Can technology stop people lying on dating sites?

RESEARCHERS have created a computer program that can detect lies, be they in an e-mail or on a dating profile or visa application.

The algorithm created by researchers at City University London and the University of Westminster can tell if a person is lying just by analysing word use, structure and context.

To create the algorithm, researchers compared text in tens of thousands of e-mails that contained lies and truthful statements.

The comparison revealed that people who are lying are less likely to use personal pronouns — such as “I”, “me”, “mine” — and tend to use more adjectives, such as “brilliant” and “sublime”. Reasons for this language use could be that liars try to dissociate themselves from the content of a message, while clouding its meaning in unnecessary description.

Other clues that someone is lying include linking sentences to each other so that thoughts appear to be connected, and mirroring the sentence structure of the person they’re communicating with.

The algorithm is better at detecting lies than the average human. People manage to spot a lie 54% of the time, said the researchers, whereas the computer lie detector detects it 70% of the time. “Humans are startlingly bad at consciously detecting deception,” said Tom van Laer, one of the researchers.

The algorithm was designed to help organisations protect themselves against scam or phishing e-mails.

“We want to put it to work to fight fraud wherever it occurs in computerised content,” said Van Laer. “And as the technology evolves, we want to wholly automate its warning.”

But before it can be put into practice, Van Laer said, they want to increase the algorithm’s accuracy. — Cara McGoogan © The Daily Telegraph, London