How being able to read body language, nonverbal behavior and microexpressions can play a crucial role in the jury selection process, particularly in the high profile Michael Jackson murder trial.
Magnet Magic: “The Truth of the Matter”
A new study suggests that magnets can be used for more than just pinning your kid’s artwork to the refrigerator.
Magnetic fields have been used in science for quite a while for a plethora of things ranging from fMRI’s to the simple navigational compass. It has long been known that magnetic fields, which are invisible to the human eye, can have effects on the tangible world.
What if magnets could effect our ability to deceive people?
Well, Smartplanet has reported on that very idea. Researchers, Inga Karton and Talis Bachmann from Estonia, revealed that magnets, strategically placed, can affect a person’s proclivity to lie. Scientists stimulated a part of the brain labeled DPC or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with magnets. This same type of scientific technique is used to study elusive qualities of human nature, such as morality and memory.
Law enforcement everywhere would love to procure an instrument as beneficial as a truth extractor. What could be better or easier than placing an innocuous item such as a magnet on someone and being able to extract the truth?
This study, published in Behavioural Brain Research, has a long way to go to prove that magnets directly influence a person’s propensity to lie. The sample size of this group was very small (16 participants) and there was no real motivation for the subjects to lie.
However, the preliminary findings are interesting and further studies could prove beneficial for how lie detectives try to extrapolate the “truth of the matter”.
What do you think? Could a simple magnet be used as a lie detection tool? If lie detection were that easy, wouldn’t we have figured it out by now?
Related articles
Researchers find magnetic brain stimulation appears to make lying more difficult (medicalxpress.com)
Study Suggests Magnets Can Force You to Tell the Truth (science.slashdot.org)
After A Magnetic Pulse to the Brain, Study Subjects Cannot Tell a Lie By Rebecca Boyle (imullins89.wordpress.com)
Quick deception links from December 2010
Here are the deception-related crimepsychblog tweets from last month.
Technology-facilitated deception detection (brain scans and machines that go ping):
Thermal Imaging as a Lie Detection Tool at Airports http://retwt.me/1QhzC
New research on fMRI-based deception detection measures’ vulnerability to countermeasures http://retwt.me/1QbCJ
Article on fMRI in court is one of Nature News top stories of 2010. Well worth a (re)read. http://retwt.me/1QfBJ
New research: Improving efficacy of Concealed Information Test? “Denoised P300 & machine learning-based CIT method” http://retwt.me/1QbCC
Psychophysiological Response Pattern in Symptom Validity Testing Arch Clin Neurology http://retwt.me/1QbDE
Great write-up of a rare study of fMRI countermeasures (via @ResearchBlogs) How To Fool A Lie Detector Brain Scan http://goo.gl/fb/7oNFv
Free access: The Polygraph and Forensic Psychiatry (Don Grubin) J. American Academy of Psychiatry & Law http://retwt.me/1QggR
Beliefs, predictions and shortcuts in the deceitful brain (Uni of Cambridge article): http://bit.ly/eK1rVw
Ocular motor deception detection technology http://secprodonline.com/articles/2010/09/01/seeing-through-the-lies.aspx
Frequent truth telling makes lying more difficult, but frequent lying makes lying easier. http://is.gd/hQeIM
Articles on cognitive neuroscience of confabulation, free access til Feb 28 (scroll down ->symposia) http://ht.ly/3qYl8
“When volunteers suspected they were being lied to activity levels rose in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex” New Scientst http://retwt.me/1Qcgj
Interviewing (deception detection the good ole fashion’d way):
Eliciting Cues to False Intent: A New Application of Strategic Interviewing http://retwt.me/1QhzA
Influence of Investigator Bias on the Elicitation of True & False Confessions http://retwt.me/1QhzB
Looks & Lies: Physical Attractiveness in Online Dating Self-Presentation and Deception. Communication Research 37(3) http://retwt.me/1QgIz
And some other deception-related stuff that caught my eye:
From Scientific American: What Makes An Honest Smile Honest? http://bit.ly/hkX7HN
Can deception be a life skill? http://bit.ly/e4jYYk
@evbasedmummy discusses how and why parents lie to their children http://is.gd/ivosZ
Cricket’s old boys are proposing lie detectors as a way to combat corruption: http://ht.ly/3q4KH Sigh
Great summary of the DWP ‘Lie Detector’ trials from @Unity_MoT http://tinyurl.com/2366dlg. Big sigh.