如 何 識 別 謊 言

文/戴維·羅布森 譯/任笑川

如 何 識 別 謊 言

文/戴維·羅布森 譯/任笑川

Forget body language or eye movements. There are much better ways to identify the deceitful.別管什么肢體語言或眼睛活動了，識別說謊者有更好的招數(shù)。

T homas Ormerod’s team of security of fi cers faced a seemingly impossible task. At airports across Europe, they were asked to interview passengers on their history and travel plans. Ormerod had planted a handful of people arriving at security with a false history, and a madeup future—and his team had to guess who they were. In fact, just one in 1000 of the people they interviewed would be deceiving them. Identifying the liar should have been about as easy as fi nding a needle in a haystack.

托馬斯·奧默羅德的安檢團隊面臨一個似乎無法完成的任務。在歐洲各地的機場，他們的任務是詢問旅客的過往經(jīng)歷和旅行計劃。奧默羅德特意安排了幾個人過安檢時提供虛假經(jīng)歷和虛構計劃，而他的團隊必須找出這些人。事實上，編造謊言的只占受詢者的千分之一。識別哪個人說謊就像大海撈針一樣難。

[2]那么，他們如何識別謊言呢？一個辦法大概是關注對方的肢體語言或眼睛活動吧？這個主意很糟糕。一項項研究已經(jīng)表明，即使是訓練有素的警官，通過觀察肢體語言和面部表情來測謊，基本上跟碰運氣差不多。根據(jù)一項研究，2萬人中僅有50人的判斷準確率超過80%。絕大多數(shù)人的判斷就像拋硬幣。

[2] So, what did they do? One option would be to focus on body language or eye movements, right? It would have been a bad idea. Study after study has found that attempts—even by trained police of fi cers—to read lies from body language and facial expressions aremore often little better than chance. According to one study, just 50 out of 20,000 people managed to make a correct judgement with more than 80% accuracy. Most people might as well just fl ip a coin.

[3] Ormerod’s team tried something different—and managed to identify the fake passengers in the vast majority of cases. Their secret? To throw away many of the accepted cues to deception and start anew with some startlingly straightforward techniques.

[3]奧默羅德的團隊嘗試了新辦法，并在茫茫人海中成功找出了假旅客。他們的秘訣是什么？那就是拋掉許多廣為人知的欺騙信號，而采用一些相當直接的全新的技術手段。

[4] Over the last few years, deception research has been plagued by disappointing results. Most previous work had focused on reading a liar’s intentions via their body language or from their face—blushing cheeks, a nervous laugh, darting eyes. Even if we think we have a poker face, we might still give away tiny flickers of movement known as “microexpressions” that might give the game away, they claimed.

[4]過去幾年，騙術研究的結果一直令人失望。先前絕大多數(shù)的研究集中于通過身體語言或面部變化——臉頰發(fā)紅，笑聲發(fā)緊，眼球快速轉動等信號——來識別說謊者的動機。研究者聲稱，即使我們自認長著一副撲克臉，還是會有細微的下意識動作，即所謂的“微表情”，這些表情可能暴露騙局。

[5]然而，心理學家越仔細觀察，那些原本可靠的信號就越飄忽不定。問題就在于人類行為模式的千變萬化。因為熟識對方，你也許能夠根據(jù)其面部肌肉抽搐來判定對方是否誠實，但其他人的表現(xiàn)可能截然不同；身體語言沒有通用的解讀法。薩塞克斯大學的奧默羅德認為：“沒有什么與欺騙總是對應一致的信號。我會發(fā)出緊張的笑聲，其他人會變得更嚴肅，有些人會尋求目光交流，也有人會避免目光接觸?！?/p>

[5] Yet the more psychologists looked, the more elusive any reliable cues appeared to be. The problem is the huge variety of human behaviour. With familiarity, you might be able to spot someone’s tics whenever they are telling the truth, but others will probably act very differently; there is no universal dictionary of body language.“There are no consistent signs thatalways arise alongside deception,” says Ormerod, who is based at the University of Sussex. “I giggle nervously, others become more serious, some make eye contact, some avoid it.”

[6] Clearly, a new method is needed. But given some of the dismal results from the lab, what should it be? Ormerod’s answer was disarmingly simple: shift the focus away from the subtle mannerisms to the words people are actually saying, gently probing the right pressure points to make the liar’s front crumble.

[6]顯然，這需要新方法。但是，鑒于實驗室得出的一些結果令人灰心，到底什么方法有效呢？奧默羅德的答案非常簡單，解人疑惑：把關注點從微妙的小動作轉移到實際的言語上，慢慢探尋正確的壓力點，最終讓騙子的防御前線崩塌。

[7] Ormerod and his colleague Coral Dando at the University of Wolverhampton identified a series of conversational principles that should increase your chances of uncovering deceit:

● Use open questions. This forces the liar to expand on their tale until they become entrapped in their own web of deceit.

● Employ the element of surprise. Investigators should try to increase the liar’s “cognitive load”—such as by asking them unanticipated questions that might be slightly confusing, or asking them to report an event backwards in time—techniques that make it harder for them to maintain their fa?ade.

[7]奧默羅德和來自伍爾弗漢普頓大學的同事科拉爾·丹多確定了一系列會話原則，這些原則應該可以提高識別謊言的機率：

●采用開放式問題。這會迫使撒謊者不斷擴展他們的故事，直到陷入自己編織的謊言網(wǎng)里不能自拔。

●運用突然襲擊。調查者要設法增加說謊者的“認知負荷”——比如問一些他們無法預料、可能略帶迷惑性的問題，或者要求他們倒敘某件事——這些技巧會讓他們很難維持假象。

●留意可以驗證的小細節(jié)。如果乘客說他們在牛津大學上班，那就問問他們上班的路徑。不過，如果發(fā)現(xiàn)確鑿的矛盾之處，也不要立刻揭穿——最好讓他們越說越自信，隨口吐出更多謊言，而不要去糾正他們的錯誤。

● Watch for small, veri fi able details. If a passenger says they are at the University of Oxford, ask them to tell you about their journey to work. If youdo find a contradiction, though, don’t give yourself away—it’s better to allow the liar’s confidence to build as they rattle off more falsehoods, rather than correcting them.

● Observe changes in confidence. Watch carefully to see how a potential liar’s style changes when they are challenged: a liar may be just as verbose when they feel in charge of a conversation, but their comfort zone is limited and they may clam up if they feel like they are losing control.

●觀察信心是否生變。仔細觀察潛在撒謊者遭到懷疑時說話風格的變化：當他們覺得自己掌控對話時，說話會很啰嗦，但他們的舒適區(qū)域有限，如果感到自己將要失控，就會三緘其口。

[8] Ormerod openly admits his strategy might sound like common sense. “A friend said that you are trying to patent the art of conversation,” he says. But the results speak for themselves. The team prepared a handful of fake passengers, with realistic tickets and travel documents. They were given a week to prepare their story, and were then asked to line up with other, genuine passengers at airports across Europe. Of fi cers trained in Ormerod and Dando’s interviewing technique were more than 20 times more likely to detect these fake passengers than people using the suspicious signs, fi nding them 70% of the time.

[8]奧默羅德坦承他的策略可能聽起來像常識。他說：“有個朋友跟我說，你是要為談話藝術申請專利啊?！钡墙Y果不言自明。團隊預備了幾個假乘客，他們有真的機票和旅行證件。他們有一周時間準備各自的故事，然后在歐洲各國的機場和真正的乘客一起排隊等待檢查。與靠識別可疑信號判斷真假的同事相比，經(jīng)過奧默羅德和丹多的面談技巧培訓的安檢人員發(fā)現(xiàn)說謊乘客的機率高20多倍，達到70%的正確率。

說服的藝術

[9]萊文有關面談技巧的實驗證明同樣有效。和奧默羅德一樣，他相信，設計精妙的面談以暴露說謊者言談中的漏洞，要比試圖識別肢體語言中的說慌信號好得多。最近，他設計了一個問答游戲，讓大學生兩人一組進行，每答對一題獎勵現(xiàn)金五美元。學生們并不知道，他們的搭檔其實是演員，當游戲主持人臨時離開房間時，演員會提議快速偷看答案。有小部分學生聽從了這個作弊的提議。

The art of persuasion

[9] Levine’s experiments have proven similarly powerful. Like Ormerod, he believes that clever interviews designed to reveal holes in a liar’s storyare far better than trying to identify tell-tale signs in body language. He recently set up a trivia game, in which undergraduates played in pairs for a cash prize of $5 for each correct answer they gave. Unknown to the students, their partners were actors, and when the game master temporarily left the room, the actor would suggest that they quickly peek at the answers to cheat on the game. A handful of the students took him up on the offer.

[10] Afterwards, the students were all questioned by real federal agents about whether or not they had cheated. Using tactical questions to probe their stories—without focusing on body language or other cues—they managed to find the cheaters with more than 90% accuracy. Importantly, a follow-up study found that even novices managed to achieve nearly 80% accuracy, simply by using the right, open-ended questions that asked, for instance, how their partner would tell the story.

[10]事后，學生們都接受了真正的聯(lián)邦特工的質詢，要求他們回答游戲時是否作弊。采用有策略的提問來探究他們的說法，而不是專注于肢體語言或其他信號，特工們識別作弊者的正確率高達90%以上。重要的是，一項后續(xù)研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，即使這一行的新人也能達到近80%的正確率，他們只不過采用了合適的開放式問題，例如問如果換作他們的搭檔會如何講述發(fā)生的事情。

[11]實際上，調查者常常說服作弊的人坦承他們的不當行為。萊文說：“專家們深諳此道。”他們的秘訣很簡單，擅長說服藝術的高手都知道：他們在談話一開始就會問學生，覺得自己有多誠實。僅僅讓學生說出自己說的是實話，就可以引導學生接下來更加坦誠。萊文表示：“人們希望被看作誠實的人，這會讓他們更加配合。即使不誠實的人在此之后也很難裝出樂于合作的樣子，所以基本就可以判斷誰在說謊了。”

[11] Indeed, often the investigators persuaded the cheaters to openly admit their misdeed. “The experts were fabulously good at this,” says Levine. Their secret was a simple trick known to masters in the art of persuasion: they would open the conversation by asking the students how honest they were. Simply getting them to say they told the truth primed them to be morecandid later. “People want to think of being honest, and this ties them into being cooperative,” says Levine. “Even the people who weren’t honest had difficulty pretending to be cooperative [after this], so for the most part you could see who was faking it.”

[12] Clearly, such tricks may already be used by some expert detectives—but given the folklore surrounding body language, it’s worth emphasising just how powerful persuasion can be compared to the dubious science of body language. Despite their successes, Ormerod and Levine are both keen that others attempt to replicate and expand on their fi ndings, to make sure that they stand up in different situations.

[12]顯然，一些經(jīng)驗豐富的偵探或許早已用上這些竅門了——但是關于肢體語言有許多民間說法，因而有必要強調，與不可靠的肢體語言相比，說服的效力巨大。盡管奧默羅德和萊文都取得了成功，他們仍然熱切期望其他人嘗試復制和拓展他們的研究結果，以確保那些結果在不同的場合都站得住腳。

[13] Although the techniques will primarily help law enforcement, the same principles might just help you hunt out the liars in your own life. “I do it with kids all the time,” Ormerod says. The main thing to remember is to keep an open mind and not to jump to early conclusions: just because someone looks nervous, or struggles to remember a crucial detail, does not mean they are guilty. Instead, you should be looking for more general inconsistencies.

[14] There is no fool-proof form of lie detection, but using a little tact, intelligence, and persuasion, you can hope that eventually, the truth will out.

[13]盡管這些技巧主要是幫助執(zhí)法部門，但同樣的原則也可以幫你找出周圍的騙子。奧默羅德說：“我一直用這些方法和孩子們打交道?！敝匾氖怯涀。槐С梢?，不過早下結論：僅僅因為某人表現(xiàn)有點緊張，或是回憶某個重要細節(jié)很費力，并不能表明他們作假。相反，應該尋找更普遍的矛盾之處。

[14]沒有萬無一失的測謊方法，但是運用一點點機智、智慧和說服技巧，就可以期待，真相終將大白。

（譯者單位：青島科技大學外國語學院）

The Best (and Worst) Ways to Spot a Liar

ByDavid Robson