B11

Ten men are interviewed on video for ten minutes. Each man gives his opinion on important social issues such as capital punishment and anti-smoking laws. All the person watching video has to do is to decide which of them are lying. It sounds easy, doesn't it? Most people think it does. They are confident of their ability to detect a liar.

 PUNISH

B12

After all, we live in a society where lies are commonplace - in one study people confessed to telling at least one lie a day (college students two).

 COMMON

B13

Yet  psychologists at the University of California have demonstrated that most people perform really badly on the test,

 PSYCHE

B14

even though each liar gave a variety of clues. Even groups who might have been expected to score better-police officers, lawyers, judges and FBI agents- got low marks, showing little more skill than the man in the street.

 VARY

B15

In fact the only two groups of people who have proved consistently good at spotting liars are US Secret Service agents, and clinical psychologists who are doing research into lying. The reason why they're good is that they don't rely on one single clue, a lack of eye contact for example, but they notice and interpret many different signals that liars often give out.

 CONSIST

B16

These signals, which are different for each liar, and are virtually undetectable in very skilled liars, can be verbal and non-verbal.

 DETECT