In fact, researchers have found little evidence to support this belief despite decades of searching. Across cultures, people believe that behaviors such as averted gaze, fidgeting and stuttering betray deceivers. The men, both later exonerated, were victims of a pervasive misconception: that you can spot a liar by the way they act. They’re not, says psychologist Maria Hartwig, a deception researcher at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. How can such opposite feelings both be telltale clues of hidden guilt? He, too, was judged to be lying and served nearly 16 years for the crime. Yet in another case, detectives thought that 16-year-old Jeffrey Deskovic seemed too distraught and too eager to help detectives after his high school classmate was found strangled. Authorities didn’t believe his claims of innocence, and he spent 17 years in prison for the murders. Police thought that 17-year-old Marty Tankleff seemed too calm after finding his mother stabbed to death and his father mortally bludgeoned in the family’s sprawling Long Island home.
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