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The Book of Tells (Peter Collett)[unlocked]

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THE BOOK OF TELLS<br />

attempts to secure peace. 9 People have all kinds <strong>of</strong><br />

motives for ignoring the fact that someone is lying to<br />

them. A wife may choose to fool herself that her husband<br />

is not having an affair in the hope that he will lose<br />

interest in the other woman and return to her. Equally,<br />

parents may overlook the fact that their son is taking<br />

drugs because they don't want to have to deal with the<br />

problem.<br />

• THRESHOLD SETTINGS. Individuals' assumptions about<br />

the prevalence <strong>of</strong> lying can affect their ability to spot liars<br />

and truth-tellers. People who are very trusting and who<br />

therefore don't expect others to deceive them are likely<br />

to set their detection threshold very high. As a result they<br />

are likely to identify the truth-tellers quite accurately, but<br />

not the liars. Highly suspicious people have the opposite<br />

problem - because they set their threshold too low, they<br />

inadvertently identify most <strong>of</strong> the liars, but fail to spot<br />

the truth-tellers. Police <strong>of</strong>ficers are a good example <strong>of</strong> the<br />

second type because they tend to set their lie detector<br />

threshold so low. <strong>The</strong> only reason why they are successful<br />

at spotting liars is because they think everyone is lying! 10<br />

• GUT FEELINGS. <strong>The</strong>re are two ways <strong>of</strong> identifying a liar<br />

- by looking out for clues to deception; or by relying on<br />

one's intuition. It has recently been discovered that<br />

people who use their gut feelings are less accurate in<br />

detecting liars than those who try to base their decisions<br />

on the evidence. 11 Indeed, when it comes to detecting<br />

deceit, intuition is usually more <strong>of</strong> a hindrance than a<br />

help.<br />

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