them only very minor additional information that will increase the accuracy of their work, most likely, by no more than 1%. “Grand,” he replied, “come on.”
My colleague Maureen O'Sullivan ^{[238] and I} always started the seminars with a small test to assess the participants' ability to learn lies by their behavior. This test was to watch a video about an experiment I described in Chapter 1, “False. Information Leakage and Some Other Signs of Deception,” in which 10 female nurses participate. Each of them tells about their pleasant feelings experienced when watching a film about nature and graceful animals. Five out of ten girls are telling the truth, the rest are lying. In fact, they watched a horrible film of unpleasant medical content, but they tried to hide their true feelings and convince the audience that the film was pleasant.
I give this test for two reasons. First of all, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to find out how precisely these people who deal with the most terrible lie can actually catch the liars. And secondly, I am sure that such a test is a good start for the seminar. For the audience it immediately becomes more understandable how difficult it is to determine when people are lying. I seduce them with the words: “You have a unique opportunity to learn the truth about your ability to convict liars. You constantly have to judge, but how often do you manage to check whether you reasoned correctly or not? Now you have this opportunity. You will know the answer in just 15 minutes. ” Immediately after the test, I give the correct answers. Then I ask you to raise the hands of those who have 10 correct answers, 9, 8, etc. Then I count the results on the board so that each student can compare his level with the general indicator of the group. And as a result, among other things, although I do not set myself such a goal, after this procedure, the whole group will know the effectiveness of each participant.
Most of the seminar participants are not the best way to cope with my test. But such a sad lesson fits perfectly with the goal of my mission, which is to make these people more cautious in making judgments about truth or lies. At the first seminars, I was afraid that my listeners would object to the test, fearing to demonstrate in public their inability to catch liars. I expected that by finding out how badly they coped with their task, they would go on the offensive, question the correctness of my test and argue that the lie shown in the video has nothing to do with the lies that have to be dealt with. them. But this has never happened before. These men and women working in law enforcement and intelligence wanted their colleagues to be convinced of their ability to catch liars. They showed much more courage than my learned colleagues when I gave the latter the same opportunity — in the presence of my students and colleagues to demonstrate my ability to catch liars.
Upon learning of their deplorable results, these professional verifiers abandoned the “finger to the sky” method, which many of them have so far relied on. They began to be much more careful in defining deception by behavior. In addition, I usually warned them about the many stereotypes that people use when they try to distinguish truth from a lie by behavioral signs — for example, it is believed that if a person fidgets or looks away, he will lie.
As a more specific piece of advice, I used examples from life to show them how to use the questionnaire described in Chapter 7, “The technique of detecting lies.” Moreover, as in the previous chapters of this book, I constantly pointed out how emotions can produce and how to detect signs of such emotions. I showed them photos of people with different facial expressions, and very quickly (within a split second) so that they could easily read microexpressions. I used videotapes to capture examples of various lies in which they can practice their newly acquired skills.
In September 1991, our discoveries concerning the activities of professional verifiers were published ^[239] .
It turned out that only one professional group shows results that exceed the level of random guesswork - the US Secret Service. About half of its agents recognized the lie with an accuracy of about 70%, and almost a third - with an accuracy of 80% and higher. Although I can’t say with certainty why the Secret Service is so much superior to other professional groups, I think the reason is that many agents had to deal with personal security - to watch the crowd, trying to figure out who could threaten the person they are guarding. This kind of vigilance is a good preparation for noticing the subtlest behavioral signs.
Many people are surprised when they find out that all other professional groups dealing with lies (judges, lawyers, police officers, detective operators working for the CIA, the FBI or the National Security Agency, military specialists and psychiatrists) show results at random. No less surprising is the fact that most of them are not aware of their inability to detect deception by behavior. Before the test, we asked them how they evaluated their skills, and their answers usually had nothing to do with the true results. However, immediately after the test, their answer remained unchanged.
I was surprised when at least one of these professional verifiers could quite accurately recognize the cheaters, because the situation shown to them and people were completely unfamiliar to them. I came up with the situation shown in the video in order to simulate the state of a psychiatric patient who wants to take her own life, but hides her plans, since in order to fulfill them she needs to free herself from constant medical supervision. She must hide her anxiety and convincingly pretend that she no longer suffers from depression (see Introduction). Experienced at the moment, strong negative emotions were covered with positive emotions. Such situations often come across only to psychiatrists and psychologists, but they, as a group, also showed results at the random level. Why does the US Secret Service so well detect this type of deception? ^[240]
At that time I didn’t understand this yet, but after thinking about our discoveries, I had an assumption about when exactly it is possible to catch a liar on the basis of behavioral signs. If the suspect has strong emotions, the verifier does not need to have much information about him or the situation. If a person seems frightened, guilty or agitated and his appearance does not match what he says, the likelihood that this person is lying is very high. If the suspect’s speech is constantly interrupted (pauses, “hm-m”, etc.), and there are no reasons why he couldn’t know what to say, and this manner of speaking is not typical of him, then in this case, probably , he's lying. If the suspect does not experience strong emotions, then the behavioral signs of deception will be much less. If a liar does not have to hide strong emotions, then for his successful exposure the specialist needs to be much better informed about the characteristics of the situation and the qualities of the liar himself.
When the stakes are high and the suspect is afraid of being caught or has a gambling desire to deceive a specialist (I call it “delight of cheating”), then there are chances that a specialist will be able to find out the truth without even having detailed information about the specifics of the situation or features of the suspect. However, there is one very important "but" - not all suspects are afraid of being caught even at very high stakes. Experienced criminals, who have already repeatedly had to lie successfully, are not afraid, as Don Juan, who hid their past stories many times, and experienced diplomats, are not afraid either. And innocent suspects who fear that they will not be believed, even speaking the truth, look like they are lying, especially if too much is at stake (see the discussion of Othello’s error, "Basic mistakes and precautions."
If a liar respects the one he is trying to deceive and shares his values, then most likely he feels guilty about this lie, and the behavioral signs will betray his lies or motivate a confession. But the verifier should not be tempted to think too well of himself, assuming that the liar has respect for him. An incredulous or too picky mother should know these qualities behind herself and not wait for her daughter to feel guilty about deceiving her. An unjust boss should know that his subordinates consider him unjust, so he should not rely on the fact that in the event of fraud, guilt can betray them.
You should never trust anyone's judgment, made in the complete absence of information about the suspect or situation. When performing my test, the verifiers had no opportunity to meet people about whom they had to make judgments. Having seen a person only once and without any other information about him, they had to decide who was lying and who was telling the truth. In such circumstances, very few have done the job. It was possible to do this, but for most it turned out to be very difficult. (I will later explain how those who did manage to make a correct judgment based on so little information.) We have another version of this test, where each person is shown twice. When verifiers have the opportunity to compare human behavior in two situations, their judgments become more accurate, although even in this case, most people show results slightly exceeding the level of random ones ^[241] .
A questionnaire for a situation where a lot of things are at stake (Chapter 7, “Lie Detection Technique”) helps to identify which signs are likely to be present: overt, masking, or behavioral. It helps to determine whether there will be a fear of exposure, remorse or delight in cheating or not. In no case should a specialist assume that it is always possible to determine a lie by behavioral signs. He must resist the temptation to resolve doubts about the truth of the suspect, relying only on his abilities.
Although the Secret Service turned out to be the only organization whose specialists showed results above random ones, in the other professional groups there were also some representatives with high results. I continue to explore the question of why only a few people can accurately determine deception. How did they learn this? Why can not everyone learn to detect a lie with the same precision? Can one learn this skill, or is it rather a talent that is either given to a person or not? This strange thought first occurred to me when it turned out that my eleven-year-old daughter reveals a lie with about the same success as the best representatives of the US Secret Service. She did not read my books and articles. Maybe my daughter has no special talents; It is possible, and in general, most children learn lies better than adults. We are just beginning to explore this issue.
And the key to the answer to the question of why some people manage to accurately determine a lie was given by the test participants themselves. We asked them to tell them which behavioral signs they used when making judgments about truthfulness or deceit. Comparing the answers of all professional groups, we found that those who manage to pinpoint a lie use information provided by the facial expression, voice and body of the suspect, while those who cannot cope with this task base their judgments only on words suspects. This result, of course, is fully consistent with what I said in previous chapters of this book, but none of the seminar participants read it before passing the test. Those who manage to pinpoint a lie knew that it was much easier to cheat with words than to hide a facial expression, voice, or body movements. This does not mean that words do not matter - very often a liar gives contradictions in what has been said, and it is quite possible that a comprehensive, complex analysis of speech can help to reveal lies ^[242] - but one should not fully concentrate only on the content of what was said. We still have to figure out why not all verifiers pay attention to the correspondence between the words of the suspect and, for example, the expressions of his face and voice.