Want to know if someone is telling the truth or lying? Apparently as human beings, we aren’t very perceptive and are only able to tell about 50% of the time. The reason is according to Professor of computer science and engineering Rada Mihalcea, humans are focused on higher-levels of communications and don’t pay much attention to the telltale signs.
This is why at the University of Michigan, researchers have pieced together software that relies on real court cases to help detect lies. According to the researchers, it seems that their software is significantly better at telling lies compared to humans with a 75% rate of success, which we guess isn’t as high as we had hoped, but still noticeably better than the average Joe.
To detect people who are telling lies, the software focuses on the behaviors of people who appeared in court and how they acted or responded to questions, like how often they would look at the questioner, speaking with more vocal fill, and also how many gestures they would make. These are aspects that people tend not to take count of, according to Mihalcea.
As to why they turned to court cases as opposed to conducting their tests in a lab, Mihalcea said, “In laboratory experiments, it’s difficult to create a setting that motivates people to truly lie. The stakes are not high enough. We can offer a reward if people can lie well—pay them to convince another person that something false is true. But in the real world there is true motivation to deceive.”
The researchers are hoping that eventually this software could one day become a tool for professions that might need it, like security agents, juries, or even mental health professionals.
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