by Argen Duncan News Reporter Two New Mexico State University graduate students have been looking for clues to detect dishonesty, which may help with law enforcement, and have proven the existence of a "lie bias." In experiments, Gary Bond and Dan Malloy, doctoral students in psychology, analyzed conversations between prisoners for verbal cues of dishonesty. They also asked participants if they believed their conversation partner had lied to see if prisoners had a lie bias. This phenomenon occurs when someone is more prone to believe another person was lying than to think that individual was telling the truth. Bond, the principal investigator, said he also hopes to travel to Washington, D.C., to study the visual lie-detecting habits of individuals with unusually high accuracy in identifying deception. Bond said that in the last few years, he and Malloy have visited six prisons in Kansas, Mississippi and New Mexico. They had prisoners watch videos, then recorded inmates' conversations with each other about what they saw. Bond asked the participants to lie or to tell the truth about the videos, according to a statement from University Communications at NMSU. Malloy said that upon interviewing the prisoners about their conversations, the researchers found that people in the prison context have a lie bias. They were more likely to believe someone was lying to them than NMSU students were. While other research has theorized the existence of the lie bias, Malloy said he and Bond are the first to prove it. "This is the first of its kind," he said, adding that the study paves the way for other researchers. Bond also analyzed transcripts of the prisoners' remarks with computer software called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count and achieved a 69 percent accuracy rate in determining whether the person lied, according to the University Communications statement. He and Malloy found differing speech patterns between those who lied and those who did not. "In truthful statements, they used exclusive words, such as 'but' and 'however,' indicating greater complexity," he said. He said prisoners asked to lie used more motion words such as "do" and "walk." "I think it's all to divert attention away from the speaker," he said. The liars also used more words dealing with negative emotions, which past research has also shown, Bond said. The statement quotes him as saying liars referred more to others, while those who told the truth spoke of themselves more. He said a study by other researchers published in 2003 found that liars tend to be more tense and less forthcoming, make more negative remarks and have less compelling statements. These cues predicted dishonesty across many studies when subjects pursued identity-relevant goals or lied about transgression, the research found. Still, there do not seem to be any signs to detect lies in all situations because those cues apparently disappear in liars in everyday, low-stakes circumstances, according to the study. Bond said the most recent media analysis, which is a study of many studies, shows there are no non-verbal cues to detect dishonesty, but there may be some with minimal significance and possibly some in higher stakes situations like interrogations. Retired psychologist Paul Ekman studied "human detectors" in federal law enforcement and intelligence and determined they can detect lies with between 70 and 100 percent accuracy, Bond said. He hopes to go to Washington, D.C., because most human detectors work there. He aims to study their patterns of looking at a person when trying to detect dishonesty, he said. He has made arrangements to use a lab at Catholic University of America. Bond said that by using eye-tracking systems, he hopes to pinpoint where Secret Service agents, CIA agents and federal judges look, and if they use sweeps of the eyes when trying to determine if someone is lying. He said he plans to show participants life-sized videos of ex-convicts on a plasma screen. Bond said he wants to replicate Ekman's findings, and then, if this happens, find places to look to determine if a person is telling the truth. "And I think that would improve law enforcement practices," he said. He said he thinks he could design a way to train personnel in the area and would use local law enforcement officers to test that. Bond said he went into prisons for research because experiments done in laboratories and universities cannot be generalized to the public. He decided to go into this environment to see if the people were different, particularly with decision-making and biases in the way they spoke with each other, he said. Also, Bond said results are more valid when subjects interact with each other instead of an experimenter.
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