You think that a liar has a great deal of control over the content of their story, but the style of language used to tell this story may contain clues to their underlying state of mind. The idea that our word choices can give away our underlying thoughts and feelings dates back to Freud (1901), who argued that speech mistakes, or parapraxes, “almost invariably [reveal] a disturbing influence of something outside of the intended speech” (p. 80). Freud recounts the case of a doctor visiting a wealthy patient who was suffering from a long illness. Despite outwardly claiming to have his patients’ interest in mind, the doctor remarked, “ . . . I hope you will not soon leave your bed” (p.88), revealing his underlying selfish desire to continue treating a wealthy patient. TFor
Information of public seminars Patti is giving on body language and deception detection in Philadeliphia in the summer of 09 though Paliani consulting please contact us or go directly to the Paliani site. You can always contact Patti at Patti@PattiWood.net
Those little slips of the tongue he called Freudian slips.
Word choice, like body language, can reveal a liar
Lying often involves telling a story that is false, a story that the liar doesn't believe. If you analyze the text of a liar or a truth teller and look at the linguistic style you can see words and phrases that distinguish between true and false stories. Computer based text analysis programs can correctly classify liars and truth-tellers at a rate of 67% accuracy. Here is how you can look for words and phrases that liars use. Compared to truth-tellers, liars use fewer self-references such as I or me and prefer to use words like we or us. Liars are more likely to use other-references such as she or her instead of personal reverences such as, "My daughter Sara or my wife Sue". Liars use inclusive generalization such as "awhile ago" instead of "five days ago". They also use more negative emotion words like bad or awful.
Body Language and Content to Read for Lies in Apologies
I am often asked to read the body language of apologizes and media interviews made by politicians like Governor Mark Sanford, Sport Stars like A-Rod, and Celebrities. Most of you know that I discuss the body language, but what you may not know is that I also read the actual words that are spoken. Last week I gave my public seminar on Deception Detection. (by the way I am doing my next public seminar on deception detection, so you can catch a liar on July 22, 2009 in Philadelphia. Call or email for details.) I teach how to analyze the words and the meaning behind them to detect whether or not a person is lying. In the next post I will give you textbook 'tells' for lying.
Photo analysis of Governor Sanford
I was just reading a twitter post about Governor Sanford's odd body language http://twitter.com/bagnewsnotes. The tweeter criticized his body language and in the next post apologized because he found out the photo he was analyzing was a year old. You really need to know your source before analyzing the body language in photos. I imagine the media was using that photo to represent the governor and most of the public assumed that it was a timely photo that represented his body language response to the discovery of his affair with an Argentinian woman.
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