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predicting people’s real beliefs about 67 percent of the time. The word markers of honesty overlapped considerably with some of our other studies. When expressing their true beliefs, students said more words, used bigger words, and relied on longer and more complex sentences. Their arguments were more nuanced and less emotional. Particularly interesting was their relatively heavy use of exclusive words (e.g., except, but, without). Exclusive words are used when people are making a distinction between what is in a category and what is not; “I did this but not that.” When people were describing their own beliefs using exclusive words, they tried to circumscribe them in a way that clarified what they believed and what they didn’t.

When telling the truth about their beliefs, people relied on more self-references, using the word I at much higher rates. When being deceptive about their beliefs, the students expressed more positive emotion.

Turning Up the Heat: Attitudes With Consequences Writing or talking about your own view of an emotional topic versus the opposite view is not exactly a high-stakes test of deception. Some might argue that this isn’t an example of deception at all. A more compelling approach was developed several years ago by Paul Ekman, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Mark Frank. Ekman has been considered the premier expert on nonverbal communication for the last generation. In addition to mapping cross-cultural displays of emotion, he has studied changes in facial expressions when people are induced to lie. Several years ago, I heard Ekman deliver a spellbinding lecture on his recent research with lie detection. He had conducted an experiment with about twenty people that was a delicious mix of science and theater.

Imagine you read about an experiment that will take an hour or so that will pay you money. You call to sign up, and in the mail, you receive a questionnaire that asks your beliefs about a number of current topics—things like capital punishment, smoking, the environmental movement. A few days later, someone calls to make an appointment for you to participate in the study. You are told that you will meet Professor Ekman for a brief interview about one of the topics on which you reported holding a strong belief. Some people are asked to tell their true beliefs and the others told to falsely claim the opposite of what they had reported on the questionnaire. You are told that Ekman will talk with you for a few minutes and try to determine if you are expressing your true belief.

Here’s the interesting part of the deal: If you tell him the truth and he believes you are telling the truth, you will receive a $10 bonus. If you lie and he thinks you are telling the truth, you will receive a $50 bonus. However, if he thinks you are lying you will receive no bonus and, in fact, you may be punished by a trip to the Noise Room. The Noise Room is a small dark room where you must sit alone for an hour or so while you listen to occasional bursts of loud noise. In other words, it is to your advantage to try to convince Ekman that you are telling the truth.

Ekman’s group made videotapes of the interviews and ultimately showed the tapes to a wide array of people, including psychologists, local and state law enforcement personnel, and high-level federal officers with training in interrogation, and asked them to distinguish those who were lying from those being truthful. Overall, the accuracy rates ranged from 51 to 73 percent accurate, where 50 percent was chance.

After hearing Ekman’s presentation, I asked if he would be willing to share the transcripts of the interviews so that I could subject them to our computer program. Our arrangement was that he would send the transcripts but not tell us who was truthful. I would then send back a list of my conclusions about who were the liars and who were the truth tellers. A few weeks later I had analyzed his data and made my determinations. His co-author Maureen O’Sullivan responded almost immediately saying that I had done an amazing job. With this small sample, the computer