Tag: psychology

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How to tell if someone is lying

It may be easier to tell if someone is lying when you cannot see their face, new research finds.

 Contrary to most people’s expectations, being able to see someone’s full face does not help lie detection.

In fact, it actually hurts it.
Dr Amy-May Leach, the study’s first author, explained that the reason may be because it helps people focus on important cues:

“The presence of a veil may compel observers to pay attention to more ‘diagnostic’ cues, such as listening for verbal indicators of deception.”

The finding emerges from a study of the wearing of veils in court.
Witnesses appearing in US, UK and Canadian courts are not allowed to wear a niqab (covering the whole body except for the eyes) or hijab (covering the head and neck).
This is partly because judges believe it is necessary to see the face to tell if someone is lying.
Dr Leach, though, explained that they thought this was wrong:

“We hypothesized that lie detection accuracy would be higher in the niqab condition than in the hijab or no-veil conditions because it would minimize the availability of misleading cues to deception.
It was only when witnesses wore veils (i.e., hijabs or niqabs) that observers performed above chance levels.
Thus, veiling actually improved lie detection.”

The researchers conducted two experiments with a total of 523 participants.
They compared people’s ability to detect lies when witnesses were wearing a hijab or a niqab or neither.
The researchers explained the results:

“Contrary to the assumptions underlying the court decisions cited earlier, lie detection was not hampered by veiling across two studies.
In fact, observers were more accurate at detecting deception in witnesses who wore niqabs or hijabs than those who did not veil.
Discrimination between lie- and truth-tellers was no better than guessing in the latter group, replicating previous findings.”

The study was published in the journal Law and Human Behavior(Leach et al., 2016).
from PsyBlog http://bit.ly/29e8ujJ

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What activities make us happiest? (I'm impressed that people stopped to answer the survey…)

A survey of tens of thousands of people conducted over five years has revealed the 33 activities that make people the happiest.At the top was making love, followed by concerts and the theatre, sport and gardening.
To study everyday happiness, researchers created a smartphone app which ‘dinged’ at random points during the day to ask how they were feeling and what they were doing.
Dr George MacKerron, who created the app, which is called ‘Mappiness’, said:
“Mappiness is interesting because it quizzes people in the moment, before they get a chance to reach for their rose-tinted glasses.
For example, it is common to hear people say that they enjoy their work, but the Mappiness data show that people are happier doing almost anything other than working.
Although we may be positive about our jobs when reflecting on the meaning and purpose they give us, and the money they provide, actually engaging in paid work comes at a significant psychological cost.
It appears that work is highly negatively associated with momentary wellbeing: work really is disutility, as economists have traditionally assumed. At any given moment, we would rather be doing almost anything else.”
Palastexamen-SongDynastie-Kaiser
Below is the full list of activities that made people happy.
The percentages indicated the average increase in happiness levels from engaging in that activity:

  1. Intimacy, making love 14.20%
  2. Theatre, dance, concert 9.29%
  3. Exhibition, museum, library 8.77%
  4. Sports, running, exercise 8.12%
  5. Gardening, allotment 7.83%
  6. Singing, performing 6.95%
  7. Talking, chatting, socialising 6.38%
  8. Birdwatching, nature watching 6.28%
  9. Walking, hiking 6.18%
  10. Hunting, fishing 5.82%
  11. Drinking alcohol 5.73%
  12. Hobbies, arts, crafts 5.53%
  13. Meditating, religious activities 4.95%
  14. Match, sporting event 4.39%
  15. Childcare, playing with children 4.10%
  16. Pet care, playing with pets 3.63%
  17. Listening to music 3.56%
  18. Other games, puzzles 3.07%
  19. Shopping, errands 2.74%
  20. Gambling, betting 2.62%
  21. Watching TV, film 2.55%
  22. Computer games, iPhone games 2.39%
  23. Eating, snacking 2.38%
  24. Cooking, preparing food 2.14%
  25. Drinking tea/coffee 1.83%
  26. Reading 1.47%
  27. Listening to speech/podcast 1.41%
  28. Washing, dressing, grooming 1.18%
  29. Sleeping, resting, relaxing 1.08%
  30. Smoking 0.69%
  31. Browsing the Internet 0.59%
  32. Texting, email, social media 0.56%
  33. Housework, chores, DIY 0.65%

Down at the bottom of the list were the seven activities that made people the least happy:

  1. Travelling, commuting -1.47%
  2. In a meeting, seminar, class -1.50%
  3. Admin, finances, organising -2.45%
  4. Waiting, queueing -3.51%
  5. Care or help for adults -4.30%
  6. Working, studying -5.43%
  7. Sick in bed -20.4%

The study was published in The Economic Journal (Bryson & MacKerron, 2015).
from PsyBlog http://bit.ly/1Pky5SC
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One Minute Personality Tests – PsyBlog

The Big Five personality framework is well-validated across cultures and popular with researchers, although it’s not as well known at the Myers Briggs. The five factors of personality that emerge with some consistency are

Extroversion/introversion
Neuroticism
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Openness to experience

Looking over this list, you can see why the Big Five hasn’t caught on with HR departments. The terms don’t look value-neutral. If you administer the Myers Briggs and report that someone came out as an INTJ or an ESFP, great! Neither one sounds better or worse than the other. But who wants to tell someone they tested as  neurotic and disagreeable?

One dimension that the Big Five has in common with the more popular Myers Briggs is introversion vs. extroversion.

Psychologist Jeremy Dean has posted one-minute measures of introversion and neuroticism, with more to come.

Try it out!

Are You An Introvert, Extrovert or….? 

How Neurotic Are You? One-Minute Personality Test

 

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