Spotting liars is hard – but our new method is effective and ethical

Cody Porter (cody.porter@port.ac.uk) is a Teaching Fellow in Psychology and Offending Behaviour at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth. This article was first published by The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/uk).

Most people lie occasionally, says Cody Porter. The lies are often trivial and essentially inconsequential – such as pretending to like a tasteless gift. But in other contexts, deception is more serious and can have harmful effects on criminal justice. From a societal and certainly from a counter-fraud perspective, such lying is better detected than ignored and tolerated.