FALSE DATA – LIES

Overcoming the challenges in understanding

individual and collective human behaviour

The purpose of research, in social sciences, is having a multitude of methods used

on humans (interviews, surveys) to find the truth about something, with or without
their consent.

One of the biggest impediments for the social scientists is detecting lies when doing
their research. Therefore, in a social experiment, which requires interviewing the
participants to reach a result, with the adding of lies by some of the subjects the
outcome of the study is certain to change, an outcome that will be based on false
data.

The first thing experts have to do so they will avoid receiving ‘false data’ into their
research is gaining knowledge in what a lie is and how humans behave while lying.
However, scientists found numerous methods of detecting and dealing with lies
going from external and internal aspects of a human to the use of special equipment.

The lie is a complex psychological act, with socio-cultural resonances, which targets
several existential layers: ontological, gnoseological, rhetorical, axiological,
anthropological, cultural and sociological. It is a form of efficient fiction, of motivated
jump in the unreal, of removing by language or gesture from what is commonly
recognized as existing, as true, as value. As a way of deviating from what it is, the lie
shows that the distance between the real and the unreal is regulated by semiotic
mechanisms, that it is not always the correspondence between what is affirmed and
the facts, that verbal or paraverbal tools are excellent means of cheating, hiding,
nudging. Lying is a cultural acquisition that refines as the subject acquires a certain
praxiological experience, reaches a certain cognitive performance, knows how to
select and rank, has a certain discursive performance, is integrated into the
community and has certain interests.

The liar is a well-placed man. Counterfactual discourse presupposes some

prerequisites: the structuring of a goal, rendered in the form of imaginary material,
the possibility of expression in contrariety with the aim pursued, the ability of a
subject to choose among several favourable options.

The act of lying presupposes:

 A certain projective, ideological capacity that goes beyond the present

(generally, the liar is an unhappy one).
 Knowing the truth and abstaining from telling it.
 Effective fructification of the advantage of knowing more than another subject,
of being one step ahead of him.

Because lying exists, people developed the skill of detecting lies told by others.
Besides the art of deceit which is present for such a long time, humans created the
art of detecting lies. Since antiquity, criminals were made to tell the truth with the
help of different methods. Some of them were very brutal (torture), others were more
subtle like getting the lawbreaker drunk.

In the course of time, many ideas and theories sustained that certain behaviour
indicate lies, some of them being closer to the truth, others not.

Simple signs of the lie:

The type of lie and whether or not it folds to the personality of the liar will cause the
signs of lies. Occasionally they are very obvious, especially when the liar feels guilty.

Obvious signs include:

 Excessive denial - repeated protests related to innocence;

 Babbling - stumbling into words without natural fluency;
  Shaking hands - rubbing his hands, playing with his fingers and hands as he
speaks.
 It is impossible to make visual contact or to get out of it.

Most people who intend to say a lie fabricate their story long before and become
comfortable with it and are rarely caught so easily. Likewise, many of the signs
above may be simple signs of nervousness or shyness or discomfort caused by the
new situation.

There are many subtle signs that many people overlook and that can affect even the
perfect liars.

These are:

 Formal speech - the use of long, grammatically correct words and a series of
expression formulas that would normally be shortened, suggesting a written
discourse rather than a natural conversation.
 Very few gestures and no fixation - physical movements illustrate what is
described and are natural and common activities;
 Justification - trying to justify every detail with long explanations;
 The mismatch - the mismatch between the tone of the voice and the
expressiveness.

The problem of whether lies can be found satisfactorily through non-verbal methods
is a rather controversial topic. In trying to make the detection of lies more accurate,
different machines have been built to capture the behaviour that reveal the lie.

The lie detector, the polygraph, measures the psychological stress that a person
endures in a number of measurements when he or she makes a series of statements
or answer some questions. This method happened to fail, but it is still used. The lie
detectors do not measure the lie. They measure some physiological changes in a
person's body, which are considered automatic responses to the stress caused by
the lie. It's about blood pressure, pulse, breathing, sweating, electro-dermal activity.
When these functions go out of normality, one can assume that the subject is lying.
So lie is not a normal human process.

Various serums of the truth have been proposed, but none are believed to be
trustworthy.

More recently, scientists have discovered that the lie activates different brain
structures during MRI scanning, which can lead to a much more accurate lie
detecting method. The researchers found that telling a lie and telling the truth
requires different activities in the brain. Brain sections that are important to focus
attention and to monitor error control (the anterior cingulate cortex and parts of the
prefrontal cortex and the premotor cortex) were more active in people who lied than
in those who were telling the truth. If truth is the state of normal brain response, then
lying requires increased brain activity in the regions involved in inhibition and control.

People who are lying usually blush. Based on this finding, researchers have
developed a lie detector that measures skin temperature around the eyes. It has an
accuracy of 83-90%. Normally people have 29 degrees around their eyes but when
they lie they have 30 degrees.

Because most people feel embarrassed when they lie, they instinctively try to
separate themselves from the lie. In the US, by analysing the words of false alibi
suspects, F.B.I. has recently discovered a clue: liars were trying to remove
references to themselves as they were lying, avoiding using the words at the first
person. Also, the liars will try to avoid using the name of the people they are lying
about.

People think that the lie is associated with an increase in movements, but in fact,
when people lie, they reduce their movements. Recent studies have shown that in
case of highly motivated liars the lie is associated with a decrease in the movements
of the hands, feet and soles.

When people say lies, four mechanisms come into action that could help us to
recognize more easily when we lie:

 Arousing - Lying causes anxiety and awakening, either because of cognitive

dissonance between conflict values with behaviour or fear of being caught. It
can be detected by the lie detector, speech errors, or hesitation, rehearsals,
follicle, shifted activities, blinking, tone picking, pupil dilation.
 Behavioural control - We're trying to control the body language that can
expose us. In fact, this is impossible and there are escapes, for example
when we control our face, our feet are giving us away.
 Emotions - Our emotions change when we lie. Guilt may also appear. Micro
movements at the facial level can betray hidden emotions.
 Thinking - In order to lie, we need to think more, to ensure the coherence of
the facts we relate. This makes us have more and more speech breaks. We
are tempted to talk more generally to avoid being caught with specific details.

On the other hand, there are situations where lies cannot be detected by
researchers. These situations are met when a person’s brain perceives the lie as a
truth. Therefore, the mind and body will act normally while telling the lie and if the
people are confronted with the truth they may not recognise it, or they realise that the
lie was actually considered as truth for them.

False data, which in this context can be interpreted as lies, are an obstacle that
social sciences confront very often. Humans, as unpredictable as they are, will
always come with something new to this domain in deceiving scientists, on their own
will or not. However, experts struggle, throughout technology and knowledge of the
human body and behaviour, to reduce the wrong outcome of research even though it
is impossible to eliminate this obstacle.