Telling Lies

Some of what forensic psychologists are asked to do is try to determine if people are lying (or malingering) about symptoms or information. How often do psychologists or psychiatrists figure out if people are lying? Not often. In a study of Secret Service agents, psychiatrists (both forensic and non-forensic), and college students, only the Secret Service agents excelled at catching liars. Paul Elkman, a professor of psychology who conducted this study, uses facial expressions and body language to catch liars.

I think that one reason for the poorer ability of psychiatrists to catch lies on video tape is that psychiatrists and forensic psychologists rely more on cognitive clues than on facial expressions to determine if a person is misleading them. I usually figure out if someone is lying by comparing their words to the the data I have before me; for example, if a kid tells me he shot a friend by accident and then I see a story he has written in school about a desire to kill his friend prior to the murder, it is probably a tip-off that something is not right.

I do find it interesting to try and determine who is lying (excuse me, I mean exaggerating) when looking at politicians' behavior on tv--take for example, Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin, when descibing all the babies being raped at the Superdome on Oprah. You have to ask yourself why someone would bring that up at all.

Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriageis a good read if you would like to understand more about how to spot a liar. It seems to me that all citizens could benefit from this training--given the misinformation and downright lying that appears more often then we would wish on tv and in the media.