Words and Phrases in Unit 2研究生英语.pptxVIP

LOOKING FOR THE LIE;Words and Phrases in Unit 2;2 This idea that liars are easy is still with us. Just last month, Charles Bond, a psychologist at Texas Christian University, reported that among 2,520 adults surveyed in 63 countries, more than 70 percent believe that liars tend to avert their gazes. The majority believe that liars squirm, stutter, touch or scratch themselves or tell longer stories than usual. The liar stereotype exists in just about every culture, Bond wrote, and its persistence would be less puzzling if we had more reason to imagine that it was true. What is true, instead, is that there are as many ways to lie as there are liars; theres no such thing as a dead giveaway. ;3 Most people think theyre good at spotting liars, but studies show otherwise. A very small minority of people, probably fewer than 5 percent, seem to have some innate ability to sniff out deception with accuracy. But in general, even professional lie-catchers, like judges and customs officials, perform, when tested, at a level not much better than chance. In other words, even the experts would have been right almost as often if they had just flipped a coin. Most of the devices now available, like the polygraph, detect not the lie but anxiety about the lie. The polygraph measures physiological responses to stress, like increases in blood pressure, respiration rate and electrodermal skin response. So it can miss the most dangerous liars: the ones who dont care that theyre lying, dont know that theyre lying or have been trained to lie. It can also miss liars with nothing to lose if theyre detected, the true believers willing to die for the cause.;Words and Phrases in Unit 2;5 Deception is, after all, one trait associated with the evolution of higher intelligence. According to the Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis, developed by Richard Byrne and Andrew Whiten, two Scottish primatologists at the University of St. Andrews in Fife, the more social a species, the more intell