Why don't we catch liars? - Truth-Telling, Lying and Self-Deception

Social Research, Fall, 1996 by Paul Ekman

A fifth explanation is based on Erving Goffman's writings (1974). We are brought up to be polite in our interactions, not to steal information which is not given to us. A rather remarkable example of this is how we unwittingly avert our gaze when someone we are talking to cleans their ears or picks their nose. Goffman would also argue that the false message sometimes may be the more socially important message than the truth. It is the acknowledged information, the information for which the person who states it is willing to take responsibility. When the secretary who is miserable about a fight with her husband the previous night answers, "Just fine," when her boss asks, "How are you this morning?" that false message may be the one relevant to the boss' interactions with her. It tells him that she is going to do her job. The true message--that she is miserable--he may not care to know about at all as long as she does not intend to let it impair her job performance.

None of the explanations I have offered so far can explain why most members of the criminal justice and intelligence communities do so poorly in identifying liars from demeanor. Police and counter-intelligence interrogators are not taking a trusting stance with their suspects, they are not colluding in being misled, and they are willing to steal information not given to them. Why do they not do better in identifying liars from demeanor? I believe they are handicapped by a high base-rate and inadequate feedback. Most of the people they deal with probably are lying to them. Those with whom I have spoken estimate the base rate of lying as more than three-fourths. Such a high base rate is not optimal for learning to be alert to the subtle behavioral clues to deceit. Their orientation all too often is not how to spot the liar, but how to get the evidence to nail the liar. And when they make a mistake and learn that someone was wrongfully punished, that feedback comes too late, too far removed from the mistaken judgment to be corrective.

This suggests that if you expose people to a lower base-rate of lying, around 50 percent, and give them corrective feedback after each judgment they make, they might well learn how to accurately identify lies from demeanor. This is an experiment we are now planning. I do not expect that accuracy will reach one hundred percent, and for that reason I do not believe that judgments about who is lying should be allowable evidence in court. Such judgments, however, may provide a sounder basis for deciding, at least initially, whom to investigate further, and when to ask more questions to clarify why something unusual has been noticed.

Notes

(1) I am grateful to Helena Cronin, London School of Economics, for asking me why evolution had not prepared us to be better lie catchers, also to Mark Frank, Rutgers University, and Richard Schuster, University of Haifa, for their many helpful comments on this manuscript. (2) Helena Cronin raised this possibility. (3) I am grateful to Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, University of California, Berkeley, and to Richard Schuster, University of Haifa, for pointing this out. (4) I am grateful to Alison Gopnik, University of California, Berkeley, for suggesting this explanation. (5) For evidence consistent with my reasoning see Tooby and Cosmides, 1989.