Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to Science Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: My name is horthe Cham and today in the program,
Speaker 1: we'll be asking the question do our pets lie to us?
Speaker 1: It's a question that pet owners have been asking themselves
Speaker 1: for centuries. Is my feline friend fibbing? Is my dog
Speaker 1: duping me with deceit? We're gonna tackle the general question
Speaker 1: of whether animals can lie, and we're gonna ask if
Speaker 1: they have the same tells that humans do, can you
Speaker 1: catch them in the act. We're going to talk with
Speaker 1: a biologist and also a brain scientist to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of this. Now, this is a special episode
Speaker 1: because today's question comes from a friend of mine, and
Speaker 1: not just a friend, a famous friend. Mary Robinette Kowal
Speaker 1: is a well known science fiction writer. She's only one
Speaker 1: of eighteen people in history to have won all three
Speaker 1: major science fiction awards, that's the Hugo, the Nebula, and
Speaker 1: the Locusts. And she's asking this question for a very
Speaker 1: peculiar reason. She's taught her cat to talk, but now
Speaker 1: she's wondering if her cat is lying to her. So
Speaker 1: here is my chat with science fiction author Mary Robinett Kowal,
Speaker 1: answering her question of whether our pets are being perfidious
Speaker 1: that means they're lying anyways, enjoy.
Speaker 2: My question is I want to know about animals lying
Speaker 2: and if they have the same kind of tells that
Speaker 2: humans have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. What made you think of
Speaker 1: this question?
Speaker 2: What made me think of it is I have a
Speaker 2: cat who uses buttons to talk. Were part of a study.
Speaker 2: There's thousands of animals in this study out of University
Speaker 2: of San Diego. But we're also part of this very
Speaker 2: large movement of people whose animals use buttons to talk.
Speaker 2: It's called augmentative inner species communication. It started with a
Speaker 2: woman named Christina Hunger in twenty nineteen. She was a
Speaker 2: speech language therapist who basically thought, what happens if I
Speaker 2: use the same techniques that I use with my nonverbal
Speaker 2: patients if I use them with my new puppy. And
Speaker 2: she spawns this global movement. So, Elsie, my cat, has
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty word vocabulary, and she, to all appearances,
Speaker 2: will lie to me. For instance, I had just given
Speaker 2: her the button for sleepy, and you model it for
Speaker 2: them the same way you'd model for a child. And
Speaker 2: then she said bedroom lie down, sleepy, and you know,
Speaker 2: I'd been in the kitchen. I was making my lunch.
Speaker 2: But I'm like, I'm going to abandon lunch. I'm going
Speaker 2: to model this. Let's go lie down. And so I
Speaker 2: walk into the bedroom and I lie down. I'm like,
Speaker 2: why is my cat not here? And I go in
Speaker 2: and she's eating my lunch.
Speaker 1: She fooled you, she fooled me to the bedroom to
Speaker 1: leave the room. I feel like you're living in a
Speaker 1: science fiction world.
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 1: I am, yes for that story from up the Pixar
Speaker 1: movie with the dog with the speaker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is like the way I describe it is,
Speaker 2: I am living with a non he an intelligence who
Speaker 2: is an el toddler covered in fur and an alien.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I feel like I could spend the rest
Speaker 1: at the end of you just asking you about this
Speaker 1: movement and your pet. Yeah, but if I'm going to
Speaker 1: try to answer your question.
Speaker 3: We should get to it.
Speaker 2: Yes, please do Okay?
Speaker 1: And now I'm not an animal expert or psychologist, so
Speaker 1: I didn't know the answer. But fortunately I do know
Speaker 1: someone who happens to be both of those things. So
Speaker 1: I reached out to my friend Katie Golden, and Katie
Speaker 1: is a podcaster. She's a host of a podcast called
Speaker 1: Creature Feature, and she's a trained behavioral biologist and a
Speaker 1: trained psychologist. I thought perfect person to ask this question. Okay,
Speaker 1: so here is her first part of the answer.
Speaker 4: There's obviously a ton of deception in nature. You look
Speaker 4: at a leaf insect or stickbug, it's being deceptive, right,
Speaker 4: It's disguised.
Speaker 1: As a leaf or stick camouflage.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's camouflage. So like, there's there's so much deception
Speaker 4: in the natural world. You know, there's even deception on
Speaker 4: the microbial level, like viral DNA tricking the immune system
Speaker 4: into allowing it to go through the body. You know,
Speaker 4: there's so many levels of deception. But I feel like
Speaker 4: what your question and what Mary's question is kind of
Speaker 4: getting at is lying, which to me feels different from
Speaker 4: like passive deception. Like if you're born as a leaf
Speaker 4: insect and you look like a leaf, you're not trying
Speaker 4: to trick anyone necessarily, that's just how you are. But
Speaker 4: evolution has pushed you into this state. When you look
Speaker 4: more and more like this leaf or like the stick,
Speaker 4: you tend to survive more. So it's a type of deception.
Speaker 4: But to me, it doesn't feel like lying. Lying feels
Speaker 4: like I am communicating something to you directly that is
Speaker 4: false and intentionally, so like I am intentionally misleading you
Speaker 4: to get what I want or to avoid consequences.
Speaker 1: So I think you're saying the concept of lying in
Speaker 1: this context of the question, it's more about playing mind games.
Speaker 1: You're not just like wearing some sort of suit to
Speaker 1: help you hide. If you're you're intentionally aware of the
Speaker 1: other organism or person out there, and you're intentionally doing
Speaker 1: something to mess with their minds.
Speaker 4: Yeah. One of my favorite examples of lying without any
Speaker 4: vocalization is in squirrels, where squirrels will bury a ton
Speaker 4: of nuts and they have to do this to survive
Speaker 4: the winter, so that they have these nut caches, and
Speaker 4: so once things are barren and there's not as much food,
Speaker 4: then they can dig them up and eat them. And
Speaker 4: one thing that squirrels will do is they'll try to
Speaker 4: steal each other's nut cases, because why spend all this
Speaker 4: time looking for nuts when you can just see another
Speaker 4: squirrel bearing a nut, remember where they buried the nut,
Speaker 4: and then steal it. And so squirrels have come up
Speaker 4: with a way to combat the thieves, and that is
Speaker 4: by deceiving them intentionally with a behavior which is pretending
Speaker 4: to bury a nut while a thief is watching and
Speaker 4: then leaving the area, and as the thief is busy
Speaker 4: sort of trying to dig up that nut for itself,
Speaker 4: then it buries the nut for real. So it's this
Speaker 4: intentional perception of like, look, I'm bearing a nut, and
Speaker 4: then the thief goes there and looks for it and then.
Speaker 1: Doesn't find anything, and then it gets ah nuts eggs.
Speaker 4: That's the one squirrel joke that they make.
Speaker 1: Yes, So then a squirrel will pretend to hide a
Speaker 1: nut because it knows that it's being watched by another squirrel.
Speaker 1: Now is that proven would only do this fake hiding
Speaker 1: nut behavior if it knows it's being watched.
Speaker 4: I believe they've found that they do more of the
Speaker 4: hiding behavior when they think they're being observed.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Katie will tell us an example
Speaker 1: of animals actually telling a lie, and then she'll tell
Speaker 1: us how she thinks her dog is lying to her.
Speaker 1: You're listening to sign stuff. Welcome back to science stuff.
Speaker 1: Katie had another interesting example, and this one does involve
Speaker 1: telling a lot.
Speaker 4: There's another animal, which is maybe one of my favorite liars,
Speaker 4: and this one is actually lying verbally, so we're getting
Speaker 4: really close to kind of human lies. Right. So, alarm
Speaker 4: calls are done by an animal to warn its family
Speaker 4: that a predator is about. And sometimes it's really specific.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they're like they'll have a call that's lookout. It's
Speaker 4: a hawk, look out, it's a snake, look out, it's
Speaker 4: like a coyote, you know, different calls for different predators.
Speaker 4: So there's this animal called the fork tailed drongo, which
Speaker 4: sounds kind of like an insult, like, does not sound nice.
Speaker 4: There are a species of bird that lives in South Africa.
Speaker 4: They look kind of like a blackbird, but they have
Speaker 4: a little bit of a thicker beak and a forked tail.
Speaker 4: And so these birds will watch other animals handling a
Speaker 4: food item and then issue an alarm call. But this
Speaker 4: is a false alarm. They're crying, they're saying, I see something,
Speaker 4: uh oh, And it's either mimicking the alarm call of
Speaker 4: that species, like say a meer cat alarm call, or
Speaker 4: they're using their own alarm call. And something that's kind
Speaker 4: of interesting about alarm calls is animals learn the alarm
Speaker 4: calls of other species because that helps them. Right, if
Speaker 4: you hear some other animal using an alarm call, you're like, oh,
Speaker 4: well they think something's up, so I should also run.
Speaker 4: And so these birds, these drongos, learn that they can
Speaker 4: either mimic an alarm call or use their own type
Speaker 4: of alarm call and animals will run away. And they
Speaker 4: do this when they are observing their targets, they're victims
Speaker 4: eating food or handling food. And then once their victims
Speaker 4: have run away because basically they've been lied to, they've
Speaker 4: been told there's a predator, then the drangle goes in
Speaker 4: and eats the food. And in this case, I know
Speaker 4: for a fact that they have done research where they've
Speaker 4: found that they do more of these false alarm calls
Speaker 4: when they are watching an animal handling food directly. So
Speaker 4: it is very linked to an awareness of like, look
Speaker 4: that's food I want. I can get it to run
Speaker 4: away if I fake an alarm call.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is amazing. It makes me sort of have
Speaker 1: any immediate humanizing reaction. It makes me not trust this animal,
Speaker 1: or it makes me think of this animal as being
Speaker 1: deceptive or not a good person.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we make a moral judgment.
Speaker 1: So birds lie too, Mary, that's so cool. They literally
Speaker 1: cry wolf.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is amazing. This is a surprise to maybe
Speaker 2: and also a moment of like, well, of course some
Speaker 2: bird would have gone like, oh, that worked, well, let's
Speaker 2: do that again.
Speaker 1: And I like this example because it's sort of like
Speaker 1: the classic hey, look behind you, or like well there's
Speaker 1: a tiger coming for you to fool somebody you're trying
Speaker 1: to take advantage of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh no gods.
Speaker 4: In terms of verbal lying. So I don't have a
Speaker 4: study here, but I do have an anecdote of my dog.
Speaker 4: She will verbally lie to me about danger when she
Speaker 4: sees something outside the window. She does her job as
Speaker 4: a little guard dog, even though I didn't hire her.
Speaker 4: I don't know who did. But she barks at pigeons,
Speaker 4: at whatever, like any birds, any activity, another dog barking.
Speaker 4: She has a certain sound, a certain tone to that bark.
Speaker 4: Her hackles raise, her tail is stiff. It's alertness, right,
Speaker 4: like I am in a protective mode and there is
Speaker 4: something out there and I am alerting you, which again
Speaker 4: is not something you see in wolves. This is a
Speaker 4: dog specific trait that we've bred into them. And so
Speaker 4: she'll do this right, But if I'm about to leave
Speaker 4: the apartment, she'll bark, but her tone's very different. She's relaxed,
Speaker 4: her tail's down, but she's looking out the window, and
Speaker 4: her body language is otherwise very like relaxed and calm,
Speaker 4: but she barks, and her tone is different when she's
Speaker 4: barking and she's staring out and there's nothing there, right,
Speaker 4: there's nothing out the window. And I think she's doing
Speaker 4: this every time I'm about to leave, to basically say like,
Speaker 4: don't leave. There's something weird, there's something interesting or weird
Speaker 4: over here. You should stay. So she's trying to lie
Speaker 4: to me about there being something at the window.
Speaker 1: What are you doing, Katies, there's a pigeon out there.
Speaker 1: Pigeons are dangerous.
Speaker 4: Stay in exactly, which I find is so interesting. And
Speaker 4: the fact that her tone kind of is different, so
Speaker 4: it's like she's trying to make it sound convincing, but
Speaker 4: I can kind of tell the difference. She has a
Speaker 4: different sort of tone, a different sort of like body language.
Speaker 4: Everything's a little bit different when she's lying and I
Speaker 4: see there's like literally nothing out there, versus when she
Speaker 4: actually sees something. I look out and there's like a pigeon,
Speaker 4: which you know, big deal, thanks.
Speaker 1: Cookie, meaning Cookie is not good at lying, Like she
Speaker 1: tells that you can tell she's.
Speaker 4: Lying, right, which I only know because I know her
Speaker 4: baseline behavior, and I also know dog body language, right,
Speaker 4: like tail being stiff and the hackles being raised. There's
Speaker 4: a lot like the stiffness in the body can show
Speaker 4: you like how anxious or alert a dog is, and
Speaker 4: whereas if the tail's lower and they seem more relaxed,
Speaker 4: but then they're barking and like running around in a circle,
Speaker 4: you're like, hmmm, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's like smart enough to think about lying to you
Speaker 1: so that you don't go out, but not smart enough
Speaker 1: to notice her own tails.
Speaker 4: Well, it's probably hard to control those too, because like
Speaker 4: a lot of those tells are not something that she
Speaker 4: has executive control over, right, Like the same thing with humans.
Speaker 4: We can't control everything we do. Maybe with practice, we
Speaker 4: can control our heart rate and our sweating or something,
Speaker 4: but it is really difficult for a human to control everything, right,
Speaker 4: Like you can't. If you're like I is twitching a
Speaker 4: little bit, you can't turn that off necessarily. So we
Speaker 4: don't have complete control over our body language, nor do
Speaker 4: I think dogs don't have complete control, but they have
Speaker 4: some control, and sometimes they'll manipulate that to get what
Speaker 4: they want.
Speaker 1: Wow, what if you put Cookie in like acting lessons,
Speaker 1: you never leave the house.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, if Cookie got an oscar, I would
Speaker 4: stay home with her all day.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons I was curious about this is
Speaker 2: that there are self soothing actions that humans will do
Speaker 2: when they're lying. Not always, but often people will fidget
Speaker 2: a little bit more, or they will fidget less because
Speaker 2: they're aware that they need to look super calm. So
Speaker 2: there are these things that people will do. There's a
Speaker 2: study that people tend to look up into the left
Speaker 2: a little bit when they are telling a lie versus
Speaker 2: when they're accessing a memory that really happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The part of your question was do animals lie? Do
Speaker 1: they have tells? And do they correlate to tells in humans?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, If there is something common we have with animals
Speaker 1: when we lie, does that mean that it's genetic and
Speaker 1: we can fight it or is it just cultural? Part
Speaker 1: of your question was or tells cultural or not?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, So I got really interested in this question also,
Speaker 1: and so I reached out to a psychologist at the
Speaker 1: University of Oslo who's been publishing a lot recently on
Speaker 1: the kind of neuroscience of lying.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm so excited by this.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is Tim's description what he does.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm a psychologist. In my area is cognitive psychology,
Speaker 3: so memory and mental processes, how we think, And more
Speaker 3: recent years I have spent time doing research on how
Speaker 3: cognitive processes link up to emotional processes, more recently specifically
Speaker 3: looking at light detection, which is pretty important task or
Speaker 3: job throughout the legal system. You know, from the time
Speaker 3: a crime is committed, when the police turn up and
Speaker 3: they want to look for witnesses or victims or perpetrators.
Speaker 3: You know, the task of deciding, well, you know, is
Speaker 3: this person telling me the truth or art is quite
Speaker 3: important all the way through the detective work into the
Speaker 3: court system. You know, you have witnesses there and the
Speaker 3: jury or the judges have to decide, you know, well
Speaker 3: they can't both be telling the truth, so which one
Speaker 3: is it? So it's an important topic, you know, obviously
Speaker 3: important in a practical sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Tim, doctor Brennans are as a psychologists. But
Speaker 1: then when the lawyer approached him and said Hey, you're
Speaker 1: someone who knows about emotions and things like that, can
Speaker 1: you come and be an expert on this case? And
Speaker 1: that's how he got a really interesting idea of lying,
Speaker 1: because it's so crucial in a legal case, right, like
Speaker 1: two people are saying different things. Who's telling the truth?
Speaker 1: How do you determine who is guilty? In some cases
Speaker 1: a matter of life and death? Right, Yeah, although he
Speaker 1: says in Norway they don't have death penalty, so it's
Speaker 1: a matter of life in prison.
Speaker 2: I guess does he talk to you about ways he
Speaker 2: can tell?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The basic question I asked him was what's going on
Speaker 1: in your body when you're telling a lie? Neuroscience psychology
Speaker 1: point of view, what's your body doing?
Speaker 3: So, what's happening in our body and brains when we're
Speaker 3: telling a lie? We're deliberately trying to deceive. Most of
Speaker 3: us on a daily basis, we know how it feels
Speaker 3: to tell a lie, and so from the inside you
Speaker 3: can feel a bit of stress and you're wondering, is
Speaker 3: this person understanding that I'm not quite telling the truth here?
Speaker 3: And so on. That's one of the main things is
Speaker 3: that the stress is associated with lying and mental effort,
Speaker 3: because it's much easier just to tell the truth and
Speaker 3: retrieve from memory rather than having to keep track of
Speaker 3: what you've said to whom and which details you've made
Speaker 3: up and so on. There's more mental effort involved. One
Speaker 3: line of research it hopes to be able to pinpoint,
Speaker 3: for example, where in the brain this extra effort is
Speaker 3: being expended. And generally people are looking at the cognitive
Speaker 3: load hypothesis and to say, okay, is there a way
Speaker 3: for measuring cognitive load or rather imposing cognitive load. So
Speaker 3: if you're telling the truth, you should be all right,
Speaker 3: but if you're lying, you've already got the extra cognitive
Speaker 3: blowed and this will tip you over the edge so
Speaker 3: that it all collapses. And there's some research in favor
Speaker 3: of that sort of idea that you can distinguish between
Speaker 3: liars and truth tellers by imposing cognitive blow to a
Speaker 3: certain extent.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's cool. And then there's another part of my
Speaker 2: brain that's like every ADHD person is just going to
Speaker 2: look like a liar if you're just putting more targahiveload
Speaker 2: on us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it seems like you know the way he
Speaker 1: looks at it, And I guess scientists look at it
Speaker 1: is that this idea of tells, it kind of boils
Speaker 1: down to what your brain is trying to do. Right,
Speaker 1: You're trying to tell a story that you know is
Speaker 1: not true, and so therefore there's two things associated with that.
Speaker 1: One is stress. One is that he might be worried
Speaker 1: about the consequences of lying. You might be worried about
Speaker 1: what if I get caught? How is it going to look?
Speaker 1: And you also have to think more than you would
Speaker 1: if you were telling the truth, because when you telling
Speaker 1: the truth, you're just maybe recalling and then spitting it out.
Speaker 1: When you're trying to lie, you have to think about
Speaker 1: what is the lie? What was the actual thing that happened?
Speaker 1: Might be self consistent? How do I make sure that
Speaker 1: I'm telling the right lie? Yeah, And so that can
Speaker 1: then manifest as some of these things that we call tells.
Speaker 1: If you're thinking extra hard telling you lie, you might
Speaker 1: stammer more, or you might say oh more, or you
Speaker 1: might feel the stress, and so you avoid the other
Speaker 1: person's gaze.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that because the information that I have about lying
Speaker 2: comes from reading about basically spies, cia interrogators and things
Speaker 2: like that, where they're looking at the external behaviors, whereas
Speaker 2: doctor Brennan is looking at the root causes of those behaviors,
Speaker 2: which is so interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. You can talk about tells, but
Speaker 1: really it's helpful to just think about what is your
Speaker 1: brain trying to do when you're trying to lie? Right?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm so excited. This is very cool.
Speaker 3: Now, an interesting thing about that is if you offer
Speaker 3: people around the world and there's this big study being
Speaker 3: done a few years ago asking people from seventy five
Speaker 3: different countries and people agree around the planet that if
Speaker 3: you don't look me in the eyes and you're looking
Speaker 3: a bit shifty and possibly lying, you know, this is
Speaker 3: deemed to be a q to deception. And in all
Speaker 3: these different countries, over all these different languages, was finding
Speaker 3: huge similarities.
Speaker 1: This is this international constortium of basically lying scientists or
Speaker 1: scientist that's dirty lying. And they did this huge survey
Speaker 1: where they send the questionnaires to like forty people in
Speaker 1: each of seventy five countries and across the world there
Speaker 1: are a lot of similar answers, meaning like this thing
Speaker 1: cuts across cultures in South America and North America, Europe, Africa, Asia,
Speaker 1: and so The number one thing that most people say
Speaker 1: that is a tell is that you're avoiding eye contact.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're verting gaze. And so something like seventy percent
Speaker 1: of all cultures in the world mentioned this as a
Speaker 1: clear sign that you're lying, which I think makes me
Speaker 1: wonder is it easier to lie over zoom?
Speaker 2: Then right?
Speaker 1: Nobody expects you to the eye.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, that is interesting.
Speaker 1: A lot of these cultures mentioned nervousness. You're a little incoherent,
Speaker 1: You're not making a lot of sense, you're making too
Speaker 1: many body movements, too many facial expressions, you're sort of
Speaker 1: inconsistent in your story. You're saying um a lot or uh,
Speaker 1: you're pausing a lot. There was another one of the
Speaker 1: signs that people mentioned.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Do you know if in that study that's seventy
Speaker 2: percent with the eye contact and being important, do you
Speaker 2: know how that relates to the culture's overall relationship with
Speaker 2: eye contact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. An interesting fact about the
Speaker 1: study that they found was that it was very universal
Speaker 1: except in cultures for which direct eye contact is considered
Speaker 1: maybe rude. So, for example, some parts in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: I think it's considered rude to look someone directly in
Speaker 1: the eye, maybe if you don't know them, or if
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be showing some respect to them. And
Speaker 1: so in those countries, eye contact was not high on
Speaker 1: the telltale signs of line.
Speaker 2: Interesting. So it's something that crosses a lot of different cultures.
Speaker 2: But if you have a culture where people are socialized
Speaker 2: to think that eye contact is impolite, then that que
Speaker 2: becomes not a meaningful queue, right.
Speaker 1: Because they know that if you're not looking in the
Speaker 1: eye just means something else where. I imagine like if there's
Speaker 1: a culture where people move their arms allot when they talk,
Speaker 1: or they say oh a lot, or they take a
Speaker 1: lot of pauses while they talk, then definitely those are
Speaker 1: not going to be things that people say are clues
Speaker 1: about lying. Don't go anywhere you're listening to science stuff.
Speaker 2: So this makes me think that dogs, which are an
Speaker 2: evolutionary bye product of humans being like, let's tinker with
Speaker 2: this wolf, but bread to cohabitate with us, and eye
Speaker 2: contact is very important for dogs, that dogs would also
Speaker 2: have eye contact as a potential tell, but that cats,
Speaker 2: which are not as interested in eye contact might not
Speaker 2: have eye contact as a tell.
Speaker 1: Well, There's an interesting study that I found related to dogs,
Speaker 1: which is that, you know, dogs didn't evolve out their
Speaker 1: nature like elephants or lions. What we call dogs really
Speaker 1: kind of evolve from walls with us. Yeah, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be dogs without humans kind of basically. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: dogs evolve ways to gain our sympathy, and one of
Speaker 1: them for those ways is to look at us in
Speaker 1: the eye. But more importantly, some scientists think this ability
Speaker 1: to kind of shed tears on sort of on cue
Speaker 1: whenever they need to get something from me or gain
Speaker 1: your sympathy.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So if they want to connect with you or they
Speaker 1: have connected with you, it will trigger some hormone and
Speaker 1: then that hormone will trigger them to shed extra tear
Speaker 1: or so there at least to have sort of like
Speaker 1: watery Wow, I know the way they're sort of lying
Speaker 1: to you when they with puppy eyes. I don't know's
Speaker 1: I know, a blurry line.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like I had read that dogs had developed eyebrows
Speaker 2: basically to be more appealing to humans. Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that they have significantly more muscles around their eyes
Speaker 2: to create the iron show more white as well than wolves.
Speaker 2: And the speculation is that it is something that happened
Speaker 2: specifically because it makes them more appealing, right right, yeah,
Speaker 2: not expressive, whereas cats who did not do that. Having
Speaker 2: a conversation with a cat is like talking to someone
Speaker 2: whose entire face has been botoxed.
Speaker 1: Like they don't care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they would be good poker players, right, exactly.
Speaker 1: There's a CTV these commonalities between animals and humans just
Speaker 1: from the idea of what lying is, which is that
Speaker 1: you're pretending that to do something, or to say something,
Speaker 1: or just state something that you know it's not true.
Speaker 1: So there's a common base and we sort of see
Speaker 1: that with Katie and her dog and how she can
Speaker 1: tell that the dog is maybe lying because the dog
Speaker 1: is not a good actor. Yeah, and we see that also.
Speaker 1: It seems in humans. It appears that there are common adalytes,
Speaker 1: even among cultures. However, the plot to us here is
Speaker 1: that Tim doesn't believe in tells at all. Oh wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: here's what he said.
Speaker 3: So there's really dissociation between what people believe and what
Speaker 3: the research shows. So we have solid research showing that
Speaker 3: nonverbal cues are at best faint, you know, faint cues
Speaker 3: to deception. Can't there so far from being usable in
Speaker 3: the forensic context, the sort of figure that we would
Speaker 3: normally throw around is fifty four percent, where fifty to
Speaker 3: fifty is the chance level. Right, So it's as if
Speaker 3: we humans can pick something up, but just very little,
Speaker 3: you know. And the research has been done in a
Speaker 3: whole wide variety of situations, also situations that are really
Speaker 3: meaningful for people, where it turns out some people have
Speaker 3: been lying in a press conference about whether they knew
Speaker 3: anything about the disappearance of one of their loved ones,
Speaker 3: you know. And then afterwards you can when you've got
Speaker 3: a set of those press conferences, and you can determine, Okay,
Speaker 3: this group of people, well, they have nothing to do
Speaker 3: with it, this group of people, they turn out to
Speaker 3: be the perpetrator. The question can then be asked of
Speaker 3: independent observers participants in experiments, what can you tell which
Speaker 3: of these people are lying? You know? And we just can't.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah huh, But like I hear that, and I
Speaker 2: understand it, and I don't question it. And also I
Speaker 2: think everyone has experienced a thing where you've been talking
Speaker 2: to someone and you know that they're lying to you,
Speaker 2: and you're right about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's sort of this conundrum right where intuitively we
Speaker 1: know that tells exist and sometimes you can tell if
Speaker 1: someone's lying, and yet people like Tim are saying these
Speaker 1: non verbal cues, this idea of being able to tell
Speaker 1: someone's lying is not true. Like at best, he said,
Speaker 1: we can guess if someone's lying fifty four percent of
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: I wonder this is such a semantic split. It is
Speaker 2: a difference between lying and acting.
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
Speaker 2: So there's a really famous quote by Marlon Brando when
Speaker 2: people ask him, you know, what the secret to acting was,
Speaker 2: and he's like, I'm just lying. That's all I'm doing.
Speaker 2: And when you think about it, that is what an
Speaker 2: actor's job is. An actor's job is to fake an
Speaker 2: emotion in order to convince you that they are experiencing
Speaker 2: the things that they're experiencing, but none of it's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I talked to Tim for quite a bit,
Speaker 1: and I think that's his main point.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: The idea is that when we're telling a lie, we
Speaker 1: do have this connective break in our heads that might
Speaker 1: manifest itself in your body doing things that you can't control.
Speaker 1: But the problem is is that liars are also very smart,
Speaker 1: and basically, if you're a liar. You've learned very early
Speaker 1: on in your lying career, perhaps that if you don't
Speaker 1: look at people in the eye, then they're going to
Speaker 1: know you're lying. Right, So good liars know to look
Speaker 1: people in the eye when they lie, or you know,
Speaker 1: they're smart enough, unlike Katie's dog, to pick up on
Speaker 1: the fact that they have these tells, and so good
Speaker 1: liars they're good at hiding these tells. Basically what actors
Speaker 1: do to just kind of convince their bodies that they're
Speaker 1: not in a stressful situation. And so what the translations
Speaker 1: to the data is that basically you can't really rely
Speaker 1: on these tells, or that if you do, you're going
Speaker 1: to be fooled by good.
Speaker 2: Lifety four percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it's not just tells that Tim also
Speaker 1: has looked into things like polygraph tests. Oh and so
Speaker 1: his general perspective is this.
Speaker 3: But the question is to what extent can people adjust
Speaker 3: these and compensate and hide the fact that they're lying
Speaker 3: and they play the system, And the empirical evidence as
Speaker 3: it stands would suggest that sort of machine is not
Speaker 3: reliable enough to what would one want in the legal system.
Speaker 3: Ninety nine points something percent you know, but we're just
Speaker 3: not there, partly because of the issue of what it
Speaker 3: called countermeasures that you can take when taking a polygraph,
Speaker 3: so you can confuse the machine. You can trigger your
Speaker 3: own physiology either by thinking something if you just at
Speaker 3: random moment start thinking something horrible or exciting, or if
Speaker 3: you have a stone in your shoe that you press
Speaker 3: your big toe on every now and then you get
Speaker 3: the same sort of activation. You know, so I'll be ooh,
Speaker 3: there's something here, but you'd just be confusing, adding noise
Speaker 3: to the whole system, you know.
Speaker 1: Interesting, So then what's the average accuracy of something like
Speaker 1: a polygraph test?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there are different variants of it, different uses,
Speaker 3: but to put one figure on it, it's around seventy percent.
Speaker 3: So it's higher than you and me observing people and guessing.
Speaker 3: So it's obviously picking something up. But like I mentioned
Speaker 3: about the brain data, it's pretty messy data and there's
Speaker 3: lots of loopholes in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think that's where it stands. It's like
Speaker 1: tells do exist if someone is it a novel liar,
Speaker 1: Like kids are not good liars because they don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of experience lying for you, know the kinds
Speaker 1: of things that Tim looks at, which is like ego cases,
Speaker 1: These things are basically useless in a courtroom to say
Speaker 1: that someone didn't pass a polygraph test, or to say
Speaker 1: they look to the right or they look to the lab.
Speaker 1: Basically you can't really use that because even though you
Speaker 1: might have statistical data that says, oh, you know, sixty
Speaker 1: percent of the time that someone looks at the right,
Speaker 1: they're lying, that's not going to fly in a corner. Right,
Speaker 1: Or even I guess with your cat, right, your cat
Speaker 1: could also be becoming a better liar as you interact
Speaker 1: with your cat, right, Like, if your cat tries to
Speaker 1: lie and sees that you didn't buy it, then the
Speaker 1: cat might be learning like, oh wait, maybe it's because
Speaker 1: I press it too hard or went too quickly to
Speaker 1: press it or something, and your cat maybe is intelligent
Speaker 1: enough to figure out that, oh, if I do this,
Speaker 1: then Mary robin Att is going to believe me.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's terrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's basically Tim's point is that there's
Speaker 1: really no way to tell someone's lie. I mean, you
Speaker 1: might get a sense of, well, I'm fifty four percent
Speaker 1: sure they're lying, but really, if you need to make
Speaker 1: an important decision based on that you can.
Speaker 2: Huh, So I guess then the answer to my question
Speaker 2: is that animals do lie, but that tells just don't exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically, animals lie. They might have tells. There is
Speaker 1: a sort of physiological connection between line and some sort
Speaker 1: of non verbal cue or some sort of things that
Speaker 1: you do. But it's so easily hackable, especially for humans
Speaker 1: who are really smart and can learn after the first
Speaker 1: lie what works and what doesn't work, that you probably
Speaker 1: don't want to bet the house on thinking that someone
Speaker 1: is lying based on the tell.
Speaker 2: This is amazing to me. I am absolutely in love
Speaker 2: with all of this.
Speaker 1: Well, there is a little bit of hope. So Tim
Speaker 1: has been thinking about this a lot, and so his
Speaker 1: basic solution, or the thing that he proposes is basically
Speaker 1: the only way you can really tell that someone is
Speaker 1: lying is by catching them in a lie. So he thinks,
Speaker 1: you don't waste time with polygraph tests in the court system,
Speaker 1: just do good detective work. Yeah, ask the person what happened,
Speaker 1: and then hide some of the information that you have,
Speaker 1: Like you know, you have cameras that were pointing at
Speaker 1: him when that person did it. But don't tell me.
Speaker 1: I have the footage and then ask them what happened,
Speaker 1: and then you can catch them in a line, and
Speaker 1: then that can then tell you if they're lying about
Speaker 1: other things.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like data, basically have data or try to outsmart the
Speaker 1: liar in some way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like Elsie has tried to send me out of
Speaker 2: the room on a couple of other occasions to go
Speaker 2: after my cheese sandwiches. And so now I know that
Speaker 2: if I am preparing food and she suggests that I
Speaker 2: need to leave the room, that I need to put
Speaker 2: whatever food I'm preparing in the microwave so she can't
Speaker 2: get to.
Speaker 1: It, right right, Yeah, yes, I'm sorry to say, Mary Robinette,
Speaker 1: you can't trust your cat.
Speaker 2: No, No, I can trust her on a lot of things,
Speaker 2: but unfortunately nothing involving food.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you so much, Mary Robinette. It's
Speaker 1: been a pleasure to explore the idea of not telling
Speaker 1: the truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much for doing all of the
Speaker 2: research on that. That was fascinating and I have a
Speaker 2: feeling that it is going to turn up in a
Speaker 2: novel at some point.
Speaker 1: All right, Hey, that's cool. Which part the cat or
Speaker 1: the squirrel, the.
Speaker 2: Squirrel, the school cat, the cat has already turned up,
Speaker 2: and so many things.
Speaker 1: Well, that's fascinating to see process that in real time
Speaker 1: and to see that seed being planted for maybe a
Speaker 1: future novel.
Speaker 2: So interesting. Thank you so much for this.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you for joining us. Thanks to Mary Robinett
Speaker 1: Kwal for being on the show. You can find her
Speaker 1: award winning book The Cut Collating Stars wherever books are sold.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Science Stuff, the production of iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: written and produced by me Or hitch Ham, executive producer
Speaker 1: Jerry Rowland, an audio engineer and mixer Kasey Peckram. Can
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