Does deception have a tell? Better said, can you tell if someone has deceit on his mind? We're talking the guy in the next cubicle, not David Blaine. According to the authors of recently published papers in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology and Economics, and the Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, maybe.
Says the Chronicle of Higher Education,
[M]aybe the answer is in his face. A 2009 paper tried to determine whether we know someone has Machiavellian tendencies just by looking at him. Researchers showed participants pictures of the faces of people who had taken the Mach-IV. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, they found that participants’ amygdalas, which process emotion, were activated more when they viewed the faces of high Machs. They also lit up when they viewed people who scored high on psychopathy measures, though not on faces of people who scored high on narcissism (incidentally, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism make up what psychologists ominously call “the dark triad”). From the paper:
"This indicates facial geometry contains accurate and reliable signals that reflect an individual’s trustworthiness and the neurology associated with threat detection is sensitive to these features."
Again, there are reasons to be skeptical. I haven’t come across follow-ups to this study (let me know if I’ve missed them) and there are scientists who think this kind of light-it-up brain-scan research is hooey.
Both of these studies depend on the widely used Mach-IV measure, which asks participants to agree or disagree with 20 statements like “All in all, it is better to be humble and honest than to be important and dishonest” and “Most people who get ahead in the world lead clean, moral lives” and “The best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear.” You have to wonder whether a true high Mach would really answer those questions honestly.
So, who's on first, here? People who believe one can, essentially, read minds by looking at faces (after analyzing brains)? Or people who believe they can fool people who ask questions by dishonestly answering those questions? PSYCH-OUT! Read the entire Chronicle article here. Read The Prince here. (I have always thought The Prince was just a little satirical, but maybe that's just me).
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