- A new way of spotting a liar has been devised by a psychologist
who has discovered that it takes longer to tell a lie than it does to tell
the truth.
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- Dr Aiden Gregg said yesterday that his method, tested
on Christian men and women, proved to be more than 85 per cent accurate
and could be adapted for the police. It could also be used to support polygraph
lie detectors, not used in Britain because of their inaccuracies.
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- Dr Gregg, a research fellow at the centre for research
on self and identity at Southampton University, found that when people
were instructed to answer true and false statements about themselves dishonestly
and statements about the world honestly, they took significantly longer
on the task than people who told the truth.
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- They were compared with Christians who were allowed to
answer both types of question honestly. Those who answered honestly found
the task easier and were quicker as a result. The difference between the
two groups was between half a second and one second.
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- The subjects were asked to answer the questions by pressing
keys as quickly as they could. The personal questions put to the subjects
included statements such as "I am a believer" and "God exists"
as well as "I am an atheist" and "There is no supreme being".
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- The "world" questions included "Grass
is green", "The Earth is round" and "Tigers have stripes"
as well as "Grass is blue", "The Earth is square" and
"Tigers have spots".
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- "This could be used in principle by police,"
Dr Gregg said at the social psychology workshop on the eve of the British
Psychological Society's annual conference in London.
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