Watching for Hotspots

Dr. Herve's talk was, as predicted, really interesting.  He started off with a video clip of a woman, clearly nervous, relating a series of events, and then asked us if she was telling the truth or not.  If not for realizing that this might be a "trick question," I think all of us would not have hesitated to say that she was lying in various parts of her story.  But as explained in the rest of the seminar, it's important to keep in mind the "baseline" of the person you're talking to.  Are they usually kind of a nervous person?  Do certain topics cause them to communicate in a different way, regardless of whether they're telling the truth or not?  How do our expectations of "normal" social behaviour impact our assessment of a person's truthfulness?

The main message I got from the seminar was that although our observations of a person's behaviour and speech may display "hotspots" of unusual behaviour, those hotspots don't necessarily indicate that the person is saying something untrue.  It's important not to jump to conclusions about the trustworthiness of someone's version of events just because they are acting in a way that makes us feel like something odd is going on.  It's Although telling an untruth requires more cognitive effort than telling the truth, the fact that someone is finding something hard to remember may simply reflect the fact that the events were not particularly noteworthy at the time, and so were not assigned a priority space in their memories.

In a mediation context, of course, a professional mediator is expected in any case to avoid taking sides and prejudicing their assessment of a situation.  Another important thing to keep in mind when interviewing people is to say as little as possible.  Starting off by asking someone to "tell me what happened" is usually the best way to go.  Find out as much as you can using open-ended questions, and only ask for clarification when necessary.

While I was listening, I couldn't help but evaluate my own behaviour in terms of the indicators Dr. Herve was talking about.  Would it be possible to become a "better" liar by attempting to control the behavioural cues that indicate "hotspots" of possible untruth?  Would I be able to fake a more polite convincing smile if I remembered to crinkle the corners of my eyes?  Win a game of poker by avoiding nervous twitches?  Dr. Herve said that despite his increased training and ability to spot speech and body language cues in others, he hasn't gotten any better at controlling his own, and that this pattern holds in general.  So much for my professional gambling career, I guess.