Quickie: Can You Tell When Your Partner Is Lying?
You may not be the human lie detector you think you are
Do you know when your partner is lying to you? Do you think that even though strangers may be able to pull the wool over your eyes, you can spot a lie coming from the one you love from a mile away?
If you believe your lie detection skills rival those of any polygraph machine, think again. Research suggests that there is a lot of faulty reasoning we engage in that leads us to believe we can identify untruths — even when we can’t. The following are examples of why we are really bad lie detectors:
The probing heuristic. We think that if we interrogate people, we can determine if they’re lying. If we’re unable to find a lie in what someone is telling us, we assume they’re being honest.
When we encounter a message with a novel twist…we think it’s a lie.
The falsifiability heuristic. We have preconceived notions about what a lie looks like, and we look for those qualities when we evaluate a message. As a result, you may assume that a message with too many factual details is a fabrication, so if a message is more vague, you assume it’s true.
