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How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

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Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#51

Post by throw7 »

Well, at an airport security check I got interviewed before boarding and the guy asked me how I got here. I thought it was a weird question to ask and I answered I got here by airplane (I was in a foreign country visiting).

He was totally non-plussed by the answer and said, "No, how did you get _here_?"... I was actually confused by the way he said it and he added, "What did you do this morning to get _HERE_?". I said I got up, packed, got on the train, transferred to the airport bus, and got here. He just paused and moved on to a few innocuous questions. It was kind of comical. I was waiting to be led to some back room for further interrogation, but in the end he just said 'enjoy your trip". :)

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#53

Post by urlgrey »

It's interesting that a low occurrence of unique words in a story can be an indication of a lie. Does that position people speaking a secondary language in an unavoidable place of distrust? Beyond body language, it's just more difficult to tell if someone's story lacks richness because they're not telling the truth, or they're simply not comfortable with the language and have a small vocabulary to draw upon.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#55

Post by simonh »

aluhut wrote: post #35
simonh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you measure it it has been effective when the successful liar passes the test and is not defined as such?

If you catch X people trying to blow up a plane and no planes get blown up, that's fairly good evidence that your method of catching people trying to blow up planes has been 100% successful. So far.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#56

Post by bcoates »

barce wrote: post #52

This is seriously flawed for folks that suffer memory degradation under stress. tl;dr: the guy with amnesia is the liar.

Only if you're in a hurry! The interviewer can patiently wait for the subject to become bored. Formal interviews in intimidating settings (like panel interviews for jobs) are often scheduled to be much longer than necessary just on the expectation that the first half will be nervous ice-breaking and the real insights are after everyone loosens up and is capable of acting naturally.

That's probably half of "in vino veritas": drinking is an excuse to spend a few extra hours with nothing to do but chat.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#57

Post by redler »

learc83 wrote: post #37

Hmm... My guess is that in a few years, we'll see the word frequency analysis being used by police as an investigative technique. However just like with drug dogs, they'll ignore the high false positives and low prior probabilities.

Hmm... My guess is that in a few years, we'll see the word frequency analysis being used by police as an investigative technique.

It's an interesting thought. Imagine the linguistic equivalent of using Benford's Law to detect accounting fraud.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#58

Post by washadjeffmad »

barce wrote: post #52

This is seriously flawed for folks that suffer memory degradation under stress. tl;dr: the guy with amnesia is the liar.

Only if this were considered conclusive (which it isn't) and if it weren't attempted first with an honest recounting of an actual memory (which they do).

I assume the true experience is done first to give a basis for comparison, since this is based on the idea that people paint pictures of their memories less reliably when they're fabricating them on the spot.

Having poorer recall actually might bias the results more in favor of a lie, if the interviewer doesn't reject the method as unsuitable or inconclusive first.

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#59

Post by cryoshon »

barce wrote: post #52

This is seriously flawed for folks that suffer memory degradation under stress. tl;dr: the guy with amnesia is the liar.

Yeah. There's a reason why the standing order for the public is "don't ever talk to the police without your lawyer in the room". Doubt or confusion about past events is often perceived as an attempt to fabricate. Add in the ability for the interviewer to feed false facts to you in an attempt to question your story, and it's tough to pass the truth as the truth.

It doesn't matter if you're actually innocent, what matters is whether they can cast doubt on your innocence. Do you think you could repeat a simple story that just happened to you recently in multiple different chronological and detail configurations/contexts without introducing some inconsistencies?

Re: How to detect lies with a storytelling technique

#60

Post by sageikosa »

frandroid wrote: post #42
aluhut wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you measure it it has been effective when the successful liar passes the test and is not defined as such?

You raise an interesting conundrum, but you can tell of a certain success rate by the number of liars who eventually confess to lying or are found to have been lying.

They could be lying about whether they were lying in the past.
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