The words that liars use only seem to distract observers from the truth.
People are better at detecting lies by ignoring the words and unconsciously judging facial expressions and tone of voice.
The words that liars use only seem to distract from the truth.
The conclusion comes from a study of people with aphasia — an inability to understand language, often caused by brain damage.
The research showed that people with aphasia are better at spotting lies than those whose language skills are intact.
Dr Nancy Etcoff, who led the study, said:
“As far back as the 1920s there are anecdotal reports of patients with aphasia being able to detect when people were lying.
In the popular book The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Dr. Oliver Sacks describes a group of patients watching a politician on television and laughing at what they perceived to be his deceptive statements.”
Aphasic advantage
For the study, people were recorded while describing a scene they were looking at.
Sometimes they viewed a pleasant scene and described it truthfully; other times they viewed an unpleasant scene and told lies.
People with healthy brains performed very poorly, detecting lies only 50 percent of the time.
In other words, performance was no better than chance — like flipping a coin.
The aphasics, though, correctly identified the lies 73 percent of the time.
Dr Etcoff said:
“One question that may arise when considering these results is whether the patients with aphasia were better at detecting lies or at detecting emotional states.
Previous studies have not shown aphasics to be any better than people without brain damage in perceiving simple emotions – such as happiness or sadness.
In fact, because of their aphasia, these patients had impaired ability to understand what the volunteers were actually saying.
What they do seem to be more sensitive to are nuances in facial expression that reveal a disconnect between what someone is trying to express and what they really are feeling.”
Related
The study was published in the journal Nature (Etcoff et al., 2000).
