I just spent the last four days learning to consciously do what you see in the clip above - watching for small changes in expression, proximity, posture, etc. to determine if someone is lying. In all fairness, humans do much of this subconsciously, but for proficiency's sake it must come out of the subconscious and into the consciousness for officers, agents, and criminal lawyers. Even without training we are generally more practiced at lie detection. In fact, Ann and I have bemoaned the fact that being human lie detectors often hinders our intrapersonal relationships even as we are proud of the fact that we are human lie detectors. For the general public, lie detection is not as vitally necessary a tool. However, for officers, agents, and criminal lawyers, the skill is vitally necessary since misreading the wrong person in the wrong situation can have mortal consequences. Here are some stats on lying: (of course stats can lie too):
60% of people lie at least once within 10 minutes of conversation. See here.
The weapon of choice when we plan to lie is the telephone. We are 10% less likely to lie in person See here.
Good post. Kinesics techniques are very useful but... not always accurate. I found from personal experience, that when I begin to employ the technique, I often read too much in to it. In high stress situations, like being interviewed by Police Officers, people will display dishonest characteristics out of nervousness. I will never forget a high profile murder here where the wife of the victim displayed all the Kinesics signs of untruthfulness and I just knew she was guilty. She wasn’t… And I learned a valuable lesson that day. These days I keep in mind the Kinesics and Reed techniques of interview and interrogation, but I don’t judge dishonesty solely on their premises.
ReplyDeleteFrom Shannon: Thanks for the comment! Point taken. Luckily my teacher was a long time agent who was also able to show the faults in Reed and others while consistently reminding us to talk long enough to gauge this person's "norm."
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