• Question: Does anybody know weather if a regular person who thinks they know cues that liars present when lying, has a genuinely better chance at catching a liar? From my research i have found regardless of what people believe they know success rate at catching a liar is around 50%.

    Asked by 698mntj29 to Jermaine, Jack, Gem, Michelle, Steve on 16 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Steven Brown

      Steven Brown answered on 16 Jun 2017:

      I am a terrible liar. But some people – psychopaths – are very good at it. Some people are distraught when they discover they were the victim of a scam or someone pretending to be someone else etc. But it’s not the fault of the person who was deceived, it’s the skills of the person doing to the deceiving.

    • Photo: Jack barton

      Jack barton answered on 18 Jun 2017:

      From cues which you could detect with the naked eye it would be very unreliable to use these to determine whether someone was lying or not. Take for example a situation in which you were being questioned about a crime. The police are trying to work out whether you are guilty or linked to it in some way. They may try to use your behaviour to see whether you’re lying about accusations and questions. Do you seem anxious? Are you avoiding eye contact? Now, think how would you feel in this situation even if you were innocent. Fairly tense and uneasy I would imagine? Signs of your anxiety would seep into your facial expressions and it may appear that you have something to hide. This doesn’t mean you’re lying simply because you show these ‘signs of lying’. It just means you’re anxious about being carted into a police station and being held under suspicion.

    • Photo: Michelle Jamieson

      Michelle Jamieson answered on 18 Jun 2017:

      .

    • Photo: Jermaine Ravalier

      Jermaine Ravalier answered on 19 Jun 2017:

      I don’t know the answer to this question, but I can ALWAYS tell when my daughter is lying. She’s 6 and can’t help but smile when she lies!

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