In a recent article from De Volkskrant, Sophie van der Zee, Assistant Professor of Applied Economics at Erasmus School of Economics, discusses detecting lies. How can you spot a lie?
The polygraph has been used as a lie detector for a century. However, a polygraph only measures stress, while stress is only one of the reasons why liars behave differently from people who tell the truth. A potentially better way to spot lies is through analysing body movements, argues Van der Zee.Â
The assistant professor studied this by having test subjects put on a full-body motion capture suit: a suit that measures body movements very accurately. 'We see that four in five people move more all over their body when they lie than when they tell the truth. In contrast, one in five people move less when lying than when telling the truth,' Van der Zee concluded. Still, translating this experiment into practice remains a challenge.
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You can download the full article from De Volkskrant, 8 April 2023, above.