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The one place that we can consistently catch people lying is in job interviews. And the question has long been how do you catch out these liars? The answer is you need to outsmart them.
But how?
Well lying uses cognitive resources. It is effortful because you have to construct an alternative narrative in your head and then keep this in your mind as you answer questions on this, or questions related to this. It is an effortful process. Therefore, if you can disrupt this process, you can uncover the liars.
Professor Aldert Vrij, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Portsmouth used this principle to design an experiment to outsmart liars. The way he did this is to give interview participants a cognitive task. This cognitive task means participants need to use cognitive resources and so this makes it much more difficult to tell a convincing lie and stick to this accurately.
The experiment had participants interviewed about societal topics, but they were instructed to either represent their own honest views or to lie about their views. They were also given time to prepare for this interview, giving them the ability to prepare elaborate and convincing lies.
