Watch What You Draw

A team of researchers has conducted a study which argues that liars betray their actions through drawing. Aldert Vrij, Sharon Leal, Samantha Mann, Lara Warmelink, Par Anders Granhag, and Ronald P. Fisher had 31 police and military members engage in a “mission to pick up a package from another agent before delivering it somewhere else,” and then draw the scene of the package pick-up. The liars (half of the 31 participants) generally drew a place they’d been to (but not the scene of the pickup) and were much less likely to draw the agent involved in the pickup — 87 percent of liars could be identified on the basis of the agent factor. Liars were also more likely to draw the scene from a bird’s-eye (as opposed to first-person) perspective. “These are high accuracy rates and will be difficult to exceed by any traditional verbal, nonverbal or physiological lie detection tool,” the research team wrote. “In fact, we would certainly expect such tools to fare worse.”[%comments]