Let’s be honest here, we all lie about stuff all the time. Hell, you probably lied a few times this morning and you didn’t even realise it.
With the amount of lying that goes on in all aspects of life – like the fustercluck that is politics to bragging about your exploits on social media – it’s increasingly important to know when something is a lie and something is true. Luckily, spotting a lie isn’t too hard thanks to all the lessons we’ve learned from TV and movies. Nervous fidgeting? Lie. Sweating? Lie. Bouncing Leg? Epic lie.
Well sorry to tell you all this, all that stuff you see about detecting lies is all a bunch of, well, lies.
The ABC chatted to a few researchers and pros in the field of lying as part of an investigation and the general conclusion is that it is a lot more complicated to catch out liars than what TV and movies tell us.
According to Helen Paterson, a senior lecturer who specialises in lie detection and witness testimony, not only are we’re pretty good at lying we are also pretty rubbish at figuring out if something is a lie or the truth.
She also says that all the nervous fidgeting and other similar “tells” are complete BS, and that there’s nothing suggesting that those indicators are signs of lies.
Totally lying. Or not. Actually, we have no idea.
This debunking of nervous tics as indicators of lying also extends to things like bodily functions. The general thought is that liars will be sweating like a cornered nun and their pulse will be racing faster than an F1 car, but those aren’t reliable indicators of lying either.
Dr. Paterson says that innocent people also get anxious when questioned so that immediately muddies the waters. Furthermore, lie detectors like polygraph tests aren’t foolproof and can be gamed, rendering them basically useless.
Other commonly held methods and indicators of detecting lies, like analyising speech or writing patterns, are also about as reliable as using a colander as a cereal bowl so it seems like the overall conclusion is that humans are simply awful at calling out lies.
Lies.
At a time when calling out BS is desperately needed, finding out that we actually suck at calling out lies isn’t the good news we want to hear right now.
But let’s look at this from a glass half-full position, it would suck to tell the absolute truth to everyone you talk to and vice versa all the time. Like, you’re totally going to tell someone that their haircut is lovely even when it isn’t because you’re not a monster and don’t want to hurt their feelings.