Fibbing is tough on the brain. New strategies expose liars by adding to the load

One of my guilty pleasures is the long-running TV show NCIS, a drama focused on the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The hero is a former marine, now Special Agent Jethro Gibbs, a disciplined detective with an uncanny ability to observe and question criminal suspects. Gibbs doesn't say much or display a lot of emotion in the interrogation room - indeed, his cool demeanor is his trademark - yet he is a keen lie spotter.

Psychological scientists are fascinated by real-life versions of the fictional Gibbs. Detecting lies and liars is essential to effective policing and prosecution of criminals, but it is maddeningly difficult. Most of us can correctly spot barely more than half of all lies and truths through ­listening and observation - meaning we are wrong almost as often as we are right. And half a century of research has done little to polish this unimpressive track record.

But scientists are still working to improve on that, and among them is social psychologist Aldert Vrij of the University of Portsmouth in England. Vrij has been using a key insight from his field to improve interrogation methods: the human mind, despite its impressive abilities, has limited capacity for how much thinking it can handle at any one time. So piling on demands for additional, simultaneous thought - or cognitive "load" - compromises normal information processing. Because lying is more cognitively demanding than telling the truth, these compromised abilities should be revealed in detectable behavioral clues.

Ever felt dismay and a sense of hopelessness when you hear yet another story of animal abuse, domestic violence or teenage bullying? Why are people so cruel?

Many researchers studying aggression and violence find the answers to their questions consistently fall back to a failure of empathy.

What is empathy, how do we get it and why do we need it?

In order to feel empathy, a person must understand another's behavior, be able to take the perspective of another and share another's emotional state. The ability to feel empathy appears to vary from individual to individual, and children learn to regulate this emotion based on a variety of social and cultural factors.

Aggression and violence relate inversely to empathy. Those who abuse their children, for example, score low on measures of empathy. Many researchers believe violent individuals have empathy or perspective-taking deficits and that empathy training is a critical component of treatment programs, the idea being if perpetrators can stop long enough to imagine themselves in the shoes of the victims, the violence can be prevented.¹ Empathy also relates to the degree of attachment people experience with their pets. Those who report strong bonds with their companion animals rate high on empathy scales.² Empathy is linked to a variety of pro-social behaviors (like being caring and helpful towards others) and even success in school and the workplace.3

So if empathy is the key, how do we teach empathy?

Jude Bijou Serves Up the Recipe for a Peaceful Life

After 20 years in the making, the book Attitude Reconstruction: A Blueprint for Building a Better Life by author Jude Bijou has finally hit the bookstores. Recently, the Santa Barbara marriage and family therapist appeared at Chaucer's Books on State Street to explain "how honoring our emotions physically and constructively can without fail, bring us more joy, love, and peace."

In her book, Bijou introduces a blueprint of the mind which is a theory based on her own experiences in life, conversations with clients and colleagues, and meditation among other things. Based on the blueprint, Bijou believes that anybody can turn around negative emotions - sadness, anger, and fear - and instead feel joy, love, and peace. The key is to allow yourself to feel.

New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that people's ability to learn and remember information depends on what they do with their hands while they are learning.

According to a study conducted by Notre Dame Psychology Professor James Brockmole and post-doctoral fellow Christopher Davoli, people holding objects they're learning about process detail and notice differences among objects more effectively, while keeping the hands away from the objects help people notice similarities and consistencies among those things.

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of Memory and Cognition.

Participants in the study were asked to analyze a set of complex geometric patterns in a series of images. Half the subjects did so while holding their hands alongside the images, while the other half held their hands in their laps.

What do a patient with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), a basketball star, and an animal in captivity have in common? According to new research from Tel Aviv University, they share a clear behavioral link that reduces stress.

In a new study, Prof. David Eilam and his graduate student Hila Keren of TAU's Department of Zoology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences found that repetitive behavior in general - and especially ritualistic-like behavior - is not only a human phenomenon but also one in the animal world. They concluded that ritualistic behavior in both humans and animals developed as a way to induce calm and manage stress caused by unpredictability and uncontrollability - heightening our belief that we are in control of a situation that is otherwise out of our hands.

Amazon.com, the books-to-diapers-to-machetes Internet superstore, is a perfect snapshot of the American Dream, circa 2011.

It grows by the hour, fueled by a relentless optimism that has made America America. First it sold books. Then it realized that buying printed words in bulk, sorting and shipping them was a transferable skill. It has since applied it to anything you could want.

In 2011, for example, I have bought the following from Amazon: a hard drive, an electric shaver, a Bluetooth headset, a coffee machine and some filters, a multivoltage adapter, four light bulbs, a rubber raft (don't ask), a chalkboard eraser, an ice cream maker, a flash drive, roller-ball pen replacements, a wireless router, a music speaker, a pair of jeans and a shoe rack - and, oh yeah, some books. (Disclosure: A book and a long-form article I have written are sold on Amazon.)

It was a technique that therapist Lionel Logue used to help George VI, as shown in The King's Speech - now scientists have discovered why singing is so effective at treating a stammer.

Surprisingly it has nothing to do with the melody but instead is based on the rhythm, say scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

Researchers found that highly familiar song lyrics and formulaic phrases expressed rhythmically had a strong impact on articulation - regardless of whether they were sung or spoken.

The results may lead the way to new therapies for speech disorders.

It has been almost a decade since 9/11/2001, and for the past ten years we have all lived in a stressful global reality in permanent flux. The Chinese culture, inspired by Confucius, places at the core of its value system the notion of balance and harmony. Almost ten years ago, any hope for even some harmonious outcome of world events was smashed to pieces and it hasn't be mended ever since. A vicious cycle of crisis has engulfed our global reality: wars, food crisis, financial crisis, natural disasters and man-made disasters.

This inexorable cycle of death and destruction is a fast spreading global disease taking its toll on all of us, and none of us are immunised from it. The storms have become tornadoes or hurricanes aiming straight at us, and the big waves must be killer Tsunamis to make it into the headlines. It can not be contested by anyone that we are currently living in a period of deep turmoil, but very few propose solutions which are not purely cosmetic and merely at the periphery of the core issues. Most of us shift the blame for this global crisis, unfolding since a decade, on entities such as corporations, governments: what can be called a global system of governance and production or exploitation of people and resources. But, first of all we could have resisted this global system a long time ago, and secondly most of us carry within ourselves the psychological attributes we so vehemently reject in the global social context. Character traits such as greed, quest for power, narcissism and lack of empathy.

This year some positive changes are occurring in the global consciousness: Arabs are challenging the power of corrupt autocratic rulers across the Middle-East, protests are spreading in Europe within Greece, Spain, and now London. Activists are reaching across country boundaries to join forces and define common goal. Some are talking about the need of a global revolution. However, we can only challenge the order of a ruthless, amoral, "dog eat dog" mentality that is our global reality, by having a revolution within ourselves. We must change our own psychology, otherwise we will never make lasting progress in a global consciousness where brutality, selfishness, corruption and amorality are the real driving forces of social success.

One in 25 bosses may be psychopaths - a rate that's four times greater than in the general population - according to research by psychologist and executive coach Paul Babiak.

Babiak studied 203 American corporate professionals who had been chosen by their companies to participate in a management training program. He evaluated their psychopathic traits using a version of the standard psychopathy checklist developed by Robert Hare, an expert in psychopathy at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Psychopaths, who are characterized by being completely amoral and concerned only with their own power and selfish pleasures, may be overrepresented in the business environment because it plays to their strengths. Where greed is considered good and profitmaking is the most important value, psychopaths can thrive.

Ignotas nulla curatio morbid - do not attempt to cure what you do not understand - is the opening theme in this study of evil. Political Ponerology is "a science on the nature of of evil adjusted for political purposes." The author, Andrzej Lobaczewski, describes himself as a Polish psychologist who - with many other colleagues - found meaning living through Nazism and then Communism by studying how evil happens and triumphs in a wider political and economic system.

Lobaczewski's hypothesis is that a small percentage of humans are born psychopaths. He describes the research to back up that data that was destroyed and supressed. Another minority percentage are of a nature to go along with psychopaths while the vast majority of people are essentially healthy. The majority who are healthy have a difficult time understanding that some people are not - they can not fathom being a psychopath or acting like one.

No one has worked harder in the last five years to understand the Tapeworm than Harry Blazer. It was Harry who discovered Political Ponerology and sent it to me. I found it chock full of deeply useful insights that can inform organizing to shift our situation. For example, Lobaczewski discovered that dealing with psychopathic systems made healthy people neurotic. However, they could heal very quickly when he gave them a scientific framework for understanding what had happened and why. With a sound framework, they could start to differentiate who was healthy and who was not and to devise strategies to deal effectively with psychopaths in power. Rather than having their relations with all humans destroyed, they were able to discriminate between healthy and unhealthy and increase their immunity to the drain of unhealthy culture and systems.