THE LANGUAGE OF LYING
Lies have changed the course of world history. Adolf Hitler’s lies to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Britain when the two met just before the outbreak of war in September 1938 are famous. Hitler was secretly preparing to invade Czechoslovakia, and he was therefore eager to prevent the Czechs from assembling a retaliatory force. The Führer assured Chamberlain that he had no intention of attacking Czechoslovakia, and the British leader believed him. A few days after the meeting, Chamberlain wrote to his sister and noted that he believed Hitler to be “a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.” Chamberlain was so convinced of Hitler’s honesty that he urged the Czechs not to mobilize their troops, fearing that such a move might be viewed as an act of aggression by the Germans. The subsequent German attack quickly overwhelmed the ill-prepared Czechoslovakian forces and led to the start of World War II. The world might now be a very different place had Chamberlain been able to detect Hitler’s lies during their fateful meeting.
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World leaders are not the only people who lie, and are lied to. Deception affects every one of us. A few years ago, I carried out a national survey into lying in collaboration with the
Daily Telegraph.
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Only 8 percent of respondents claimed never to have lied, and I suspect that most of these people couldn’t bring themselves to tell the truth even in an anonymous survey. Other researchers have asked people to keep a detailed diary of every conversation that they have, and of all of the lies that they tell, over a two-week period. The results suggest that most people tell about two important lies each day, that a third of conversations involve some form of deception, that four in five lies remain undetected, that more than 80 percent of people have lied to secure a job (with most saying that they thought employers expected candidates to be dishonest about background and experience), and that more than 60 percent of adults have cheated on their partners at least once.
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Are you a good liar? Most people think that they are, but the truth is there are big differences in how well we can pull the wool over the eyes of others. There is, however, a very simple test that you can take to help determine your ability to lie. In fact, you have already taken it.
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At the start of the book I asked you to trace the letter
Q
(for quirkology) on your forehead. If you didn’t do it then, please do it now. Using the first finger of your dominant hand, simply draw a capital letter
Q
on your forehead. Some people draw the letter
Q
in such a way that they themselves can read it; that is, they place the tail of the
Q
on the right-hand side of the forehead. Others draw the letter in a way that can be read by someone facing them, with the tail of the
Q
on the left side of the forehead. This quick test provides a rough measure of a concept known as “self-monitoring.” High self-monitors tend to draw the letter
Q
in a way in which it could be seen by someone facing them—with the tail facing to the left. Low self-monitors tend to draw the letter
Q
in a way in which it could be read by themselves—with the tail facing to the right. What has this all to do with lying? High self-monitors tend to be concerned with how other people see them. They are happy being the center of attention, can easily adapt their behavior to suit the situation in which they find themselves, and are skilled at manipulating how others see them. As a result, they tend to be good at lying. In contrast, low self-monitors come across as being the “same person” in different situations. Their behavior is guided more by their inner feelings and values, and they are less aware of their impact on those around them. They also tend to lie less in life, and therefore are not as skilled at deceit as high self-monitors.
I have presented this fun test to groups of people for many years. Over time, I have noticed that a small number of people, upon hearing what the test is all about, quickly convince themselves that they traced the letter
Q
in the opposite direction to the way they actually drew it. These people are able to ignore the evidence right in front of them; they twist the facts to fit the type of person they want to be. As a result, the test provides a rough indicator of how good you are at deceiving both yourself and others.
The vast majority of psychological investigation into deception has not focused on the types of people who are good and bad liars. Instead, it has concentrated on the art and science of lie detection. Can people detect deceit? What are the telltale signs that give away a lie? Is it possible to teach people to become better lie detectors?
Soon after I took up my position at the University of Hertfordshire in 1994, I received a curious e-mail that had been sent out to academics across Britain. The e-mail explained that, as part of a week-long national celebration of science, resources were available for a large-scale experiment in which members of the public could participate. The experiment would reach an audience of millions because it would be conducted live on one of the BBC’s flagship science programs,
Tomorrow’s World.
The e-mail ended by asking academics to submit ideas for the experiment. I thought that it would be interesting to test the lie-detection skills of the entire country, and so I suggested asking several politicians to lie or to tell the truth on the program and have the public try to identify the lies. That way, I argued, it would be possible to determine scientifically which political party had the best liars. A few weeks later I was delighted to discover that my proposal had been chosen, and I started to fine-tune the study.
After numerous telephone calls, the situation became clear: Politicians were unwilling to participate, allegedly because they were terrible liars (none of us believed them). We looked for a prestigious alternative and invited a legendary television political interviewer, Sir Robin Day, to be our guinea pig. Sir Robin was to the BBC what Walter Cronkite was to CBS. His penetrating and abrasive style of interviewing politicians had made him one of the most trusted figures on British television, and had earned him the title of “Grand Inquisitor.” We were delighted when Sir Robin accepted our challenge.
The design of the experiment was simple. I would interview Sir Robin twice, and in each interview I would ask him to describe his favorite film. In one interview he would say nothing but the truth, and in the other he would produce a complete pack of lies. We would then show both interviews on television and see whether the public could detect which interview contained the lies.
The BBC assigned a talented young director named Simon Singh to the project. Simon went on to write several best-selling science books, including
Fermat’s Last Theorem
and
The Code Book.
The two of us have worked on various projects together over the years, but we first met to film Sir Robin’s “truth” and “lying” interviews in the lobby of a large London hotel. Just after we finished setting up the camera, the door swung open and in walked Sir Robin. His trademark thick-rimmed glasses and colorful bow tie made him instantly recognizable. As he sat down in front of the camera, he seemed slightly nervous that he was about to receive questions rather than ask them. I began the first of the two interviews, asking him to describe his favorite film. He explained that he had a great love for
Gone With the Wind:
So, Sir Robin, what’s your favorite film?
Gone with the Wind.
And why’s that?
Oh, it’s, it, it’s a classic, great characters; great film star—Clark Gable; a great actress—Vivien Leigh. Very moving.
And who’s your favorite character in it?
Oh, Gable.
And how many times have you seen it?
Um . . .
(pause)
I think about half a dozen.
And when was the first time that you saw it?
When it first came out. I think that it was in 1939.
Once he had finished, I repeated the questions and he described being a big fan of
Some Like It Hot:
So, Sir Robin, what’s your favorite film?
Ah . . .
(pause)
er,
Some Like It Hot.
And why do you like that?
Oh, because it gets funnier every time that I see it. There are all sorts of bits in it which I love. And I like them more each time that I see it.
Who’s your favorite character in it?
Oh, Tony Curtis I think. He’s so pretty . . .
(short pause)
and he’s so witty, and he mimics Cary Grant so well, and he’s very funny the way he tries to resist being seduced by Marilyn Monroe.
And when was the first time that you saw it?
I think when it came out, and I forget when that was.
Which do you think is the lie?
The full experiment took place a few weeks later on a live edition of
Tomorrow’s World.
At the beginning of the program we played the two interviews and asked viewers to decide which they thought was the lie and then to register their votes by telephoning one of two numbers. It was the first time that anything like this had been attempted, and Simon and I had absolutely no idea whether people would make a telephone call in the name of science. We needn’t have worried. Within minutes we had received more than 30,000 calls.
When the lines closed, we quickly set about analyzing our results. Fifty-two percent of viewers thought that Sir Robin had been lying about
Gone with the Wind,
and 48 percent voted for
Some Like It Hot.
We then showed viewers a short film clip of me asking Sir Robin whether he really liked
Gone with the Wind.
His reply was short and to the point: “Good heavens, no! It’s the most crashing bore. I fall asleep every time I see it.” At the end of the program we announced the findings and explained that when it came to detecting deceit, the public’s skills were little better than chance.
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It could be argued that Sir Robin was an extremely skilled liar and that in everyday life people are much better at detecting deception. To investigate this possibility, one would have to carry out lots of experiments; many different types of people who lie and tell the truth about a huge range of issues would have to participate. It would be a mammoth task, but for the last thirty years or so, this is exactly what the members of a small band of highly dedicated psychologists have been doing.
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They have had people visit art exhibitions and lie about their favorite paintings, steal money from a wallet and then deny the theft, endorse products they dislike intensely, and watch films depicting amputations while trying to convince others that they are looking at a relaxing beach scene. The research has studied the lying behavior of sales-people, shoppers, students, drug addicts, and criminals. Some of my work in this area has involved showing people videotapes of instances in which people have made high-profile public appeals for information about a murder, only later to confess and be convicted of the crime themselves.
The results have been remarkably consistent: When it comes to lie detection, the public might as well simply toss a coin. It doesn’t matter whether you are male or female, young or old, few people are able to detect deception with any degree of reliability. The results suggest that we can’t even tell when our partners are being economical with the truth.
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In a series of experiments exploring romantic deception, one member of a long-term couple was presented with a series of slides containing images of a highly attractive person of the opposite sex and asked to try to convince his/her partner that he/she found the attractive person unattractive. The findings suggest that most people in long-term relationships are dreadful at telling when their partners are lying. Some researchers believe that many long-term couples have remained together precisely because they cannot spot one another’s lies.
Perhaps the public shouldn’t worry too much about their inability to detect lies. They are, after all, in good company. Paul Ekman, a psychologist from the University of California, San Francisco, showed videotapes of liars and truth-tellers to various groups of experts, including polygraph operators, robbery investigators, judges, and psychiatrists, and asked them to try to identify the lies.
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All tried their best. None of the groups performed better than chance.