Scientific Insights: How to Detect Children's Lies and Hidden Emotions

Selected 100 classic TED talks, lasting 8-15 minutes, covering innovation, growth, and future trends. Offers MP3 online streaming, downloads, and English transcripts to help you improve listening and speaking skills. Use the power of ideas to ignite your passion for learning! Here is this edition's 【TED】 collection of 100 classic speech listening and speaking materials. Keep practicing, and make your English more connected to daily life!

Hi, let me ask the audience a question. Did you ever lie as a child? If you did, could you please raise your hand? Wow, this is the most honest group of people I've ever met. So for the last 20 years, I've been studying how children learn to tell lies. And today, I'm going to share with you some of the discoveries that we have made. But to begin, I'm going to tell you a story from Mr. Richard Masina, who is my friend, and the elementary school principal. He got a phone call one day. The call says, Mr. Masina, my son, John Lee, will not come to school today because he's sick. Mr. Masina asks, who am I speaking to, please? And the caller says, I am my father. So this story sums up very nicely three common beliefs we have about children and lying. One, children only come to tell lies after entering elementary school. Two, children are poor liars. We adults can easily detect their lies. And three, if children lie at a very young age, there must be some character flaws with them, and they are going to become pathological liars for life. Well, it turns out all three beliefs are wrong.

So we have been playing guessing games with children all over the world. So here's an example. In this game, we ask children to guess the numbers on the cards. And we tell them, if they win the game, they are going to get a big prize. But in the middle of the game, we make an excuse and leave the room. And before we leave the room, we tell them not to peek at the cards. Of course, we have hidden cameras in the room to watch their every move. Because the design of the game is so strong, more than 90% of children would peek as soon as we leave the room. The crucial question is, when we return and ask the children whether or not they have peeked, whether the children who peeked confess or lie about their transgression. We found that regardless of gender, country, or religion, at two years of age, 30% lie, 70% tell the truth. At three years of age, 50% lie, and 50% tell the truth. At four years of age, more than 80% lie. And after four years of age, most children lie. So as you can see, lying is really a typical part of development. And some children begin to tell lies as young as two years of age.

So now let's take a closer look at the younger children. Why do some but not all young children lie? As in cooking, you need good ingredients to cook good food. And good lying requires two key ingredients. The first key ingredient is theory of mind or the mind-reading ability. Mind reading is the ability to know that different people have different knowledge about the situation and the ability to differentiate between what I know and what you know. Mind reading is important for lying because the basis of lying is that I know, you don't know what I know. Therefore I can lie to you. The second key ingredient for good lying is self-control. It is the ability to control your speech, facial expression, and body language, so that you can tell a convincing lie. And we found that those young children who have more advanced mind-reading and self-control abilities tell lies earlier and are more sophisticated liars. As it turns out, these two abilities are also essential for all of us to function well in our society. In fact, deficits in mind-reading and self-control abilities are associated with serious developmental problems such as ADHD and autism.

Now are children poor liars? Do you think you can easily detect their lies? Would you like to give it a try? Yes? Okay. So I'm going to show you two videos. In the videos, the children are going to respond to a researcher's question, did you peek? So try to tell me which child is lying and which child is telling the truth. So here's child number one. Are you ready? Did you peek? No. And this is child number two. Did you peek? No. Okay. If you think child number one is lying, please raise your hand. If you think child number two is lying, please raise your hand. Okay. So as a matter of fact, child number one is telling the truth. Child number two is lying. Looks like many of you are terrible detectives of children's lies. Now we have played similar games with many, many adults from all walks of life. And we showed them many videos. In half of the videos, the children lied. In the other half of the videos, children told the truth. And let's find out how these adults perform. Because there are as many liars as truth-tellers, if you guess randomly, there's a 50% chance you're going to get it right. So if your accuracy is around 50%, it means you are terrible detectives of children's lies.

So let's start with undergrad and law school students who typically have limited experience with children. No, they cannot detect children's lies. Their performance is around chance. Now how about social workers and child protection lawyers who work with children on a daily basis? Can they detect children's lies? No, they cannot. What about judges, customs officers, and police officers who deal with liars on a daily basis? Can they detect children's lies? No, they cannot. What about parents? Can parents detect other children's lies? No, they cannot. What about, can parents detect their own children's lies? No, they cannot. So now you may ask, why are children's lies so difficult to detect? So let me illustrate this with my own son, Nathan. This is his facial expression when he lies. When children lie, their facial expression is typically neutral. However, behind this neutral expression, the child is experiencing a lot of emotions, such as fear, guilt, shame, and maybe a little bit of liar's delight. Unfortunately, such emotions are either fleeting or hidden, therefore, are mostly invisible to us.

So in the last five years, we have been trying to figure out a way to reveal these hidden emotions. Then we made a discovery. We know that underneath our facial skin, there's a rich network of blood vessels. When we experience different emotions, our facial blood flow changes subtly. And these changes are regulated by the autonomous system that is beyond our conscious control. So by looking at facial blood flow changes, we can reveal people's hidden emotions. Unfortunately, such emotion-related facial blood flow changes are too subtle to detect with the naked eye. So to help us reveal people's facial emotions, we have developed a new imaging technology we call transdermal optical imaging. To do so, we use a regular video camera to record people when they experience various hidden emotions. Then, using our image processing technology, we can extract transdermal images of facial blood flow changes. And by looking at transdermal video images, now we can easily see facial blood flow changes associated with various hidden emotions.

Using this technology, we can now reveal the hidden emotion associated with lying and therefore detect people's lies. We can do so non-invasively, remotely, inexpensively, with an accuracy of about 85%, which is far better than chance level. In addition, we discovered a Pinocchio effect. No, not this Pinocchio effect. This is the real Pinocchio effect: when people lie, the facial blood flow on the cheeks decreases and the facial blood flow on the nose increases. Of course, lying is not the only situation that will evoke our hidden emotions. So then we ask ourselves, in addition to detecting lies, how can our technology be used? One application is in education. For example, using this technology, we can help a mathematics teacher to identify the students in his classroom who may experience high anxiety about the topic he is teaching so that he can help them. We can also use this in healthcare. For example, every day I Skype my parents who live thousands of miles away. Using this technology, I can not only find out what's going on in their lives, but also simultaneously monitor their heart rate, their stress level, their mood, and whether or not they are experiencing pain. Perhaps in the future, we could even assess their risks for heart attack or hypertension.

And you may ask, can we use this also to reveal politicians' emotions? For example, during a debate. Well, the answer is yes. Using TV footage, we could detect the politicians' heart rate, mood, and stress, and perhaps in the future whether or not they are lying to us. We can also use this in marketing research. For example, to find out whether or not people like certain consumer products. We can even use it in dating. For example, if your date is smiling at you, this technology can help you to determine whether she actually likes you or she's just trying to be nice to you. And in this case, she's just trying to be nice to you. So transdermal optical imaging technology is at a very early stage of development. Many new applications will come about that we don't know today. However, one thing I know for sure is that lying will never be the same again. Thank you very much.