Sunday, February 05, 2006

Detecting liars

NY Times Magazine says:
Most people think they're good at spotting liars, but studies show otherwise. A very small minority of people, probably fewer than 5 percent, seem to have some innate ability to sniff out deception with accuracy. But in general, even professional lie-catchers, like judges and customs officials, perform, when tested, at a level not much better than chance. In other words, even the experts would have been right almost as often if they had just flipped a coin.
The article has much more about the science of lie detection.

This is yet another example of how most people suffer from delusions that they can read other peoples' minds. They cannot.

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