Dutch scientists have found out what exactly helps a person to guess that he is definitely a liar. They published their findings in the journal Nature Human Behavior. The researchers confirmed that there are obvious signals that a person gives and that you need to pay attention to in order to recognize a lie. But if you start focusing on them, you can easily get confused.
“For the most part, people cannot correctly evaluate all the “hints” in a short period of time, and even more so draw accurate conclusions based on them whether a person is lying or not,” said lead author of the study, psychologist Bruno Verschuer. “The analyzer is confused by the stereotypes that are firmly planted in the brain about the appearance, the appearance of the “suspect”. They can be even more confusing.”
The researchers conducted an experiment, almost 1.5 thousand people took part in it. The task they were given was to examine several written “testimonies” and videotapes of students’ stories about how they spent their day. And then guess who is lying and who is not.
Some participants in the experiment used their intuition as a “lie detector”. It turned out that this method is not working. The number of correct answers was low.
But those who paid attention to the amount of detail in the stories of students: description of the place, action, objects, events and their time frames showed excellent results. Participants who focused on the level of detail distinguished truth from lies with an accuracy of up to 80%, writes Psychologies.
“When we suggested focusing only on the details of the stories of students, people were almost always able to distinguish lies from the truth,” the Dutch psychologists said. “When a person lies, they are more likely to add details to their lies in order to increase their level of credibility.”
Source: Rosbalt
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