Humans Social Beings: Spotting a Liar Research Paper

Spotting a Liar
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Spotting a Liar
Humans are social beings and have over the years proven to be the most advanced animals. This is relative to the fact that they have the ability to apply their intellect to different scenarios. Ideally, as a person one is able to assess a situation and come up with the quick solution to a complication or simply make amends on the fly. In light of the human intellect, the social interactions between people tend to be quite complicated. Other than telling the truth, people are able to tell lies depending on the situation and make good of the situation either for selfish gains or simply easing the situation. Robin Marantz captures the essence of lies. There are volumes of material that have been released delving on the aspects of lies and how to spot a liar. There are books and even movies that claim to shed light on how to spot if one is lying (HENIG, 2006). As such, for most, people there are stereotypic characteristics and behaviors that can use to spot a liar. It is common for people to state behaviors such as looking away, looking up, looking down and covering their mouth among others. The truth is that, research indicates that more than 70% of the people that claim that they are able to spot a liar do not have a clue about how to it. As such, most of the people are misled to think they are actually aware when one is lying while in essence they do not.
The idea of getting to know when someone is lying has been of paramount importance especially in the age of terror attacks. Government agencies that are concerned with national security are constantly looking for better ways to understand what persons planning or involved in activities that are terrorist in nature are thinking (HENIG, 2006). Given that such information may not be freely given, the agents have to device ways they can tell when a person is actually telling the truth from when they are lying. The polygraph is one of the ways that has been developed in the recent past to determine when one is lying. While the scientific basis for the machine have drawn mixed reactions, there are new developments in this area such brain mapping that use more complex procedures to determine if one is lying (HENIG, 2006).
Understanding when someone is lying to you can be quite a daunting task. This relative to the fact that, as the article indicates, there are rarely black and white areas. It is complex process that in some of the cases requires expensive and technologically advanced hardware and software. Not many people have the ability to buy such equipment and they may not even be applicable in all areas. This is an aspect that Robin makes clear, when referring to the polygraph and the way t...