Practice Makes a Perfect Liar

http://bodyodd.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/27/15488245-practice-makes-the-perfect-liar?lite

Are you one of those people who suck at lying? Can everyone tell when you're lying because you can't keep a straight face? According to this article, with enough practice anyone can become a perfect liar. While I don't think I exactly agree with the methods presented in this article, I still found it to be very interesting. Researcher Hu and his team claimed that after 20 minutes of training their subjects were very efficient at lying and it was no longer possible to distinguish between the lie and the truth. Participants were given a new false identity and instructed to remember three fact: their new name, new hometown, and new date of birth. The liars were tested and instructed to press yes for every fact appearing about their false identity and no for facts about their true identity.

While I don't think this method of testing was extremely strong, I definitely think it's a start, and something that could become incredibly useful, especially for improving EEG and polygraph tests. However, I think there is a huge field of lying to be covered. In this test participants were simply asked to lie about themselves, and were given no motivation other than lying is wrong. In terms of criminals they have a HUGE motivation to become skilled liars, as it may keep them from getting in trouble. I think motivation should definitely become a factor in new studies, and perhaps asking about other items such as events rather than personal items. I also think the idea of "practice" can be expanded. Certainly rehearsing a lie over and over for a specific instance will make you a skilled liar about that subject, but it does not make you a skilled liar overall. You could easily still give yourself away on many other topics.

This article also raises a question of morality to me. Is this something we really want to be investigating and improving? Giving people the tools to learn how to lie better? Or is it something essential, a topic that we should be proactive about to prevent catastrophes later on?