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Posts Tagged ‘lying’

We Know If You’re Lying on Twitter

TWITTER is, lets face it, a place where people pretend their more exciting or more wealthy or more miserable than they really are. They do it to get attention from people they don’t know and repeat the process week-after-week until someone trolls them, and then they actually are miserable… but no-one takes any notice because they’ve been pretending to hate everything and everyone for so long.

With that, some science people have come up with a thing so they can tell whether you’re lying or not with your Tweets. Bad news for those of you who have convinced us all that your life is all cocktails and new trainers.

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Posted: 14th, March 2014 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment


How the game of Good Cop – Bad Cop works in job interviews

THE police love playing good cop- bad cop. One does the talking; one takes notes. What effect does the silent presence have on the subject? Let’s see:

Over 100 hundred students and university staff were allocated to either tell the truth in answering detailed questions about a real job they really had, or they were asked to lie and answer questions about a fictional job. After having three days to prepare, the participants were invited to a psychology lab for questioning. A female interviewer with a neutral style asked the questions (e.g. “If you were training me to do your job for a day, what things would I need to know about it?”) while a second male interviewer took notes. Crucially, this male interviewer either struck a supportive demeanour (smiling and nodding his head), a neutral demeanour, or acted as if he had suspicions (frowning and shaking his head). The participants were incentivised with the promise of a £5 reward if they fooled the interviewers.

Here’s the headline result – the truth-telling participants gave more detailed answers than the liars, but only when the second interviewer provided a supportive presence. This runs entirely counter to the aggressive questioning styles so often portrayed in fiction. By creating a reassuring atmosphere, the second interviewer encouraged the honest interviewees to open up more, which made the the lack of detail given by liars stand out.

Another sign of deception was the amount of negative comments made by liars about their (fictional) boss. But again, this difference only appeared when the second note-taking interviewer acted supportive. [Researcher Samantha] Mann and her team said this was the first time a study had shown the beneficial lie-detecting effect of having a supportive second interviewer.

The second interview is acting as the witness…

Posted: 23rd, September 2013 | In: Technology | Comment