Telling porkies hard for elderly

If you want to know the truth, just ask an older person. A study has revealed that elderly people are less likely to lie or recognise they are being lied to.

The New Zealand study, conducted at the University of Otago and published last week, suggested the ability to recognise deceit may wear down with age after comparing young and old adults’ skills at deception as judged by listeners within and outside their age group.

The results of the lie detection test showed both young and old listeners found it easier to differentiate truths and lies when the speaker was an older adult.

Video clips of 20 people – 10 aged 30 or under and 10 aged older than 60, expressing their actual or false views on topical issues were shown to the study’s participants.

Two clips of each speaker were shown, one in which they were lying and the other being truthful.

The listeners, aged between 21 and 71 years old, were asked to determine if the person in each clip was being truthful or lying. They also underwent tests that required judgments of emotional expression and age in faces.

The inability to lie was contributed to memory, planning ability and social understanding.

The study revealed older people may be less convincing liars because the kinds of cognitive abilities required for successful deceit are also those that tend to deteriorate with age.

The research team also examined an idea proposed by previous researchers that recognising brief flashes of negative facial emotions such as guilt, fear or disgust, known as “micro- expressions”, played a key role in detecting lies.

“We still don’t know what exactly allows listeners to correctly detect lies, although we know that people can differentiate lies and truth at a rate above chance level, though they are far from perfect,” the study’s researchers said.

They said it would be interesting to study whether older adults’ difficulties telling and detecting lies affected their susceptibility to fraud schemes and their general social well-being.

“As well as problems arising from being more easily deceived, a reduced ability to tell white lies that spare others’ feelings may impair their relationships, for example,” the researchers said.

The findings were published in US journal Psychology and Ageing.

Do you find it hard to tell a lie? Let us know in the comment box below.