Are we always able to recognize whether they are telling us the truth or deceiving us? Usually we guess a lie about half the time, which is clearly not enough. But the probability of “guessing” noticeably increases if there is someone to discuss your feelings with.
“Night falls, the inhabitants of the city fall into a sound sleep, and the mafia wakes up.” Do you love this game? If so, then you already know what we are talking about. And if not, then be sure to try to somehow play in a friendly company. Before the start of the game, everyone receives a card with the designation of their role — a peaceful citizen with an indication of the profession or a mafia villain. Well, then each participant talks about himself. Civilians tell the truth, and the villains pretend to be civilians. The task of the first is to bring the mafia to clean water, the task of the second is to slowly exterminate the peaceful citizens and seize power in the city.
First, it’s exciting and fun. And secondly, at the same time you will conduct nothing less than a scientific experiment, testing the guess of psychologists Nadav Klein and Nicholas Epley. They have long been studying our ability to distinguish lies from the truth. An ability that, honestly speaking, can hardly be called outstanding. For example, a meta-analysis of studies on this topic shows that, on average, we are able to say that the interlocutor is telling us the truth about 61% of the time. But we recognize a lie on average only in 47% of situations1. In general, fifty-fifty, heads or tails.
- How sincere are you?
By the way, the fact that we have known our interlocutor for a long time also does not at all guarantee that we can easily determine whether he is telling the truth or being cunning. Research shows that we recognize lies from friends or relatives about as often as lies from strangers.2.
How to be? Firstly, do not be alone with liars, and secondly, be sure to discuss what you saw and heard. That is, to do exactly what the players in the «Mafia» do. After the performances, they are almost exclusively engaged in discussing who is really convincing in the role of a baker, bus driver or student, and who, it seems, hides his mafia essence under the guise of a civilian. Here your friend made an impassioned speech about how he wouldn’t hurt a fly in his life, because he is a flower grower, and immediately went to drink water in the kitchen. Maybe he really wanted to drink? Or maybe he wanted to avoid unnecessary questions? And by the way, his eyes were somehow suspiciously running around, don’t you think?
This is how it is possible to bring liars to clean water, Nadav Kline and Nicholas Epley are sure. In their study3 groups of volunteers were shown videos of various people speaking. The task was to determine whether the speaker was telling the truth or not. At the same time, in half of the groups, the participants could not communicate with each other: everyone only wrote down their own opinion, and the general verdict was made based on which option received the most votes — true or false. In the other half of the groups, the participants had the opportunity to discuss the videos they watched and work out a collective decision. And the solutions of these groups turned out to be much more accurate.
Many psychologists find this result quite unexpected. It, for example, contradicts the idea that we are all prone sometimes to the manifestation of herd feelings. And don’t mind without too much thought to join the opinion of some passionate and charismatic speaker, who may well be sincerely mistaken or meaningfully try to confuse us.
Well, the criterion of truth in science, as you know, is the ability to reproduce the experiment described earlier — and get the same results. And if the next time you play Mafia, civilians win more, then Nadav Kline and Nicholas Epley are right. If not, then psychologists will have to work on the mistakes.
1 C. Bond Jr., B. DePaulo «Accuracy of deception judgments». Personal and Social Psychology Review, 2006, № 10 (3).
2 L. Van Swol et al. «Deception and its detection: effects of monetary incentives and Personal relationship history». Online publication on the website of the journal Communication Research from January 13, 2011.
3 N. Klein, N. Epley «Group discussion improves lie detection». Online publication on the website of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of May 26, 2015.