People are better at lying in a foreign language, scientists say

People are much better at lying when they’re speaking in a foreign language, researchers have found.

According to the latest findings, those who speak multiple languages are better at lying in a foreign dialect, as there is a greater emotional disconnect to the words.

Our mother tongue is closely tied to our emotions, which makes us more vulnerable and therefore honest when we’re speaking it, scientists say. 

However, this is not the case with a second, or third language. 

Foreign languages are also associated with more rational thinking, compared to our mother tongue. This can also help people to construct a falsehood, scientists say.

  

The ability to converse in more than one language allows polyglots to frolic around the truth. Scientists have found that those who speak more than one dialect have an emotional disconnect to what they are saying when using a second language (stock)

The latest study was conducted by Kristina Suchotzki and Matthias Gamer, of the University of Würzburg in Germany.

It required 135 German speakers with a good level of English to lie and tell the truth in both languages.

The results, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, found the Germans found it much easier to lie when speaking in their second language.

Lying in both languages required the same amount of energy, but came easier when speaking English because the mental ‘cost’ of lying in a foreign language was smaller, the researchers claim.

In order to test the theory, the researchers asked participants a variety of questions, requiring them to answer with both accurate and untrue answers for each one.

Questions ranged for the factual, to the personal and included anything from ‘do you have an aquarium at home?’ to ‘do you watch pornography?’.

Dr Suchotzki also believes the results go some way to explaining why foreigners can appear shifty when speaking in their non-native tongue. 

A chief warning sign that someone might be lying to you is if they seem to labouring over their words.   

However, telling the truth and lying can both require the same amount of effort, so it can be difficult to identify dishonesty based exclusively on a foreigner’s speech.

DO PEOPLE LIE MORE OR LESS IN THEIR SECOND LANGUAGE?

Research suggests that people are less likely to lie if they’re speaking in their mother tongue. 

People fib more when talking in a second language because they are ‘less emotional’, scientists said.

Our first language is often more closely tied to our emotions, which makes us more vulnerable and therefore honest when we’re speaking it.

However, a second language is often associated with more rational thinking which means people feel more distant from it and so find it easier to lie.

Scientists at Bangor University and the University of Manchester found people who speak more than one language interpret facts differently depending on which one they are speaking.

They asked Welsh people who spoke fluent Welsh and English to rate sentences as true or false.

These sentences either had positive or negative connotations.

Participants showed a bias towards categorising positive statements – even if they were false – as being true in both languages.

However, when they were negative, participants responded differently depending on whether they were reading in Welsh or English – despite the fact the information was exactly the same.

Scientists believe people’s native language is more closely tied to our emotions which means we find it easier to be honest. 

Functioning in the second language appeared to protect them against unpalatable truths, and deal with them more strategically, researchers concluded.

Our mother tongue is often more closely tied to our emotions, which makes us more vulnerable and therefore honest when we're speaking it. However, a second language is often associated with more rational thinking (stock)

Our mother tongue is often more closely tied to our emotions, which makes us more vulnerable and therefore honest when we’re speaking it. However, a second language is often associated with more rational thinking (stock)

‘If the difference between truth-telling and lying gets smaller, then lying gets easier, relatively speaking,’ Dr Suchotzki said. 

The study backs up what has been found in previous research. 

Researchers previously looked into how truthful people were being when speaking both Welsh and English.

According to Dr Manon Jones, of Bangor University, and Ceri Ellie, from the University of Manchester, ‘the perception of truth is slippery when viewed through the prism of different languages and cultures.’

‘So much so that people who speak two languages can accept a fact in one of their languages, while denying it in the other’, they wrote in an in-depth feature for The Conversation earlier this year.

WHAT ARE THE NINE WAYS TO SPOT A LIAR?

The big pause: Lying is quite a complex process for the body and brain to deal with. First your brain produces the truth which it then has to suppress before inventing the lie and the performance of that lie. 

This often leads to a longer pause than normal before answering, plus a verbal stalling technique like ‘Why do you ask that?’ rather than a direct and open response.

The eye dart: Humans have more eye expressions than any other animal and our eyes can give away if we’re trying to hide something. 

When we look up to our left to think we’re often accessing recalled memory, but when our eyes roll up to our right we can be thinking more creatively. Also, the guilt of a lie often makes people use an eye contact cut-off gesture, such as looking down or away.

The lost breath: Bending the truth causes an instant stress response in most people, meaning the fight or flight mechanisms are activated. 

The mouth dries, the body sweats more, the pulse rate quickens and the rhythm of the breathing changes to shorter, shallower breaths that can often be both seen and heard.

Overcompensating: A liar will often over-perform, both speaking and gesticulating too much in a bid to be more convincing. These over the top body language rituals can involve too much eye contact (often without blinking!) and over-emphatic gesticulation.

The more someone gesticulates, the more likely it is they might be fibbing (stock image)

The more someone gesticulates, the more likely it is they might be fibbing (stock image)

The poker face: Although some people prefer to employ the poker face, many assume less is more and almost shut down in terms of movement and eye contact when they’re being economical with the truth.

The face hide: When someone tells a lie they often suffer a strong desire to hide their face from their audience. This can lead to a partial cut-off gesture like the well-know nose touch or mouth-cover.

Self-comfort touches: The stress and discomfort of lying often produces gestures that are aimed at comforting the liar, such as rocking, hair-stroking or twiddling or playing with wedding rings. We all tend to use self-comfort gestures but this will increase dramatically when someone is fibbing.

Micro-gestures: These are very small gestures or facial expressions that can flash across the face so quickly they are difficult to see. Experts will often use filmed footage that is then slowed down to pick up on the true body language response emerging in the middle of the performed lie. 

The best time to spot these in real life is to look for the facial expression that occurs after the liar has finished speaking. The mouth might skew or the eyes roll in an instant give-away.

Heckling hands: The hardest body parts to act with are the hands or feet and liars often struggle to keep them on-message while they lie. 

When the gestures and the words are at odds it’s called incongruent gesticulation and it’s often the hands or feet that are telling the truth.

The scientists found changing language is related to other perceptual, cognitive and emotional changes as well.

Emotional experiences might be more closely associated with the mother tongue.

For example, when someone says ‘I love you’ in one language it could mean a lot more than when said in another language.

Not only do languages shape our visual perception, but they also affect the way we perceive things and make sense of our environment.

‘Until recently, it was commonly assumed that one’s understanding of meaning is shared across all the languages one speaks.

‘However, we have been able to observe that this is not the case.

‘Bilinguals actually interpret facts differently depending on the language they are presented with, and depending on whether the fact makes them feel good or bad about their native culture,’ Dr Jones and Ellie wrote.



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