The truth about lies

Deception is rife in nature. However, the ability to detect deception is not as common a trait. An as-yet unpublished review of 253 studies has found that overall accuracy in deception detection is around 53 percent. There are, however, a few people who can spot deception and a study on such people's ability has thus far found that fleeting facial expressions that leak emotions such as anger or guilt are key indicators for lying. Another finding from this study was that those people who have an excellent ability to detect lying have tended to have difficult childhoods, in which sensitivity to emotional temperature athome could have been useful.