Reading Deceptive Eyes

Eyes are an incredibly important part of emotional recognition, but what role do they have in allowing us to detect deception? While conventional opinion tends to hold that failure to maintain eye contact is a tell-tale sign of deception, this is actually just a pervasive myth. However, because eyes are so important in reading emotions,…

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Detecting Deception Close to Home

Parents and really anyone who works with kids can attest to many children’s tendency to lie. While these might take the form of minor fibs of who hit whom, and that sort of common deception, it is not just our anecdotal impression that children are often dishonest. As Dr. Wendy Patrick explains, there is a…

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Deception as Human Nature Blog, Part II

By Humintell Director Dr. David Matsumoto In this week’s blog, we continue last week’s discussion about deception as being a part of human nature. The words “deception” and “lying” most often conjure up negative, and sometimes pretty dark images. This is reflected in not only much academic and lay writing on the topic, but also…

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The Problem of Lie Detection

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the movies have painted a highly inaccurate picture of the power of polygraphs, or so-called lie-detector tests. While many crime dramas showcase a seemingly miraculous technology for distinguishing truths from lies, this portrayal, itself, is far from true. However, a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry suggests that polygraph tests…

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