Lying through text message should be fairly simple, right? You don’t have to work on your poker face or make sure your quivering voice doesn’t give you away. In practice, lying through text should be downright impossible to spot.
Unless you’re researchers at Brigham Young University. Their research may be able to shed the light on when your significant other is fibbing, according to CNET.
The researchers say a sudden pause during a quick back and forth or a message that takes a while to be send is a red flag. They could be trying a little too hard to think of the best way to lie.
Another red flag? Overly short messages. The BYU researchers found people over edit their lies, once again making sure their text is exactly how they want to write it.
This is how BYU found this information. They took 100 college students and had a computer ask them questions. The students were told to lie in half of their responses. When the students tried to lie, their responses took longer, were edited more and it took them more time to hit the Send button.
So how do you put this information to use in the real world? The authors of the study say you shouldn’t assume someone is lying when they take a while to respond (hey, they could just be busy after all), but when a text just doesn’t seem right after waiting an hour for it, get your detective hat on.
