Lying & lie detection

This research investigates the verbal and non-verbal indicators of lying, and examines the efficacy of techniques designed to enhance the detection of deception. Studies have examined how several factors affect people’s ability to detect lying, including the role of intuition, confidence and personality.

One of Prof Wiseman’s best-known studies of lying involved a mass participation experiment examining whether the public are better at detecting lies on television, radio, or in a newspaper. Sir Robin Day, a well-known British political commentator, was interviewed twice about his favourite film. In one interview he told the truth, in the other he consistently lied. Transcripts of these interviews were printed in The Daily Telegraph, the soundtrack was broadcast on BBC Radio One and the film of the interview was shown on BBC1’s Tomorrow’s World programme. The public were asked to choose which of the two interviews they believed contained the lies. Over 40,000 people took part in the study and the results, published in Nature, suggested that vocal and verbal cues are more reliable indicators of deceit than visual cues. This experiment was recently re-staged by the Canadian Discovery Channel with actor Leslie Nielson.

Prof Wiseman also carried out a mass participation study with the Edinburgh International Science Festival, examining whether people can spot a fake smile.

Prof Wiseman’s work on deception has been reported on various television and radio programmes (including BBC1’s Horizon and The Human Mind, and the BBC2 four-part series, The Lying Game), and he regularly presents lectures to organisations on the prevention and detection of deception.


External links

BBC Online article about Prof Wiseman's work on lying

BBC Breakfast repeats Prof Wiseman's lying experiment

The Times article on fake and genuine smiles

Selected references

Wiseman, R. (1995). The MegaLab Truth Test, Nature, 373, 391.