Experts say that to win a game like The Traitors, competitors should look for verbal clues over physical ones—and be friendly and open
has a theory about what makes the show so captivating: “We watch people lying, and we know they’re lying,” he said in a recent interview on NBC’sbrings a group of celebrity competitors—actors, comedians, reality TV stars and Olympic athletes, for example—to a mansion in the bucolic Scottish Highlands to play a high-stakes version of the party game.
The prize is a jackpot worth up to $250,000. The object of the game is for the “faithfuls” to identify and banish the “traitors,” while the traitors attempt to trick everyone else into believing they’re one of the good guys. The lying, backstabbing and manipulation the game inspires does indeed make for delightful TV viewing. But the show’s formula also raises a question: How do you win? The answer may lie in what science tells us about. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.as a faithful, a winning strategy lies in being able to tell who is lying and who is not. Unfortunately, humans areinvolving more than 24,000 people, for example, found that participants correctly identified lies just 47 percent of the time—about the same as they might by just flipping a coin—and correctly identified truths just 61 percent of the time. To catch a traitor in the act, players need to consider their own innate biases, says Geoffrey Beattie, a professor of psychology at Edge Hill University in England and author of the bookOne such bias is that many of us are taught from a young age that if someone’s lying, they won’t look you in the eyes. “That’s simply not true,” Beattie says. On the contrary, when people are planning what to say next, they tend to look away, while liars oftenOther body language may be more telling. When they smile, how abruptly do they stop grinning? An extremely abrupt stop to a smile signals that it may be fake, Beattie says. Research also shows that people who lie often, says Sharon Leal, a senior research fellow at the University of Portsmouth in England, who studies deception detection. “It takes up more mental resources to lie than it does to tell the truth,” she says. A similar situation arises when we unconsciously stop dead in the street in order to answer a text message, for example, Leal adds.players, Beattie recommends asking other contestants about their experiences out of chronological order. That makes it harder to lie convincingly and consistently compared with telling a single, rehearsed story.that Leal and her colleagues published in 2008 found that police officers were better at detecting lies about an incident when mock “suspects” told false details in reverse chronological order. Confirmation bias can also muddy the waters. “If you like someone and they share your views,” Beattie says, “you’re less likely to be skeptical when they start talking, because they’re saying things that you want to hear.” Similarly, people who are thought of as good-looking may take advantage of a so-calledthat defendants in criminal cases are more likely to get a lighter sentence if they are perceived as physically attractive, Beattie says., she and her colleagues found that people tend to be better at detecting lies when they hear someone giving a statement rather than see it.For the traitors in the game, science has a few tricks they can try to be more convincing. Appearing open, friendly and approachable all come off as more trustworthy, Leal says. “You might throw something in about your personal life” in a conversation, for example, to give the impression of openness. Another strategy is to “reframe stories emotionally,” Beattie says. “The secret of being a really good liar is to change the emotional response to .” If you can remind yourself that you are playing a game with your fellow contestants that you want to win, you can avoid triggering more emotive—and thus telling—responses to questions, he says.’s Rob Rausch, revealed in the episode before the finale that his deception had been “taking a toll.” “It’s a bit like if you hold a glass of water: At first, it doesn’t bother you,” Leal says. “But keep holding that for hours and hours and hours, and you’ll start to feel the stress of it.” Viewers will need to wait until the show’s finale airs on Thursday to know if Rausch’s efforts will pay off—or if he will leave with nothing. But his strategy of keeping his emotions at bay, leaning in to alliances andScientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too., you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you’ll support us in that mission.
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