We are natural-born liars...

We have evolved to lie because it is an effective strategy for human survival, says a British psychologist, as reported in The Sun by Jacqueline Ann Surin.

KUALA LUMPUR: "Every one of us is a natural-born liar. All of us are," says renown British psychologist Prof Richard Wiseman.

Although lying is actually difficult to do convincingly, we've evolved to lie because it is an effective strategy for human survival, he said.

"There is also some evidence from observational studies that some animals lie," he said, citing elephants and the famous talking gorilla Koko, who was trained in American Sign Language at Stanford University in California.

Wiseman says his research has found that 40% of three-year-olds who have just learnt to speak, and 100% of five-year-olds lie, and among adults, 83% of people lie in job interviews and 90% lie on dates.

"Some lying helps bond society together, although some people may manipulate it," he said when presenting a talk on "How to Catch a Liar" at a session of the British Council's Cafe Scientifique last Monday.

People, he said, lie because they can get some gain for nothing if not caught.

Wiseman, who started his working life as an award-winning professional magician, currently holds the only chair in the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire.

A passionate advocate of science, he has gained an international reputation for research into unusual areas of psychology, including deception, luck and the paranormal.

He is also the author of the best-selling book The Luck Factor.

Lying is very difficult to detect, Wiseman says, adding that police, judges and polygraph operators have only a 56% accuracy rate, just slightly above the 50% accuracy rate arising from chance alone.

But there are some signals that one can look out for, he says.

Contrary to popular belief, liars do not look away, move their hands and arms more, talk more, or move around in their seats.

"It's a complete myth that the eyes give you away when you're lying. It's not clear where that myth came from.

"Good liars will look you in the eye especially if they are well-rehearsed and do not feel guilty about lying," he says, noting that some people's natural style of interaction may seem shifty because they are actually shy or embarrassed or have low self-esteem.

Wiseman's research, conducted over 12 years, has found visual signals to be the least revealing about when a person is lying because there is a decrease in gestures and body movement.

He says the linguistic approach is the most accurate way to detect a liar. When somebody is lying, there is an increase in pauses, speech errors and response latency and a decrease in speech rate and emotional involvement.

The verbal signals include a decrease in the length of reply, general level of detail, plausibility, links to other events and spontaneous correction.

Liars also use fewer "I"s in their speech and are more impersonal in their description because they need to create emotional distance from their lie.

"If you want to catch somebody lying, listen to the words they use and how they say them," Wiseman says.

However, he also notes that truth tellers typically say they "can't remember" a detail. Liars usually make up the details.

One of Wiseman's best-known studies on lying involved a mass participation experiment examining whether the public is better at detecting lies on television, radio, or in a newspaper.

Sir Robin Day, the well-known British political commentator, was interviewed twice about his favourite film.

In one interview, he told the truth, and in the other he consistently lied.

TV viewers were found to be only 52% accurate in detecting the lie, newspaper readers 64% and radio listeners 73%.

This strongly suggests that visual signals are not reliable indicators of when a person is lying, says Wiseman, who is a fraud detection consultant for several corporations.

He says people with high IQs make good liars because lying requires a lot of thinking. However, this did not mean that people with high IQs were more predisposed to lying.

To detect lying during an interview, he says, it would be more effective to have one other person, who is not doing the interviewing, observe a candidate's words and use of them.

"Good liars are evasive, and will create fantastic distractions from what they're trying to hide. It's what they don't say that's really important. So, it's good to ask the candidate, ÔIf you missed out on any information, would you consider that a lie?'"

He says blind people, rather than children or wives, were extremely good at detecting lies.

But, the people who were the best lie detectors, were prisoners.

"It's because they're immersed in an environment where a lot of lying happens."

Wiseman is of the opinion that the biggest lie is to say "I love you" to one's partner while having an affair, adding that spouses are really bad at detecting each other's lies.

Parents are also poor at detecting their children's lies because their judgment is clouded by emotional ties.

Women were much better at detecting a lie with emotional material and men with factual material.