Summary of Timothy R. Levine's Duped

By IRB Media

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#1 The authors of Spy the Lie, a book about detecting lies, said that their approach was not based on scientific research, but on anecdotes and personal experience. They said that experience had taught them that their approach was highly effective. But how could they have known how many lies they had missed.

#2 The science behind lie detection is extensive and solid. People are not very good at accurately distinguishing truths from lies. However, we should not be too quick to dismiss professionals with expertise in interrogation and interviewing who believe there are ways to catch liars and detect lies.

#3 The scientific conclusion is that people are not very good at detecting lies in lie-detection experiments published prior to 2006. The research did not prove that lies cannot be detected. It showed that lies cannot be accurately detected in the type of experiments used to study lie detection.

#4 I grew up the son of a real estate salesperson, and I was interested in sales and social influence as a teenager. I knew I wanted to be a professor, and I ended up getting into the highly regarded PhD program at Michigan State University, where two leaders in persuasion were on the faculty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822507180

IRB Media

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Insights on Timothy R. Levine's Duped

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The authors of Spy the Lie, a book about detecting lies, said that their approach was not based on scientific research, but on anecdotes and personal experience. They said that experience had taught them that their approach was highly effective. But how could they have known how many lies they had missed.

#2

The science behind lie detection is extensive and solid. People are not very good at accurately distinguishing truths from lies. However, we should not be too quick to dismiss professionals with expertise in interrogation and interviewing who believe there are ways to catch liars and detect lies.

#3

The scientific conclusion is that people are not very good at detecting lies in lie-detection experiments published prior to 2006. The research did not prove that lies cannot be detected. It showed that lies cannot be accurately detected in the type of experiments used to study lie detection.

#4

I grew up the son of a real estate salesperson, and I was interested in sales and social influence as a teenager. I knew I wanted to be a professor, and I ended up getting into the highly regarded PhD program at Michigan State University, where two leaders in persuasion were on the faculty.

#5

I have been interested in deception since I was a graduate student. I liked the fact that deception research could do better. The theory needed improvement, the methodology could be made better, and the findings could be stronger and more coherent.

#6

The four questions above are: What do people look for in order to distinguish between whether someone else is honest or lying. What, if any, specific behaviors distinguish truthful communication from lies. How accurate are people at distinguishing truths from lies.

#7

The believability markers that people look for when deciding whether to trust someone are not very strongly linked to actual lying. People are poor lie detectors, and the odds of them detecting lies are not much better than chance.

#8

People are poor lie detectors. They look for the wrong things when assessing whether someone is lying. However, there are no right things. All is hopeless. I wanted to find a new way of understanding deception that would make apparent what had been missing.

#9

The second puzzle is that of deception accuracy in research not about deception. Among my many interests is a long-held affinity for classic old experiments in social science. One well-known example is Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments on obedience to authority.

#10

The study of conformity is a good example of how experimental social science uses research confederates and other types of deception. In this study, subjects judged the lengths of lines, and when they were in groups, other group members would sometimes all give the same incorrect answer. Yet few if any of the subjects came to the conclusion that the group errors were simply lies.

#11

The first half of the book introduces readers to deception theory and research. It explains what is known about deception, how the facts are most often framed, and why TDT is needed.

#12

TDT is a modular collection of mini-theories, hypotheses, and effects. Each of the modules is briefly described, and the propositional structure weaving them together is laid out. But the detail comes in chapters 7 through 14.

#13

The four questions that define the scope of this chapter are: What do people look for in order to distinguish whether someone else