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Spotting Lies: A How to Guide

Experts are not good at detecting deception according to the The Huffington Post and new research conducted by Professor of Applied Social Psychology, Aldert Vrij.

Dr. Vrij reveals that with an average accuracy rate of 56.6%, lies go undetected more than 1/3 of the time!

His latest research suggests that even trained professionals such as police and customs officers are no better than the average person at detecting deception.

Why are trained professionals not good at lie detection?

There are a plethora of reasons why professionals may not display a high accuracy rate for deception detection.  Perhaps,  they are only trained in one area of deception detection such as body language (excluding, micro facial expressions and/or statement analysis).  Perhaps, they are just not trained often enough, that is there is an infrequency to their trainings; therefore, the review of their skills.  It could even be that they were simply not trained properly and there is a misapplication of the skills that they learned.

Detecting inconsistencies in nonverbal behavior (including facial expressions and microexpressions) is a crucial skill that needs to be practiced often.  As with many trainings, including Humitnell’s micro expression training, one should re-visit it often to remain agile in the core principles of that training.

We do not expect our trained soldiers or law enforcement agents to go out into the field without continuing to practice gun safety and execution.  Like many other things in life, deception detection techniques should be practiced  to be able to accurately and efficiently sift the truth from the lies.

Dr. Vrij goes on, in “How to Tell Who is Lying to You”,  to note the two main ways to be a better lie detector are:

1.  The Baseline Method:  There is  no one behavior that is universally characteristic of liars, but when any particular individual starts to stray from the truth, various cognitive, emotional and physiological processes kick in, which are  possible to detect.  However, you can only spot these if you already have the ‘baseline’ of how someone behaves when they are telling the truth

2.  Devil’s Advocate:  Interviewees are first asked questions inviting them to argue in favor of their personal view. This is followed by a Devil’s Advocate question that asks interviewees to argue against their personal view.   The Devil’s Advocate Question is actually what they really believe, but are covering up.  As we think more deeply about, and are more able to generate, reasons that support rather than oppose our beliefs, this leaks out during the answer to the Devil’s Advocate Question.

Dr. Matsumoto’s new book, Nonverbal Communication:  Science and Applications, marries the two worlds of knowing how to detect deception with putting that knowledge into practice.

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Mood Matters: Marketing to Our Basic Emotions

We all know that our frame of mind, or mood if you prefer, greatly influences our behavior.  What is one of the best indicators to how we feel? Our facial expressions.

Marketing departments are now able to capitalize on that more than ever due to the fast pace and growth of technology.

Human’s basic emotions regulate the things we do, what we buy and even what we are willing to tolerate (e.g. pay rate, product prices etc).

CNET/Reviews comments on the future of marketing and car building.   Toyota is beginning production on a mood facial recognition tracking system that they will place in the dashboard of their vehicles. This system will customize the electronics of the vehicle to the drivers specifications. 

What does this mean on the practical applications side of this technology?

Well, if your car thinks you might be angry or sad, the system will increase the alert time it gives you.  Thus giving you more time to react to a possible collision.

The possible down side to this, is simply that Big Brother is watching.  The technology could be integrated with other vehicle electronics systems to block phone calls or limit speed if it senses that the driver is under stress.

The question for consumers and the public in general is,  is safety more important than freedom?  Also, how much safety is really necessary before our freedom is compromised?

Toyota is not the only car maker capitalizing on such technology. Audi has a similar type of system in the works.  Other industries are also implementing emotion recognition in an effort to improve their products and marketing.

Samsung has recently applied for an emotional recognition patent.

According to Phys.org the South Korean conglomerate’s patent is on a device that will be able to tell a users emotions based on their facial expressions or action units (AUS).   AUS ‘are components of a facial action coding system which was specially programmed to reference the contractions of facial muscles.