Emma Young reports for the NewScientist.com news service. Excerpt:
People who think of themselves as being intuitive make worse lie detectors than those who do not trust in a “gut instinct”, according to new research.
“People generally aren’t very good at detecting lies – accuracy is between 45 and 65 per cent,” says Paul Seager of the University of Central Lancashire, Preston. “So my interest is: are there ways of making people better lie detectors?”
Seager showed 10 video clips of people lying or telling the truth about their favourite films or preferred ways of relaxing to 200 people. Half of these believed they were very intuitive and had scored highly on questionnaires designed to reveal this belief. The other half had low scores.
The intuitive group were 59 per cent accurate at detecting lies. But the non-intuitive people were 69 per cent accurate. “The intuitives fell into the normal range, but the others were significantly better,” Seager says.