High court jurors are actually better able to tell whether those on the stand are lying or telling the truth if the latter are wearing a face mask, a study has claimed.
University of Portsmouth-led experts studied how COVID has affected the lie-detecting capacities of juries via measures like face masks and virtual courtrooms.
They found that facial expressions and other non-verbal behaviours that might be lost behind a mask or over a video screen are in fact unreliable indicators of deceit.
Given this, masking these signals can make it easier for jurors to assess truthfulness — and suggest that anti-COVID measures are not detrimental to court proceedings.
High court jurors are actually better able to tell whether those on the stand are lying or telling the truth if the latter are wearing a face mask (pictured), a study has claimed (stock image)
The research was undertaken by psychologists Aldert Vrij of the University of Portsmouth and Maria Hartwig of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
‘In some ways we deliver good news. It does not seem that the measures to counter the spread of the COVID19 virus will negatively impact juries,’ said Professor Vrij.
‘Provided jurors are able to clearly hear the defendant and their speech is not muffled by the mask, there is no reason for concern.’
In their study, Professors Vrij and Hartwig reviewed hundreds of past studies on deception, focussing on those that assessed how well we can identify lies based on non-verbal cues such as demeanour, gestures and facial expressions.
These indicated people are only able to correctly detect deceit based on these indicators half of the time — an accuracy rate little better than random guesswork.
According to the team, habitual liars know how to cover up tell-tale behaviours that might give a more truthful individual away.
‘We draw attention to fundamentally problematic aspects of lie detection — in particular, the fact that non-verbal behaviour is not helpful,’ explained Professor Vrij.
‘It may suggest that the future lies in exploring how to translate science-based interviewing and interrogation protocols to the courtroom, to draw more accurate lie detection results from jurors.’
The team also explored studies that looked at whether it was easier or not to detect a liar in person than it was via a recording or video call — finding that lies were spotted just as well in both face-to-face and virtual courtrooms.
While the findings suggest that measures against COVID-19 have not significantly affected court proceedings, there are still questions outstanding, the duo said.
‘With only one existing study [explicitly] on how face coverings impact lie detection, it is clear more research needs to be done to address questions and concerns around how the pandemic is impacting the justice system.’
The full findings of the study were published in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition.
This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk