How to detect lies with a storytelling technique • Hacker News Board

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#21

Post by mrestko » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 2:48 PM UTC

gabemart wrote: post #14

mrestko wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> ask for the number in reverse, it's essentially impossible to repeat the same fake, especially if you've been drinking I would find this extraordinarily difficult to do in any state of mind. The only way I could give you the digits of my telephone number backwards would be to mentally go through my telephone number from beginning to end once for each digit of the number, and stop a digit earlier on each pass.

Yep, that's basically what everyone has to do.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#22

Post by mankyd » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 2:49 PM UTC

caminante wrote: post #20

mankyd wrote: post #8

Read 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…

> 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. Alternatively, the liar's experienced, good at his craft, and more capable of jumping around.

Certainly. It's not a perfect or fool proof method. Nothing is. It's simply a piece of evidence to look for.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#23

Post by knodi123 » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 2:50 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #16

at-fates-hands wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes. I used to be a bouncer in my college town and you'd be surprised at what lengths kids will go to pass off their fake ID's as real. they'll memorize everything on the ID, including where the city is located - "So Flagstaff, is that North or South of Phoenix? I can never remember?" I would ask for all the information on the ID if I thought they looked young. Then once the person was confident they had passed…

That's a pretty good idea! But doesn't this rather depend on you knowing the area code yourself?

Haha, either that, or pretending you do. You're only looking for people who are not confident.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#24

Post by pavel_lishin » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 2:52 PM UTC

Rubu wrote: post #19

at-fates-hands wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes. I used to be a bouncer in my college town and you'd be surprised at what lengths kids will go to pass off their fake ID's as real. they'll memorize everything on the ID, including where the city is located - "So Flagstaff, is that North or South of Phoenix? I can never remember?" I would ask for all the information on the ID if I thought they looked young. Then once the person was confident they had passed…

Why use an ID from a different city in the first place? I'd say keep everything except for the year the same and there'd be no problem.

As I understand it, some states' IDs are easier to fake than others. Your supplier may only have Arizona IDs to give you.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#25

Post by pavel_lishin » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 2:53 PM UTC

knodi123 wrote: post #23

pavel_lishin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty good idea! But doesn't this rather depend on you knowing the area code yourself?

Haha, either that, or pretending you do. You're only looking for people who are not confident.

As someone who frequently forgets how old he is, I'd be kind of irked if someone denied me entry because I said "I'm 28. No, wait, shit, 29!"

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#26

Post by simonh » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 2:53 PM UTC

caminante wrote: post #20

mankyd wrote: post #8

Read 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…

> 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. Alternatively, the liar's experienced, good at his craft, and more capable of jumping around.

Only if they are aware of this technique and purposefully and skillfully prepare to defeat it. That turns out to be harder than you'd expect for methods like this. The methods used by Israeli security agents to profile travelers at airports have been well known for decades, but even so are still very effective.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#27

Post by Scriptor » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 3:02 PM UTC

andrewclunn wrote: post #11

Sounds to me like some of these people just aren't good liars.

It'd be easy enough to check for that by having a control where you interview people without using the extra storytelling-lie-detection methods.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#28

Post by scott_s » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 3:07 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #25

knodi123 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, either that, or pretending you do. You're only looking for people who are not confident.

As someone who frequently forgets how old he is, I'd be kind of irked if someone denied me entry because I said "I'm 28. No, wait, shit, 29!"

Knowing some bouncers and bar tenders, they tend to have a dynamic level of skepticism. If you look 25-ish, that sort of slip probably won't deny you entry. If you look 20-ish, it may be more likely.

The difficulty here is that the incentives heavily favor allowing false negatives, and denying false positives. I know that in Virginia, the bar tenders were personally responsible if they served alcohol to anyone underage. And in a college town (where I was for quite some time in grad school), there are loads of underage kids trying to get into the bars, and the authorities would sometimes hire underage kids to test the bars.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#29

Post by saint_fiasco » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 3:14 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #15

>Morgan found that the use of these mnemonic props – open-ended questions about various sensations and sequences of events – dramatically increased memory recall about what had happened. The subject’s stories consequently became more and more complex, and richer in detail. Or at least, they did when people were telling the truth. When it came to the lies, even well-rehearsed ones, the subjects tended to falter and we…

When you are lying on purpose, you have to make sure whatever you say is accomplishes whatever made you lie in the first place. It has to make you look good, make it seem like something is not your fault and so on.

Therefore, you need to consciously validate whatever your brain outputs when you ask for some bullshit to "remember". Maybe this creates a delay or makes people be conservative in what they tell you for fear of accidentally saying something inconsistent.

If you had a false memory, however, your brain could make up details as it goes along and you would just say them aloud, without feeling nervous or consciously thinking about consistency and validity at all.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#30

Post by yasth » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 3:14 PM UTC

jasode wrote: post #15

>Morgan found that the use of these mnemonic props – open-ended questions about various sensations and sequences of events – dramatically increased memory recall about what had happened. The subject’s stories consequently became more and more complex, and richer in detail. Or at least, they did when people were telling the truth. When it came to the lies, even well-rehearsed ones, the subjects tended to falter and we…

In an expansion[1](pdf) the classical Bugs Bunny at Disney study[2](pdf), over several leading interviews participants added more and more detail. So while it would probably work with an accidentally and freshly implanted memory; it could probably be defeated by either purposely pushing for sense recall, or perhaps accidentally over the course of many attempts to fix the "memory".

Knowing the technique is probably half way to defeating it in all honesty, as long as a person has time to prepare (or be prepared).

[1]http://eprints.port.ac.uk/11286/1/filetodownload,62616,en.pd...

[2] https://webfiles.uci.edu/eloftus/BraunPsychMarket02.pdfhttps...