Lie to me: Why thank you, I already am

As if CSI wasn’t enough, lawyers now have another TV show to deal with when it comes to jurors and their ability to make credibility assessments. A new show, starring the inimitible Tim Roth, Lie to Me, purports to bring to the fore the “science” of lie detection through observation. The show does this in rather cheesy ways (the cheesy way that would look good on “Psych”, but not befitting a slick network production), by “highlighting” or zooming in on the subject’s facial tics. This gives Roth (and the viewer) a clue that the subject is acting in a not-so-truthful manner.

The show itself is based on four decades of research by Paul Ekman of the University of California. He serves as a consultant to the show. Ekman has been researching body language and the art (or is it science) of lie detection for a long time, copiously compiling data after research study after research study.

His finding? It doesn’t work. You can’t do it.

“We’ve been testing people’s ability to discern a lie for 15 years now and haven’t noticed any real change over that time,” he says in a telephone interview. “We’ve tested about 15,000 people in every profession you can think of — CIA, judges, lawyers. Less than 1 percent are any good at it. Most people are only at about the level of flipping a coin.”

He writes: “Most liars can fool most of the people most of the time.”

The best you can get is to become good at lie detection, but that too only in your professional life, not in personal interactions. Even “tells” that most people would definitely state are indicators of lies are actually not:

Last are “manipulations,” which are personal grooming tics, such as biting your fingernails. Manipulations, it turns out, don’t mean anything one way or the other — and yet studies show most people list these tics as one of the clearest signs of dishonesty. They’re not. People who read them are committing an “Othello error,” in Ekman’s jargon, a reference to the Shakespearean character who falsely believed his wife to be an adulteress.

So what’s this mean for all of us? Just another reminder that we have to be careful in selecting jurors, in reading witnesses and in asking questions. Most lawyers already question jurors about the impact of CSI. We might have to start reminding them that they have to judge the credibility of witnesses based on their testimony standing alone and in relation to other witnesses testimony.

But if you are willing to go further, the implications are tremendous. Essentially all jurors make credibility determinations of witnesses based on their own perceived ability to discern truth from falsehood. If they, just like the rest of us, are hopelessly unable to make any realistic assessment, because it is not a science, then what exactly are jurors doing and how do we get them to do it right?