A team of experts has identified a new method to help detect when someone is lying, which is surprisingly simple. The new study revealed that one of the best ways to determine if someone is lying is to "try to distract them during questioning."
The study explains that deception puts more pressure on the brain and requires more energy to carry out successfully. In other words, lying during interviews consumes more cognitive energy than telling the truth. Keeping this in mind, the experts discovered that by performing a secondary task while lying, it becomes more difficult to concoct and maintain a convincing lie, making it easier to identify a liar.
It appears that the additional cognitive effort required to create a lie, while doing something else simultaneously, means that the liar struggles to keep it together.
As part of the study conducted by a team of experts at the University of Portsmouth, 164 people were asked about their level of support for controversial topics in the news, which at the time included issues like "COVID-19" passports, immigration, Brexit, and Boris Johnson. They were then asked to either lie or tell the truth again about the same issues. Some were tasked with remembering a seven-digit vehicle registration number shown to participants earlier, which they were told was very important.
The results indicated that the stories of liars were deemed less credible than those of truth-tellers, particularly when liars also had a secondary task to focus on.
