For those of you – like me – interested in the heady mix of lie-detection and body language, there was a great piece on BBC Radio 4′s All in the Mind last week.  Here’s the blurb. 

“Trying to spot when somebody is telling lies has probably preoccupied mankind since the earliest humans. Who’s eaten more than their fair share of seeds and berries; who’s scoffed the leftover termite ? For nearly a century we’ve had the polygraph, or traditional lie detector, with its wires and electrodes stuck to the skin – and more recently techniques like Voice Risk Analysis and brain scans purport to detect truth telling from fabrication. But a study at Portsmouth University suggests that in this controversial area, an old fashioned pencil and paper could make more sense at singling out those who are being economical with the truth. Claudia talks to Dr Samantha Mann about an experiment where a simple drawing separated the liars from the truth tellers.”

Listen to the interview here.

According to her staff profile at the University of Portsmouth website, Dr Samantha Mann’s academic interests include:

• Nonverbal cues to deception
• People’s perceptions of deceptive behaviour
• Professional lie detectors’ ability to detect deceit
• Enhancing interview situations in order to facilitate deception detection
• Speech related cues to deception (Reality Monitoring)

For other articles related to the work of Dr Mann, see:

Liars ‘too self aware to twitch’

Liars don’t blink: they keep still and concentrate hard

Drawing a picture is ‘lie detection technique’

Whole truth and nothing but the truth?

See also my own recent blog The Body Language of Honesty.

Image credit: jmendicute.

Click here to listen to a brilliant interview with Professor Martin Seligman, modern founder of Positive Psychology an author of Authentic Happiness.

In a special edition, Claudia Hammond talks to the father of Positive Psychology, Professor Martin Seligman, about why optimism is not only good for your health, but could also help you live longer. Claudia visits a school that has introduced happiness lessons with some surprising results. And we hear from Dr Julie Norem about why, for some of us, a more pessimistic approach might be the winning strategy.

What interests me is that Seligman describes himself as a natural pessimist and depressive.  That’s the kind of guru I can listen to!  He also reiterates a point that I’ve made on his behalf before – the optimism he promotes is not meant to exclude a sort of risk-cautious realism but rather complement it.

Anyway, enjoy the conversation.  Seligman’s treatment of the topic is both masterful and humane.  Most impressive.

Image credit: Diego Cupolo’s.