As a mediator and as a Guardian Ad Litem (GAL), one of the most challenging problems to handle is this: one of them is lying, and you're not sure which one. Some examples? Spouses offer absolute opposite accounts about whether one refused to allow the other to pick up the child for parenting time or not; the amount of back child support that is due; or whether a parent tried to call or not. These are fact-based questions, and frequently the only evidence is created by the parties, unverified by independent sources.
When mediating, in some sense, it doesn't matter which one is lying. If the parties can agree to some version of facts for resolving the issues (e.g., "let's just agree that the amount X is going to pay in back child support is $Y"), then there is room for a deal to be made. (Notice this does not decide how much X owes, just how much X is going to pay.) Ditto if the mediator can redirect the parents toward the future, not the past.
Outside of mediation, however, when asked by a judge to fact-find as a Guardian for the minor child, it does matter who's lying. And as a mediator, it definitely can help speed the negotiation along if I know who's lying.
That is why I was so intrigued by the presentation "Dodging Lies and Making Deals: the Science of Lie Detection and Emotional Truthfulness" offered by Clark Freshman at the 18th Annual Alternative Dispute Resolution Conference for Neutrals held earlier this month.
Freshman is a law professor at the University of California Hastings in San Francisco, and his research is based on the analysis of body language and facial expressions -- especially microexpressions -- pioneered by Paul Ekman. If you ever saw the TV show Lie to Me, you know what I'm talking about.
The substance of the training is too nuanced to offer here, but what was most intriguing about the presentation was discovering how extraordinarily bad at detecting lies most of us were -- even when we caught the microexpressions, we were not sure what they meant, when paired with the person's words or other body language.
Interested in getting better? Check out the training videos on Dr. Ekman's website: http://www.paulekman.com/
