Today, the most popular methods used to find out whether a person is lying or not depend on measuring a person’s heart rate or examining their facial expressions. But scientists have recently managed to add a new one among these methods. The new method requires people to be subjected to multiple tasks during an interview.
The new study by the University of Portsmouth used the knowledge that lying during an interview consumes more cognitive energy than telling the truth. Based on this information, the scientists showed that giving the person a secondary task during the interview was effective in revealing whether the person was lying or not. Because the brain, which was already consuming more energy by lying, had difficulty focusing on the second task.
The lies are more understandable when given a secondary task in the interview:
The second task assigned to the subjects in the study was to ask them to recall a 7-number license plate again. However, it was necessary to emphasize that this information is extremely important in order to reveal the lie of the liar, so that the person’s brain spends more energy on the remembering process.
The 164 participants who participated in the study were first asked to support or oppose various social issues in the news. Participants were then randomly assigned to the ‘true’ or ‘lie’ condition and interviewed the three topics they felt most strongly about. During the interviews, those who would give correct answers were instructed to state their true views, and those who would lie were instructed to lie naturally.
In addition, one group was given a seven-digit license plate in the study and asked to repeat it to the person they interviewed. Participants were also given the opportunity to prepare for the interview and were encouraged to participate in the interview as persuasively as possible with a raffle incentive. Results from the interviews revealed that the stories of the liars were less convincing and less clear than those who told the truth, especially when given a secondary task such as remembering the license plate.
By the way, if you want to examine the lying performance of the Webtekno team, you can watch the video below
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