Tag: Social Psychology

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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Social media profile pictures can reveal clues about personality, according to new research.

Thousands of Twitter user’s pictures were included in the study, along with an analysis of their personality.

Here is how to spot each of the five aspects of personality:
1. Conscientiousness
More conscientious people used pictures that were more natural, colourful and bright.
They expressed the most emotions of all the different personality types.
This probably reflects the fact that conscientious people like to do what is expected of them.
2. Openness to experience
People high in openness to experience often had the best pictures: these tended to be sharper, at higher contrast.
Their photos tended to be more artistic or unusual and their faces were often larger in the frame.
3. Extraverts
Extraverts used more colourful images and were more likely to show a group of people rather than just themselves.
Unsurprisingly, they were usually beaming at the camera.
4. Neuroticism
People higher in neuroticism tended to use simpler photos with less colour.

They were more likely to show a blank expression or even to be hiding their face.

5. Agreeableness
Highly agreeable people post relatively poor pictures of themselves…
…but they are probably smiling and the pictures are bright and lively.
The study’s authors sum up their findings:

“Users that are either high in openness or neuroticism post less photos of people and when these are present, they tend not to express positive emotions.
The difference between the groups is in the aesthetic quality of the photos, higher for openness and lower for neuroticism.
Users high in conscientiousness, agreeableness or extraversion prefer pictures with at least one face and prefer presenting positive emotions through their facial expressions.
Conscientious users post more what is expected of a profile picture: pictures of one face that expresses the most positive emotion out of all traits.
Extraverts and agreeable people regularly post colorful pictures that convey emotion, although they are not the most aesthetically pleasing, especially for the latter trait.”

The study was published in the journal AAAI DIGITAL LIBRARY (Liu et al., 2016).
from PsyBlog http://bit.ly/1XutQe0