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It is well documented that lying during interviews takes up more cognitive energy than telling the truth. A new study by the University of Portsmouth found that investigators who used this finding to their advantage by asking a suspect to carry out an additional, secondary, task while being questioned were more likely to expose lie tellers. The extra brain power needed to concentrate on a secondary task (other than lying) was particularly challenging for lie tellers.
[...] "Our research has shown that truths and lies can sound equally plausible as long as lie tellers are given a good opportunity to think what to say. When the opportunity to think becomes less, truths often sound more plausible than lies. Lies sounded less plausible than truths in our experiment, particularly when the interviewees also had to carry out a secondary task and were told that this task was important."
[...] Professor Vrij said: "The pattern of results suggests that the introduction of secondary tasks in an interview could facilitate lie detection but such tasks need to be introduced carefully. It seems that a secondary task will only be effective if lie tellers do not neglect it. This can be achieved by either telling interviewees that the secondary task is important, as demonstrated in this experiment, or by introducing a secondary task that cannot be neglected (such as gripping an object, holding an object into the air, or driving a car simulator). Secondary tasks that do not fulfil these criteria are unlikely to facilitate lie detection."
So if you think your significant other is hiding something from you, grill them when they're driving a car.
Journal Reference:
Aldert Vrij et al., The Effects of a Secondary Task on True and False Opinion Statements [open], Int J Psychol Behav Anal, 8, 2022
DOI: 10.15344/2455-3867/2022/185
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2022, @10:45AM (2 children)
So do those e-meters used by scientologists.
They are also called psychogalvanometers.
The simple ones are just a whetstone bridge circuit, where your resting resistance can be nulled out using potentiometers on the instruments panel.
More sophisticated ones will also measure respiration. The ones I knew of, the respiration sensor was basically a variable inductance measuring the change of length of a " spring" around the torso.
It's enough to scare the heebie jeebies out of laymen.
I see it mostly as a psychological fear tool to make a liar think the machine is onto him, and he's just digging himself in deeper and deeper.
But from how I saw how they (TLAs) used it, it seemed more to me to be a way of getting rid of people they did not like, by saying their machine was saying that the testee was a loser.
That way, the loser testee wasn't supposed to know who did him in. The machine said he couldn't be trusted, hence clearance denied.
The machine can be diddled to show anything the operator wants it to. The machine appears to often be used just to give justification for terminations or denial of clearances to work.
Or, in the case of religions, to demonstrate the testee still has problems and needs further auditing, hence more fees. Again, a theater prop for getting someone else to trust them, because the machine will back up it's operator in the presence of the sucker who doesn't realize he's getting one helluva snow job.
I will post AC for obvious reasons.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2022, @01:39PM
One of my favorite quotes that Richard Nixon supposedly said about lie detectors was something along the lines of "I don't know if they work, but I do know they scare the hell out of people." My understanding is that they cannot be used in court as proof of lying if someone fails a test (though the defense will let the court know if the defendant passed a test). They most certainly do test something, but whether it is lying they are testing is up to much debate. My observation of how they are used is not a nefarious as yours (I can't comment on their use with religions). I am fairly certain they aren't used as reasons to terminate people, at least in the government where you have certain rights to challenge the reasons for your termination. If a private company wants to use it as an excuse to fire someone, I don't know how that works, or whether they even need an excuse, but this would provide them cover.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2022, @04:48PM
Won't that just keep the interviewee really sharp?