\n<\/p>\n
Alan Cumming, host of the hit U.S. version of the reality competition The Traitors, has a theory about what makes the show so captivating: \u201cWe watch people lying, and we know they\u2019re lying,\u201d he said in a recent interview on NBC\u2019s Today. \u201cAnd also, you watch people dealing with lying not very well and not enjoying it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Traitors brings a group of celebrity competitors\u2014actors, comedians, reality TV stars and Olympic athletes, for example\u2014to a mansion in the bucolic Scottish Highlands to play a high-stakes version of the party game Mafia. The prize is a jackpot worth up to $250,000. The object of the game is for the \u201cfaithfuls\u201d to identify and banish the \u201ctraitors,\u201d while the traitors attempt to trick everyone else into believing they\u2019re one of the good guys.<\/p>\n
The lying, backstabbing and manipulation the game inspires does indeed make for delightful TV viewing. But the show\u2019s formula also raises a question: How do you win? The answer may lie in what science tells us about how and why we lie and how to know when someone is playing false with us.<\/p>\n
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For those who play The Traitors as a faithful, a winning strategy lies in being able to tell who is lying and who is not. Unfortunately, humans are exceptionally bad at detecting lies. One 2006 meta-analysis involving more than 24,000 people, for example, found that participants correctly identified lies just 47 percent of the time\u2014about the same as they might by just flipping a coin\u2014and correctly identified truths just 61 percent of the time.<\/p>\n
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 book Lies, Lying and Liars: A Psychological Analysis. \u201cAnd there are lots of them,\u201d Beattie adds.<\/p>\n
One such bias is that many of us are taught from a young age that if someone\u2019s lying, they won\u2019t look you in the eyes. \u201cThat\u2019s simply not true,\u201d Beattie says. On the contrary, when people are planning what to say next, they tend to look away, while liars often known to maintain eye contact to avoid detection. “So forget about eye gaze,\u201d Beattie says.<\/p>\n
Other 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 suppress their hand gestures and may even blink differently compared with when they speak the truth.<\/p>\n
Part of the reason why liars try to control their body language may be because playing false requires more cognitive effort, says Sharon Leal, a senior research fellow at the University of Portsmouth in England, who studies deception detection. \u201cIt takes up more mental resources to lie than it does to tell the truth,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
There is a way to exploit this tendency called \u201ccognitive interviewing.\u201d For faithful Traitors 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. Research that Leal and her colleagues published in 2008 found that police officers were better at detecting lies about an incident when mock \u201csuspects\u201d told false details in reverse chronological order.<\/p>\n
Confirmation bias can also muddy the waters. \u201cIf you like someone and they share your views,\u201d Beattie says, \u201cyou\u2019re less likely to be skeptical when they start talking, because they\u2019re saying things that you want to hear.\u201d Similarly, people who are thought of as good-looking may take advantage of a so-called halo effect: some research suggests that defendants in criminal cases are more likely to get a lighter sentence if they are perceived as physically attractive, Beattie says.<\/p>\n
Leal recommends focusing on verbal information\u2014contradictory storytelling or word choice, for instance. In a 2025 study, 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would totally ignore nonverbal behavior,\u201d Leal says, \u201cunless it was something really obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n
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. \u201cYou might throw something in about your personal life\u201d in a conversation, for example, to give the impression of openness.<\/p>\n
Another strategy is to \u201creframe stories emotionally,\u201d Beattie says. \u201cThe secret of being a really good liar is to change the emotional response to [lying].\u201d 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\u2014and thus telling\u2014responses to questions, he says.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, lying can be taxing. In this season, one traitor, Love Island\u2019s Rob Rausch, revealed in the episode before the finale that his deception had been \u201ctaking a toll.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bit like if you hold a glass of water: At first, it doesn\u2019t bother you,\u201d Leal says. \u201cBut keep holding that for hours and hours and hours, and you\u2019ll start to feel the stress of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Viewers will need to wait until the show\u2019s finale airs on Thursday to know if Rausch\u2019s efforts will pay off\u2014or if he will leave with nothing. But his strategy of keeping his emotions at bay, leaning in to alliances and wearing overalls without a shirt appears to be going well so far. As host Cumming shared on a recent episode of Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, \u201cthe game is called The Traitors, and he\u2019s really good at it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alan Cumming, host of the hit U.S. version of the reality competition The Traitors, has a theory about what makes the show so captivating: \u201cWe watch people lying, and we know they\u2019re lying,\u201d he said in a recent interview on NBC\u2019s Today. \u201cAnd also, you watch people dealing with lying not very well and not<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[516,7965,1259],"class_list":{"0":"post-45405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-traitors","10":"tag-win"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}