What's the best way to expose a liar? Surely each of us has different tactics; Vrij, a professor at the University of Portsmouth has shown that the best way to discover a lie is to have the person repeat his version of how things happened in reverse, that is, to have him start the story from the most recent part and end with the more remote.
This idea is based on the theory that when you lie it is more cognitively difficult to tell the story in reverse. The number of errors and inconsistencies increases considerably.
The study in question was carried out by asking 290 police officers to examine through an interview with 255 students who had to answer with real or fictitious data to their respective questions.
Agents were more adept at detecting lies when the interview technique required the story told backwards than when using classic interrogation techniques.
People who lie tend to tell their stories in a strict chronological order, precisely because they know they must be consistent and not contradict each other, for this reason when they are asked to change the order of the story the cognitive effort becomes greater and serious trouble the liars.
Of course, this technique should not be taken as infallible to the letter, there are factors such as stress, intellectual limitations or emotional state that can compromise the most truthful story so that, telling stories in the opposite direction is just another procedure to identify the possibility. that the person is lying but does not offer the absolute guarantee.
