Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

So I've just gotten my topic and I have a few months to do this. How can you conduct an experiment on this subject? I need ideas!

OK so you have the basic topic. Now you have to figure out what kind of questions you want to ask. Do you want to find out the physiological response to lying? Why people lie? How people lie? When people lie? What kinds of people lie? Your question is very open ended.

This may have been done before, but you can read a person's bodily reactions to lying (kind of like a polygraph test - blood pressure, heart rate or pulse, pupil dilation, changes in temperature) and break responses down by age, gender, occupation (to use a stereotype: do lawyers have a less detectable response to lying than others?) to ask if people of one group lie more detectably than others? Do you have access to this type of equipment?

What do you think?
Stephanie

I was thinking along the lines of, you know, visual and audio cues. So far, I've found out really interesting stuff to go with this. However, it's not like I have a lie detector test with me. So how exactly can i test the cues out? Do I get about 10 or so test subjects and get them to tell a lie and figure out which cues are more obvious, whether it's a ridiculous lie or another that is pretty believable? Would it be good to have 5 females and 5 males all at different age levels?

Lizzieh,
I think this project sounds like a fantastic idea! I agree that it would probably be easier to look for visual/audio cues. I found a really good paper you might want to skim through that offers a bunch of information on how to detect a liar. The link is http://www.scribd.com/doc/18075888/NonV ... g-Behavior
You may also want to google "Eckman", a psychologist and renowned lie detector. Good luck on your project!

So I was thinking that a good way to test the visual/audio cues was to get 10 test subjects: 5 females and 5 males and get them to tell me two stories. One that's truthful and one that's not. Then at the end get them to tell me which was which. I'll video tape it and then look it over for the increases and commonalities with the visual cues. Does this sound like a good experiment?

I think it sounds like a very interesting project! One thing you may consider is formulating a few generic questions you can ask all of your participants so that you can see how they respond to a direct question if they are lying. You may consider random assignment of the lying condition. Perhaps have 10 people draw "lie" or "truth" from a hat so they don't have to do both conditions because you may be able to decide very easily if they are telling the truth or that if they are lying if you have something to compare to. Also, that would be 1/2 the stories you'd be analyzing. Also, it wouldn't necessarily have to be 5 males and 5 females whether or not you choose to do random assignment, and their age doesn't matter.