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Very interesting. As a criminal defence solicitor I would say that admissions of guilt (confessions)mainly occur due to the strength of evidence gathered by investigators. There are also many occasions where investigators are on a bit of a 'fishing trip'.

Great piece - we should do more of this sort of thing! Blogger was down all night (or maybe it was my internet) ... I've been dying to leave a comment. Was the talk purely on Deception or are you keeping some juicy things to yourself?

Very useful, indeed. Thank you. Regarding serendipity and inspiration, according to an interesting article in the New Scientist, our ability to absorb tangential information into our own ideas is at the heart of creativity. This would seem a perfect example. Good luck with the To-do lists.

Very interesting Teri - though lord knows what this says about my Beloved - if I ask him something and he replies quickly I know he hasn't listened to the question - usually he takes at least 5 seconds to reply - he likes to think through what he's saying. It's very disturbing, even after 25 years together I still want to say @well? Come on! Answer...'

I think gathered evidence eliciting confessions fits into Elisabeth's category of knowledge claims that challenge a line of deception? She did stress confessions were rare.

She did read some interesting bits of transcripts, but I can&#39;t use the touch screen fast enough to get that down! <br />Also there were lab experiments done where they did mean things to students to attempt to elicit confessions or deception: all for a fiver and a biscuit. <br />I can remember volunteering to be a psychology project guinea pig for similar incentives in Canada, many years ago!

I think that is very true: I can think of occasions where something I&#39;ve heard before but paid scant attention to seems to come up again at just the right time for a light-bulb moment!

LOL. Though one of the things she also said that these indicators have to be judged in context of the overall interaction. So if that is usual for him then it isn&#39;t an indicator of deception :O)

Makes a change from being influenced by TV and cinema ... so many books reflect the unreality of media rather than this sort of real life.

We should ALL take our time answering questions. Lord knows ...

Thanks for the post, Teri, but how do we know <b>you&#39;re</b> telling the truth? Eh?<br /><br />;-)

You don&#39;t!!<br />A totally unrelated comment...she also said sociopaths don&#39;t follow the rules, as you might expect

Really interesting post, Teri! I am now quite convinced that just about everyone I know lies! Hmmm...

er ... er ... that&#39;s ... not ... true ...

Living in Italy,I can honestly say there are NO rules of conversation. A bunch of Italians would send a police investigation haywire. I love K.Evans comment. My husband is exactly the same complete with me finger-tapping while I wait for an answer. I could get through the dishes and a round of washing by the time he makes up his mind.

It would be interesting to go along to one of Elisabeth&#39;s talks. I don&#39;t have time to read the book at the moment. It does seem as if Elisabeth is concentrating on a narrow academic area and generalising quite widely. For instance, the views on lying would never be admissible as evidence.

If there was any generalizing going on, it was all by me :O)<br />And there was certainly no suggestions of admissibility on these types of indicators

Forgiveness is first for the sake of our own hearts--we don't have to extend it unless someone asks. We aren't meant to bear the weight of judgment against others. However, that doesn't mean there are no consequences, no trust that needs to be earned back. We can care for someone without trusting them. Forgiveness that ignores such behavior opens the door for abuse.

It's an important distinction. I drop a crystal glass in my kitchen, it shatters. I can't talk it into re-making itself. And so are consequences for our behavior. We have the power to be great influencers, for good or for ill. Ignoring that power diminishes the humanity of the person, however poorly it is stewarded.

That sounds like some story.

True friends do forgive, but it's difficult to be true friends with someone you can never trust.

It is hard to forgive recurring deceptive behavior. You can hope that the person sees the light and moves away from such destructive behavior. I agree with Amy's comment.

Ah . . . The Wire.

Thanks for the mention of Paul Elkman in your last post. I found an article about him from 2002 that is really interesting, and I also put in a request for one of his books at the library. I’m hoping it will help my writing because I have a hard time showing and not telling emotion.

But it makes me wonder . . . how do you read someone’s face in after they’ve had their Botox treatment?

Poke Scott in the tummy and tell him that he should give you back your IM.
Tell him it’s research.
I don’t know, maybe try out some of your new lying techniques to see if you can come up with a good enough story to convince Scott to do that one thing for you…
I’m not sure, you think of something. You’re the one who tells stories for a living.

oh yes. that clears everything up!

The Wire…ah, perfection…but too often, too sad. I still miss some we lost seasons ago…

And I think they should have Omar do Honey Nut Cheerio commercials…

Emily

personally, i’m blaming maureen.

Yeah, I’m more inclined to believe that Maureen is too lazy to do her own research, but, then again, I don’t think you would do research for her so enthusiastically. So I’m just hoping it’s for a new sekrit book that no one know about just yet.

What? What? This has nothing to do with me! Though I am enjoying the vote of no-confidence I am getting from all sides.

I vote for the robot. But I think it should also know CPR so it can save lives.

Now, Justine, you can be honest. We all know you’re researching ways to use high-schoolers’ DNA to make zombies, and trying to learn how to lie convincingly so as not to let the zombie out of the bag too soon.

~Mary

Aw Justine, you can tell us about the zombies, we promise we won’t tell anyone, loyal fans and all that. And you should definitely poke Scott in the tummy, with a cookie, repeatedly, until he gives you back IM.

I know some people who could get you IM’ing without Scott being able to block it. It’ll cost ya, but you know, when you need it, you need it.

1. Justine…your post on Imitation of Life has caused me to scurry to the video store where I’ve purchased both. I owe you a response and have not forgotten. But, as you know, WORK must come first.

2. The Wire. I am unhappy. Very unhappy. [redacted for spoilerage-ness]

3. Glad Scott took away IM. I have weaned myself off of it, as well. IM is a time and brain suck that does very little towards making the work go faster.

4. [redacted for spoilerage-ness]

5. Since you’re so VERY good at it, can you talk for a minute about what makes for a good public reading of one’s work? How you decide which sections to read from…whether you feel its appropriate to make editorial revisions on the text you’ve chosen to read, etc. ?

Certainly, it must get easier over time, right?

Right?

Doselle: Let us not speak of The Wire right now.

5. Flattery will get you everywhere! I guess I could post about that. I am in hate for reading aloud. It sucketh. But general rule: keep it short. Ideally ten minutes or less. I prefer self-contained pieces. Though it can be fun to leave every on a giant cliff-hanger. Hehehehehe.

Why do you think reading aloud sucks so hard then, eh?

I mean, like, what could possibly suck about a performance anxiety-inducing exercise in public speaking before a crowd of stranger OR WORSE respected friends and acquaintances?

I mean, it doesn’t sound THAT bad, does it?

And no–let’s NOT speak of The Wire for the moment! The scene where Bunk puts on a corset and performs a scene from Pride and Prejudice seemed entirely out of context to me, but whatever!

Yowtch!

When I first started doing readings I was afraid no one or very few would show up, but now I look forward to that cause it means I don’t have to read and we can just chat casually (if there’s very few) or I can go home.

But mostly I don’t read at my appearances anymore. I tend to tell some anecdotes and then switch to Q & A. Is much more fun for me and the audience.

I really liked that scene with Bunk! I love anything Bunk does.

The best part about Bunk was his unexpected reaction to Detective Griggs as ‘Mister Darcy.

Who knew any human could make that kind of sound with a piece of black licorice and a tea cozy.

That was a tea cozy?

Yes! Yes! I know it looked very much like a miniature anteater, but it was almost certainly a tea cozy. I take my tea cozy collection quite seriously, so I would obviously be in a position to know about such things.

How Bunk was able to to fit it over Kima’s head with the teapot still inside it is another question entirely. Guess its really not just television.

Its HBO.

Re: the thieving manager: nah, he confessed before taking it.

I can tell when my uncle is lying because of the face he makes and if what he is saying doesn’t make any sense. He might tell you something to see if you will belive him, and then he laughs when you really do belive him.

I can tell when my friend lies because she tries to sound likes she is older than she is and knows what she is talking about.

The secret to lying is to make the lie as close to the truth as possible.

If you don’t believe your own lie, no one else will believe you either. Haha, that sounds terrible coming from me………but I don’t lie very often.

I was required to take a polygraph a long time ago. I was the manager of a retail store. There had been an employee that worked for me who did not like me and accused me of things. Some items had turned up missing and she accused me of that as well.

I was innocent and when asked to take the test, of course did so willingly. I was told what some of the questions would be on a general level. I learned that some questions that were going to be asked had nothing to do with the missing inventory but about something else I was being accused of. Although I was innocent of it at the time, when I was much younger and stupid, I had done these things.

I find that if there is some truth in the lie, then you can get away with certain things. For example, if you are asked, “Have you ever taken anything from the store without paying for it.” If I had, by simply saying yes, I have taken things like paper clips, office supplies, etc. you are telling the truth without telling the whole truth.

I don’t know if any of that makes sense but I did pass the test and I was innocent of what I had been accused of. And the missing inventory ended up being located in the shipping and receiving room.

Purely as a matter of interest, those people who say “I can always tell when X is lying” - how do you know?

Couldn’t they have lied on occasions that you didn’t find out about?

I’m an excellent liar. I’m not proud of it, no, I am. Its just so easy… The secret, you ask? Too many people send off signals while lying. They look in the direction of thier dominant hand, they fidgit, twitch, sweat, stutter. Don’t do that!

Be yourself! If you weren’t lying, how would you respond? Do that. If you need to cry, think of something sad. Like that lady who asked you for money to buy food. Or the time your dog was run over by a car. Cry real tears!

If you’re supposed to be happy, think up one of those jokes that always set you off for ages!

Lying is powerful though. It can be used for good… or EVIL!!!!! Good: “She’ll be late to class, Mr. so and so. Her locker is jammed.” okay. Thats sort of evil. Evil: “She’ll be late to class Mr so and so. She’s making her daily trip to the bathroom. Yeah, she goes everyday after lunch.”

Not that I would ever do that. Seriously.

i knew a compulsive liar once–had a brief relationship with him actually. when i asked him why he lied, he said he just couldn’t stop himself. he had severe anxiety attacks and i think he just suffered from the need to keep everyone around him happy–to tell them what they wanted to hear. his heart would speed up and he his breathing would accelerate and he’d just open his mouth and it would come out of its own accord. at least that is what he told me. which was very likely a lie now that i think of it.

i think it all stemmed from the need to avoid confrontation, whatever the cost.

don’t know if this helps at all.

oh and i could usually tell when he was lying–mostly because things didn’t fit together–like the fact that his mother died three times and was very much alive when i called her after that.

Years ago, I worked for the first bank in this area (Atlanta, Georgia, US) to put locations in grocery stores. After training, they made me a “floater,” so I went to whichever branch in my area didn’t have enough people for my shift.

Apparently, they didn’t think through the security so very well, and there was a series of break-ins in which someone went through the dropped ceiling into the bank branches to steal money after-hours (the grocery stores were open 24-7). They suspected an “inside job,” and I’d worked at every branch that was hit, so I was asked to take a polygraph test.

I didn’t realize at the time that my normal blood pressure is quite low. For some reason, that and the fact that I was completely calm (I knew I didn’t have anything to do with the robberies) screwed up the test - there was no real difference between me saying one of their “test lies” and saying, truthfully, that I knew nothing about the robberies other than what little I’d heard at work. The guy doing the test got really mad at started yelling at me for no apparent reason.

Unfortunately for him, it was obvious to me that he presented no physical threat, and I’d been yelled at (and worse) by a 6′4″ Marine for most of my life. I didn’t freak out. When he told me to get the hell out of his office, I did. My manager told me later that the guy was certain I’d done SOMETHING wrong, but I had awfully good alibis for every time they’d asked me about. In fact, I’d been singing in front of an entire congregation during several of the robberies.

I figure it’s a really good thing that was before I took biofeedback training.

The most convincing liars I’ve ever known are those who have borderline or narcissistic personality disorders. Whatever they’re saying is the absolute truth to them while they’re saying it.

As I recall, the culprits did have an accomplice in the bank, but it was someone much higher up the food chain that I was. I made a point of not knowing the combinations for the safe at any branch, since I wasn’t a regular at any of them, but there was at least one person who had access to all of them.

I find that the best way to make a lie believable is to believe it yourself, at least for the moment. Act as if it WERE true. It’s surprisingly easy to convince yourself that something is true, particularly when you are trying to convince someone ELSE that it’s true.

Also, if someone thinks your story doesn’t make sense, instead of coming up with a complicated explaination, act as confused as they are.
Pretending not to understand the question is a good way to buy time to think of an answer.

I feel dirty.

Tell the truth but tell it slant, success in circuit lies….
and that’s pretty much all you need to know.
Anon

the secret to lying is to actually, not lie at all.
you tell the truth, but you don’t tell the whole truth.
so, there are always things left up in the air. this causes people to make assumptions, and nearly always, their assumption is the most likely one. and if you’ve told your story correctly, then you won’t get into any trouble, because they’ll be assuming the best.

it never fails. and if for some odd reason, you do fail, and someone accuses you of lying, you can say (without lying) that you weren’t lying, you just didn’t tell them that certain aspect of the story.

for the record, i’ve always heard that polygraph tests are completely unreliable and easy to fool besides. this is why i absolutely detest that stupid show moment of truth. the whole effing thing is a lie. some guy is probably sitting there in a dark room with two buttons to push, deciding when to say “true” and when to say “false,” and none of it has anything to do with what the contestant actually says. and that’s only one reason why i hate that stupid show. end soapbox.

in high school, i lied and sneaked around all the time, and i usually got away with it. i learned a couple things from this. one, if you’re generally trustworthy and people know that there are certain lines you won’t cross, then you can easily get away with other, less “serious” things. two, even if you know you’re lying, you can still pull it off as long as you feel that the lie is justified. i rarely felt guilty about lying back then. but everything flipped in college. i stopped feeling justified, so i stopped lying. for me, that seems to be the key. it also helps to be able to come up with relatively believable stories on the spot. if you have to stop and think, that’s the first and most obvious clue that you’re not telling the truth.

on the opposite end of things, i’m utterly crap at reading other people. it doesn’t matter if they’re lying or pissed or whatever, i only seem to see what’s on the surface. i’m the same way when reading “great” literary works. i never see the underlying meaning of either one until someone else points it out to me. hmm, maybe that’s the fairy i need.

I think I’m a convincing liar, but I think that since I’m a 90% trusting person, that when I lie, people just expect it to be truth. I’m not proud that I’m good at it, really, I’m not. It makes me feel horrible.

John Green wrote a list of “Things I am good at” in which he listed sitting down and telling lies. He said that’s why he became a writer.

So there you have it - ask your mate!

On a more practical note - a good lie (for good - read convincing) should always have some truth attached. Then if ever found out the author of the lie can claim they misunderstood the situation.
A good liar should have a great memory.

There’s an abstract on PubMed (here) in which a variety of people were asked to distinguish liars from nonliars. The only people to perform better than chance were Secret Service agents.

Thanks again, everyone. Some fabulous stuff here.

Jane Volker: I already did.

I think everyone has generally given good advice on how to be a successful liar, but I think the true key to getting away with a fib is picking your target carefully. Because really, the worst liar I’ve ever met is also the person who pulled the wool over my eyes most successfully–and he was able to do that in large part because he told *such* bald-faced lies that I couldn’t believe they were actually lies. This is a kid who could have been standing over a corpse with a bloody knife in his hands and claimed that he had *no idea* how those stab wounds got there. Even if you told him that you’d *seen* him do it, he’d have told you you saw wrong. It was ridiculously unbelievable…which is why it worked. I couldn’t believe that someone could lie that badly to my face and expect me to believe it; even if I’d seen him do something rotten with my own eyes, I started to doubt what I’d seen.

But more importantly, I *wanted* to believe him–which brings me to the moral of my story: all you really need to be a successful liar is a gullible target–or, more accurately, someone who *wants* to believe you. If you’ve cheated on your girlfriend, you can probably get away with lying to her about it because she doesn’t *want* to believe that you would do that to her. You have to figure out what someone wants to hear, and then you have to say that. It doesn’t matter how crappy your performance is, how completely it contradicts all available evidence; people will believe it because the alternative means looking like an ass. And everyone hates feeling stupid.

I am shame-faced and blushing. But my excuse is that I only found your blog TODAY and I hadn’t quite read back as far as 2006.
Brilliant interview. Very entertaining. I’m always impressed by a teller of tall tales mostly because I can’t lie convincingly unless I think the person I’m speaking to needs me to. In fact I can look totally guilty when I’m telling the whole truth. It’s a terrible affliction. Maybe people fall into two groups: good liars and good confessors.
It’s a bit depressing to realise you are one of the latter.

Don’t pause. Just GO. The best liar I know (who happens to be ELEVEN YEARS OLD) just spins stories out of nowhere so fast I can’t tell which are true and which aren’t - and I know he’s a pathological liar. And the times I’ve been most convincing in my own lies are the times I didn’t even know I was going to lie until I said it.

Jane Volker: I am shame-faced and blushing.

Don’t be silly. Why would you know about an interview conducted almost two years ago? I posted the link cause I thought you might be interested and because it confirms your supposition that Mr Green does indeed know a vast deal about lying.

Came across some news articles about polygraphs and lie detection just today that might interest your research.

Showing the inaccuracy of polygraphs:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22044177/

Preliminary info about brainscans and lies:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21552376/

I do a lot of ferreting out lies in my day job work and I have to say, so much of detecting lies is what I call the internal tuning fork - it’s just this “ping” I feel inside sometimes when someone says something - sometimes it’s that the word choice is odd, or the voice fluctuated and sometimes it’s just instinct. But when I start pulling at the story, some common things fall apart.

First, as a caveat on all this, some people are such good liars they actually convince themselves the lie is truth - they are almost undetectable, because there won’t really be any tells. The “tells” - eye contact, pupils, breathing, pitch, pulse, blood flow, etc… - none of that will show if the person is: (1) believing the lie; or, (2) psychotic/compulsive.
Now, for the rest of us, there are tells. And those tells are different for everyone.

Many times, the lie is told differently than the truth - with someone who is generally fluid in their delivery, sometimes the lie stumbles or a word choice is off. If the person sometimes hunts for words, sometimes the lie is too well-rehearsed or flowing.

Many, many times I say the truth is in the pauses - and in the deflections. When someone doesn’t answer a question fully, or directly, I usually zero in on the deflection. I find with many people the information I need to know most is in the pauses between their answers.

But, all that said, there are some good liars, and those people you only trip up in examining the details and seeing if every facet of the lie can be proven true- usally some small detail, maybe even as small as time or place, falls away, and then the story unravels. Becuase (generally) people don’t lie about little things unless they are trying to hide bigger things. So, sometimes someone lies about some stupid thing, and that derails an otehrwise well-concocted lie.

There are some great articles on jury seletion out there, and they are studies in psychology and reading people. Some of that technique would work for detecting liars, too.

Here are some pretty basic sites talking about some of the techiniques and tests (although, they may be too shallow, if you’ve already been researching):

http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/liars/

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040731/bob8.asp

What it comes down to very much is focussing on the person totally and watching for the thing that makes you wonder if the person is lying - the loose thread to unravel the lie is there. Even over the phone, even in written letters, the thing that makes you pause and wonder, to hesitate, your instincts are picking up on something…so pull at it and see what falls apart.

Just some quick thoughts… emily

[…] of you have been emailing to ask why I wants to know about lying and DNA testing and race that I feel I should offer some kind of explanation, or several […]

Reflecting some of the other posts, I was taught to always make my lie part true. If I’m taking a day off work to attend a funeral, include the aunt that died a month ago, even though the funeral was on a weekend and required no days off work. If you make it partially true, you can feed off that section of the truth and let it carry over into the not-so-true part.

Moderately related: a friend of mine has no adrenal gland, and has to take adrenaline just to keep his heart beating regularly. He was falsely accused of stealing by a grocery store, and placed in a small room with many people yelling at him. The fact that he never got excited, raised his voice, or freaked out was held against him, though it’s pretty imnpossible for him to get upset, or at least manifest it physically. He was eventually allowed to leave, and never went back.

Don’t know if this is still helpful, but I thought I’d post it anyway, since I don’t think anyone’s said this already

I don’t often lie, but when I need to - cough cough, ‘needed’ to go to a Harry Potter convention but told uni my cousin was getting married - I make up all the information around the lie to support it before I tell them, littering it freely with the truth and getting all the details fixed in my mind. Then when I have to tell the lie, I only tell them a tiny bit more than they asked for - not so much as to make them suspicious - and then if/when they ask me further questions (like, so where is your cousin getting married?) I can quite happily and confidently answer, and give the same answer to everyone (in the church near m grandparents’ house, so my grandma doesn’t have to travel too far with her sciatica) and not get caught out later.

Of course, this takes a bit of prep time, but not a huge amount. It depends on the extent of the lie. Usually I can do it in a couple of minutes, and then I repeat it to myself in my mind to fix it there.

I have never been caught out.

Gina: This is my favorite book of the year so far. I LOVED it. You're right--it's quiet, and small, but so beautiful.