Lie Detector

We're leery of people lying to us, and often we are well-aware that we can have trouble sorting fiction from truth. That's in part because humans are social animals, highly attuned to what others might think of us, with corresponding pressure to get along and not question the honesty of others in our group. Con men and women are well aware of these facts, and rely on our credulity to take advantage of us, using various persuasion strategies that get around our rational decision-making capabilities. We worry that someone will take advantage of us in this way, and therefore we are highly motivated to detect dishonesty. Penalties for lying can sometimes be extreme, because a lie threatens to undermine the social order of the group.

There are lots of proposed ways of detecting a lie, including the idea that someone who looks to one side when speaking isn't telling the truth, the proposal that people who seem hesitant aren't being honest, or the more scientific-sounding approach of identifying lies based on someone's galvanic skin response (i.e., the lie detector, a device with accuracy that's not much better than chance). Can we actually detect lies in everyday conversation?

In a 2000 book chapter with Dr. Jay Efran, I proposed that we can in fact do this, by paying attention to how people choose their words. Years later, I finally have a good explanation for why that method might be effective: Distance in language means that you are probably hearing from the Narrative Mind. The fact that a statement comes out of the Narrative Mind does not necessarily make it a lie -- in fact, the person saying it might believe it completely. But it's still unlikely to tell you what they are actually going to do, if that is your interest, because the Narrative Mind does not control behavior.

A more immediate response is more likely to be the product of the Intuitive Mind, which does control behavior. So the more immediacy in language you can detect, the more likely it is that you are hearing from the true source of behavior, the Intuitive mind. In Winston Churchill's famous phrase, one should never talk with the monkey when the organ-grinder is in the room! Jonathan Haidt also uses a monkey-like image for the Narrative mind: It is a small figure seated on top of an elephant, the Intuitive mind that truly makes decisions. Whatever the rider might say is happening, the elephant is in charge.

Most language-based forms of communication involve the Narrative mind, so it can be difficult to access the Intuitive mind directly. There may be ways to do this indirectly, however. For instance, asking someone to indicate how they feel right now, preferably without thinking about it too hard, can give you a more accurate view of what the Intuitive mind is thinking. Asking someone to focus on sensations in their body is another way to get at the Intuitive mind, because autonomic reactions like heart rate variability are connected to behavior but generally outside of people's conscious control. The alignment of the body with the Intuitive mind is also why physiologic indicators like galvanic skin response (the traditional "lie detector" machine) may sometimes convey useful information. People who are stressed or emotional may be more likely to blurt out their "true feelings" because the Intuitive mind is more closely tied to emotional experience. And sometimes an indirect approach in language, such as asking what another person thinks or believes, might reveal Intuitive truths by working around the conscious safeguards that the Narrative mind imposes. (One is tempted to conclude that this is why Donald Trump so often accuses his enemies of doing the exact things that he is later proven to have done himself -- he spins out many unlikely narratives, but his Intuitive mind nevertheless retains the kernel of truth). 

Other proposed strategies for detecting a lie involve inconsistency, especially on multiple re-tellings of a story. The Narrative mind is good at logic and consistency, so one wouldn't necessarily expect an untrue narrative to be less reliable. However, the disconnect between a person's narrative and their underlying Intuitive sense of truth might trip them up. This one seems to me a less reliable way to detect untruths -- to use the Trump example once again, all you have to do to avoid it is to believe your lie wholeheartedly; I believe that an utter disregard for even the concept of truth is what allows him to tell such obvious falsehoods with such total conviction.

A final way to detect lies is through a person's aversion to open and honest conversation. Lying is inherently stressful -- even the accomplished liar has that underlying social sense of membership in a group -- so people avoid it when they can. They may use sneaky language to avoid explicit untruths ("mistakes were made"), or they might try to shut down a conversation with distractions and personal attacks. If they have power, they will likely try to assert it in a way that suggests nobody is allowed to ask them these questions. Open dialogue facilitates honesty, and makes liars more likely to reveal themselves.