The interrogation lasted all night. become Donovan Allen, just 18 years old, insisted again: “No, I did not kill my mother.” He had found the day before in a pool of blood. After 14 hours, Allen was the pressure of the policeman for, however. Yes, he had killed his mother, he finally stammered.
The jury was indeed by the fault of the young American unconvinced nevertheless sentenced him a judge in a second process in 2002 to life imprisonment -. though Allen had maintained his innocence in court
Whether a person is telling the truth, is not always easy to recognize. Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a new process to make it easier to unmask a liar in court and in everyday life.
They worked among others with video recordings of organization Innocence Project, which has set itself the goal of illegally bring convicts from prison. Even Allen’s case took over the organization a few years ago.
How liar betrayed
liar, so put the software firm, do not always behave as an untrained observer would expect. The liars in the analyzed recordings gesticulated more than those who told the truth. They spoke with convincing, loud voice. And they watched their counterparts more often in the eye than those who stuck to the facts. In addition, they smiled less than people who have told no lies.
A total of 120 video recordings of various cases solved the team to the computer science professor Rada Mihalcea for their research from. They interested the one hand, what the accused or witnesses said, as she said, especially as they moved her face and body to. This information gathered scientists in a database.
Then the team developed a software that looked for the movements and expressions and they zuordnete each veracity of a statement , In a further step, the system learned to look for behaviors that occur more frequently in liars.
80 percent of liars unmasked
The software was successful than human observers. They unmasked almost 80 percent of the liar, as it brought human subjects only to around 50 percent. “We have received many surprised reactions exactly how the software works,” says Mihalcea. Not only the courts, even security agencies interested in instruments that detect liars.
“It is an ambitious project,” says Jennifer Hofmann, a psychologist at the University of Zurich. Mainly because it is based on real situations and not, as many such attempts in laboratory situations.
“Still, I wonder if you ever forward can rely, who told the truth in court and who is not, “says Hofmann. Because not every court decision is a guarantee that the truth was actually found and the corresponding statement therefore can serve as a reliable source for detecting lies.
Mihalcea countered: “We have such a large number of cases that some outliers do not affect the overall result.” And just the Innocence Project deliver valuable data because it will correct certain judgments.
micro expression is often overlooked
also at the University of Zurich, the psychologists deal with liars. They rely on the Facial Action Coding System (Facs), originally developed the US psychologist Paul Ekman. The Facs used to catalog all the muscle movements and emotions in the face. In a second step, the system assigns an emotion certain facial movements.
Most emotions solve some sort of facial expressions from. Tried a man to suppress these emotions, they often scurry only for the fraction of a second over his face. Microexpression called Ekman this, and who is not particularly pay attention to these signs, they missed often.
There are, according to Ekman, however, no clear set of facial movements that a liar might show. Because not everyone who lies, it has the same feelings. One may fear being caught, while another secret satisfaction feels all around out of the nose.
The challenge in court or in everyday life is therefore to interpret the respective emotions properly. This is not likely to succeed and the police in the questioning of Donovan Allen right away.
That he emotionally responded to the questioning and in court , one can well imagine. He had just lost his mother and also was under a terrible suspicion. That arouse our emotions, whether someone is guilty or not.
Experts caution in this regard before the Othello error, named after the play Shakespeare. Othello believes to have his wife caught in an affair. His wife cries as Othello she confronts what these conceives as admission of guilt. He kills her. Othello’s wife wept but because they realized that he did not believe her, even though she was innocent.
An additional difficulty is that not all people equally many emotions have. Especially people with psychopathic traits are often emotionally cold. You caught in a lie, is more difficult. Because they have little emotion, this will not leave marks on the facial expressions.
Allens case came to a successful conclusion. The Innocence Project made sure that there were new DNA tests. They unmasked Allens cousin as perpetrators. After he had sat 14 years innocent in prison, he came in December 2015 free.
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