Some police see through killer’s lies. “Shown
videotapes of an interrogation of a murder suspect speaking a language
they didn’t understand, some British police officers consistently knew
when the man was lying and when he was telling the truth. Other officers
detected lies and truths about as well as if they had guessed, and some
detected lies less often than if they had guessed, report Aldert Vrij and
Samantha Mann, both psychologists at the University of Portsmouth in
England.

Their study, published in the March-April Applied Cognitive Psychology,
assesses, for the first time, people’s ability to size up a highly motivated
liar.” The study showed police officers a foreign videotape of a suspect denying a murder accusation during an interrogation; he later confessed to the crime. I’d be interested in interviews with the officers who could easily recognize a liar to see if they could articulate the nonverbal cues they use. Science News