Dr. Rebecca Wilcoxon

a story about where you were.

And I say, well, where were you last Tuesday at 10am?

If it's a true story, it's much more likely to have details in it.

One way that they can check if someone

is being accurate is to ask unintended questions such as all right so you were there with your friend and you went to the shops and then you went and got a coffee and came home and so you can say to you draw me where you were both sitting so I separate you from your friend okay which coffee shop was at which table were you sitting where were you sitting where was your friend sitting

So there are that are based in memory research, like more detail and different senses you will talk about.

Like you went somewhere and it was hot and you could smell there was a fire burning, which is different from an alibi.

You can ask unintended questions.

There are methods that can be used, but they are not anything grounded in behaviour.

I did research with Australians.

Over 500 people that filled out this survey, almost 85%, and there was no difference between genders or students or non-students or older people or younger people.

Nearly 85% of those people said they can usually tell when someone's lying.

Now, this is pretty consistent throughout the world.

There is lots of research that has tested people's lie detection ability, which is something we're doing now as well.

I'll show you a police video interview.

Do you think this person's lying or telling the truth?

The average accuracy, and a lot of this has been shown with police as well,

Slightly better than a coin flip.

Okay.

So 54% and actually people are better at detecting truth than lies.