October 2014
SCHOOL OF
GRADUATE AND
PROFESSIONAL
STUDIES
10-1-14
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!
Dan Ariely, Ph.D., a behavioral economist and
author of the excellent book “The (Honest) Truth
About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—
Especially Ourselves,” reminds us that all of us lie
and cheat a little and that sometimes we’re
unaware of it. This is particularly the case when we
have a conflict of interest or begin believing exaggerated versions of our own stories. Sometimes we
are even aware of what we are doing, which is much
more serious.
CONTACT
INFORMATION
Thomas Coogan
Chair, Forensic Studies
443-352-4075
[email protected]
Angela Scagliola Reynolds
Director, School of Graduate
and Professional Studies
Recruiting & Admissions
443-352-4414
[email protected]
People lie a lot. There are reports that we are lied
to up to 200 times a day and that on average people tell two to three lies in a 10-minute conversation, and we are not very good about catching lies.
We think we are a lot better at catching lies than it
turns out. Avoiding eye contact is the most presumed sign of lying around the world—even
though it’s false. Research also shows that we
detect lies with only 54 percent accuracy and that
the overwhelming majority of lies go undetected.
Our judgments of whether someone is lying or
telling the truth are correct only a little more often
than chance.
Fortunately many lies include innocent “white
lies” that are harmless. Innocent lying can sometimes be unconscious, but a forensics professional
has to be scrupulous to avoid telling anything less
than the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth. Forensics experts have to be cautious
about not letting their professional ego drive them
to make less-than-completely-truthful statements,
such as claiming to know something that they really do not know. There is always the potential for
experts who can’t admit “I don't know” to make up
an answer. We call this the “advocacy effect” and in
our program, students learn about this and similar
pitfalls as well as how to avoid them.
What about more serious lies such as lying under
oath or during an interview? How do we catch
those kinds of lies? How do we improve our
chance of detecting whether someone is lying? In
forensic studies, forensic science, and cyber forensics, we learn how to identify when people lie, why
they lie, and how to detect lying. All students
explore important legal topics, such as mens rea,
which is Latin for “guilty mind,” to show whether
a lie was intentional or merely an unintentional
white lie.
In cyber forensics students learn how to determine
whether a suspect was at the scene of a crime by
tracking the suspect’s mobile device location. In
forensic science students explore how scientific
techniques can identify both inculpatory (guiltproving) and exculpatory (innocence-proving)
evidence to determine who is telling the truth.
And in forensic studies students learn interviewing skills as well as the difference between the
Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination
compared to the “exculpatory no doctrine” that
allows a guilty person to remain silent but makes it
unlawful for a guilty person to affirmatively lie
about being guilty.
Learn more about Stevenson’s forensics programs
at stevenson.edu.