Liar, Liar Pants on … Thermal Imaging Device?

A Google search for “lying” yields 218,000,000 results. A Google search for “honesty” yields 77,500,000 results. What explains the 140,500,000 difference? Most of the world’s wisdom alludes to truth as an absolute measure, where truth is “a state of being in accord with fact or reality.” By contrast, upon examining definitions of the term “lie,” you find more than twenty different types of lies – including bluffing, lying by omission, white lies, lying-through-your-teeth to fabrication, perjury and exaggeration.

Perhaps the reason lying returns more Google results than honesty is because it’s expensive (lost productivity, misleading costs, withheld information) – but at the same time a requirement to maintain any type of organization. Whatever the reason, lying is a part of the human condition, and by extension, the working world.

Recently scientists in Great Britain combined video, thermal imaging and algorithms to scan faces for signs of lies. This new approach builds on years of research into how we all involuntarily reveal our emotions in subtle changes of expression and the flow of blood to our skin. The new camera system of lie detection is a significant improvement upon previous attempts, including the CIA’s attempt to find a universal "truth serum" in operation MK-ULTRA; the Wizard Project, a project identifying 50 people out of 20,000 who can spot deception with great accuracy; and the classic polygraph system of lie detection.

The recent camera detection system shows the subconscious displays of emotion to which we can all testify as ‘guilty’: eye movements, dilated pupils, biting or pressing together our lips, wrinkling our noses, breathing heavily, excessive swallowing, blinking and facial asymmetry. The thermal device is so sensitive that it can even detect swelling blood vessels around the eye when a research subject tells a lie.

For better or worse, the new camera detection system is correct in two out of every three cases. The powerful role of the subconscious to alter reality without our perception is significant for the work we do at Beyond Philosophy, which advocates the position that nearly half of the customer experience is emotional.