How to detect lies with a storytelling technique
anecdote.com
How to detect lies with a storytelling technique
1–10 of 117 posts
Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique
#2Nothing new here, this interviewing technique by storytelling has been standard procedure for a long time with the British Police. One simple variation is to recall the story from the beginning, then recall from the end and see what doesn't match up.
Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique
#3I wonder if successful con artists (or novel writers) have such a vivid imagination that they would be able to pass this kind of test. If you have such a good imagination that you can convince yourself you actually are in a make-believe world, does the lie become just as convincing as the truth?
Put another way, if a novel is so richly detailed that I feel as though I'm actually in the story, would describing my experience of that novel be interpreted by this system as truth or a lie?
Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique
#4Nothing new here, this interviewing technique by storytelling has been standard procedure for a long time with the British Police. One simple variation is to recall the story from the beginning, then recall from the end and see what doesn't match up.
That's not exactly what's going on here. The point is to use the sensory memories to improve the interviewee's ability to recall, and then see who actually recalled better the second time around. Yes, you could probably compare the two for inconsistencies as well, but that's not what he was measuring for this—just the change in level of detail between the two versions.
Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique
#5I wonder if successful con artists (or novel writers) have such a vivid imagination that they would be able to pass this kind of test. If you have such a good imagination that you can convince yourself you actually are in a make-believe world, does the lie become just as convincing as the truth? Put another way, if a novel is so richly detailed that I feel as though I'm actually in the story, would describing my expe…
I'd think it depends on the amount of time you've spent imagining this experience in the novel. If you have had enough time to vividly imagine the entire experience, none of the questions should catch you by surprise and you could answer almost as if you were actually there.
Regarding con-artists, yes I suppose it comes down to whether they can be as quickly imaginative on the spot as most people who are truthfully recalling an experience. That's probably where the inaccurate 15% of results come in.
Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique
#6Nothing new here, this interviewing technique by storytelling has been standard procedure for a long time with the British Police. One simple variation is to recall the story from the beginning, then recall from the end and see what doesn't match up.
I used a variation of this trick when I was a resident assistant in college. We had the unfortunate job of busting drinking parties in the dorms and part of our responsibility was to collect ID numbers or social security numbers if the person claimed to not have their IDs. People would quite happily rattle-off a fake SSN. But if you wait 60 seconds and come back to them and ask for the number in reverse, it's essentially impossible to repeat the same fake, especially if you've been drinking.
Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique
#7Nothing new here, this interviewing technique by storytelling has been standard procedure for a long time with the British Police. One simple variation is to recall the story from the beginning, then recall from the end and see what doesn't match up.
I used a variation of this trick when I was a resident assistant in college. We had the unfortunate job of busting drinking parties in the dorms and part of our responsibility was to collect ID numbers or social security numbers if the person claimed to not have their IDs. People would quite happily rattle-off a fake SSN. But if you wait 60 seconds and come back to them and ask for the number in reverse, it's essenti…
I would have a hard time doing this with mine, and I'm sober.
Would people memorize fakes to give away consistently, or would they just rattle off a random nine digit number?
Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique
#8Read a book on this and this seems to corroborate much of what I read. One of the most interesting and simple techniques discussed was the order in which people recounted their stories.
The example given is an employee who is consistently late for work. If you ask them to recount why they are late one day, a liar will tell you the story linearly: "I woke up, ate breakfast, hopped in the car, was on my way, minding my own business, then someone hit my car. I got out to trade insurance ... [etc]".
A truth teller jumps around, usually starting with the climax "Someone hit my car on the way in. I then realized my insurance was expired. I had just been going through my bills the previous night ...".
This is easily ascribed to the fact that the liar is either making the story up as they go or are repeating a rehearsed lie. A truthful person can jump around easily because they are recounting distinct memories.
Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique
#9Nothing new here, this interviewing technique by storytelling has been standard procedure for a long time with the British Police. One simple variation is to recall the story from the beginning, then recall from the end and see what doesn't match up.
That's not exactly what's going on here. The point is to use the sensory memories to improve the interviewee's ability to recall, and then see who actually recalled better the second time around. Yes, you could probably compare the two for inconsistencies as well, but that's not what he was measuring for this—just the change in level of detail between the two versions.
That's right, and another difference is that word frequencies change. E.g., in a lie there might be many references to "the green car", while a truthful story would refer to it variously as "the old green car", "the yellowish hatchback", "that ugly old car", etc. Yes there are inconsistencies in those descriptors. That is a property of memory, not of guilt.
Which shows yet another deficiency in LEOs' standard methods. They interrogate until they get an inconsistency, which they know the courts will interpret as guilt, even though this research shows that it is no such thing. Therefore intelligent guilty people can talk to the police with no fear, while no innocent person should ever talk to them.
Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique
#10This matches my experience that the best lies are based in truth and experience. That is, either use something which actually happened to you and change only the most necessary bits or use something which you know well to have happened, just not necessarily to you.