How good are you at telling if someone is lying? Below are two transcripts from appeals for a missing pet by owners who claim to have lost them. Who do you think is telling the truth?
Angie: I’m really worried about Fluffy [frowns]. I haven’t seen her for two days now, and I’m concerned that something has happened. I just couldn’t bear it if she was, you know, taken from us. I just really hope she’s OK and will come back soon.
Grace: I just don’t know what’s happened to Fluffy [shakes head]. I haven’t seen her for two days now, and I wor… I’m worried she’s been [looks away] killed. We just really miss her, and want her back.
If you guessed right
Congratulations, you’re a born lie detector! Have you thought about a career with the police? A recent study found that with these types of appeals both firearms and CID officers outperformed the general public, if only rather narrowly. As you probably realised, genuine people are more likely to express concern and hope, and to use euphemisms such as “taken from us”. Liars are more likely to make speech errors, to shake their heads and look away.
If you were fooled
Don’t feel too bad. A 2006 review that combined the results of more than 100 lie-detection experiments (a total of 16,0000 participants) found that people were only correct a little more than half the time. Many of us think we’re better lie detectors than we actually are, because it’s easy to identify very poor liars. When you’ve fallen for a convincing lie, you’ll probably never find out.
Answer
Angie really lost Fluffy; Grace was lying
Psy-Q by Ben Ambridge is published by Profile Books at £8.99. To order a copy for £6.29, go to bookshop.theguardian.com
