How good are you at telling whether someone is lying to you? If you had the chance of just listening to someone, just reading what they said or actually seeing them which would help you somewhat in deciding whether they were lying or not ? A psychologist designed a test to answer this question . He interviewed an actor twice. In one interview , the actor told the truth and in another, he lied. Then a group of people just viewed the interviews , another group just heard the interviews and the third group just read the interviews. Which groups of people were best at finding the lie, viewers, listeners or readers?The psychologist explained that the listeners were best at finding the lie , then the readers and finally the viewers.
But why were the listeners so much better at finding the lie? He thinks that this was because they didn’t have visual cites. When people lie , their body language ofen tells the observer that they are not being honest. But an experienced liar will try to be honest . The actor controlled his body language well, so that about half the viewers judged whether lie was ling on his body language alone. Liars , however, find it much more easy to contro. The tone of their voice. They don’t think people will notice details like the tone and anyhow don’t even try to control them.

你辨别他人有没有在对你撒谎的能力有多强？如果你有机会仅仅是倾听他人，读他们说什么或者实实在在看着他们，这样在断定他们有没有撒谎上能帮到你一点。一位心理学家设计了一个测试来解答这个疑问。他两度面试了一位男演员。在一次面试中，这位男演员说了真相而再另一次中，他撒了谎。接着，一组人刚看了两次面试，另外一组人只是听了面试，第三组只是读了面试。哪组人更善于发现谎话，是观者，听者还是读者？这位心理学家解释道听者是最善于发现谎言的，其次是读者，最后是观者。
但是为什么听者更能够发现谎言呢？他认为那是因为他们没有视觉例子。当人撒谎时，他们的肢体语言常常告诉观察者他们没有表现出诚实。但是一个有经验的骗子会尽力表现得诚实。演员很好的控制他的肢体语言，因此一半的观者判定是否撒谎单凭他的肢体语言。骗子认为这个比较好控制的。然而，就他们的语调，他们认为人们不会发现诸如语调的细节因此也就根本不会尽力控制其语调。