Just like in our interpersonal relationships, sometimes we just feel the need to lie in the workplace. These lies can include “the cat ate my presentation,” “I’m not feeling well today,” and “No, I’m not sleeping with my secretary.” In many cases, we think these lies are harmless and won’t be discovered anyway. But for some employees at companies in the United Kingdom, workplace lying may become considerably more risky. Many employers are hiring Darren Stanton—a hypnotist who has been dubbed the “human lie detector”—to help sort out the workplace lies from the truth.
Stanton picked up his lie detection skills while working as a forensic psychologist—an experience that taught him the importance of reading nonverbal communication to determine if someone is being dishonest.
“Most of our communication is nonverbal and subconscious and that’s the inadvertent information I pick up on. We all have certain traits in common when we lie, and physical reactions that are very hard to conceal,” he said. “When I was in the prison service, I would be routinely lied to by prisoners when I was assessing them. You become adept at spotting the signs. Obviously I’m not a substitute for the usual HR processes, but my insight can be useful to managers when deciding whether to escalate an issue with an employee who they feel is being untruthful.”
The employee issues that Stanton is helping employers with include lies about theft, bullying, and how much time employees spend on personal phone calls and playing on social networking sites when they should be working. As bosses question their workers about these issues, the human lie detector is there monitoring nonverbal cues and looking for employees’ lies.
Those who have not even been hired yet by a company may also come under this polygraph man’s scrutiny. Stanton also advises companies about the truthfulness of prospective employees, so any job seeker who lies on their resume will also be monitored during a job interview for lies.
(Source: The Human Lie Detector. Retrieved from www.onlineprnews.com.)
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Comments
How accurate would this "human lie detector" be with someone like me whose gestures and movements are caused by Tourette Syndrome, not by an emotional state?
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