3 Simple Ways To Catch A Liar In The Act and 1 Easy Way

This article from Time and INC. claims that according to researchers cited by the Harvard Business School, there are three easy ways to catch a liar.

1. Liars tend to use a lot more words to make their points than the truth-tellers did.

2. People who swear more often tend to lie more often.

3. Liars tended to use third-person pronouns more often (“he,” “she,” and “they”).

That sounds good, but human judgment is still involved. How about using a computer instead? An article in New Scientist describes the work of linguists Massimo Poesio at the University of Essex in Colchester, UK, and Tommaso Fornaciari at the Center for Mind/Brain sciences in Trento, Italy, who use a technique called stylometry, to create software that can tell when someone is lying.

I guess the idea of robot overlords is getting less far-fetched every day.