The Autism Spectrum Quotient

Take the test at the link below.

The Autism Spectrum Quotient

Become a Human Lie Detector

The following tips will assist you in determining whether someone is being untruthful. A word of caution is required though, to make an accurate determination that somebody is lying you will need to assess multiple factors rather than rely on a single diagnostic factor. By looking for clusters of the following factors you will enhance your ability to determine the truthfulness of those you meet.

1) Body Language

Is the person making eye contact while speaking? Liars will sometimes avoid making eye contact when lying.

Does the person touch their face or head whilst talking? Some liars will unconsciously touch their face whilst lying. Often the liar will disguise this movement as a scratch.

Are the movements of the person rather stiff? Liars will often minimize their display of body language in a bid to hide the fact that they are lying.

2) Incongruence

Is there a delay between the persons language and the emotion displayed? An example of this can be seen when you give somebody a present that they dislike and they say "I love it" but the smile comes after the statement rather than with it.

Facial expressions that don't match the verbal statement, such as somebody grimacing when they say "I love you", are another clue that the person is lying.

3) Interactions

Liars will often try to distance themselves from the person they are lying to. They may do this by turning their body away from the person they are talking to. They may also try to place a barrier such as an object or an item of furniture between themselves and the person they are talking with.

4 ) Verbal statements of liars

Many liars avoid directly telling a lie. Instead they lie by omission or they will lie via implication. This allows them to lie without directly doing so.

Some liars will add many superfluous details to their fabrications in a bid to make them more believable.

Liars will also sometimes speak in either a monotone voice or a very quiet voice. Some liars voices will also crackle with emotion when lying.

Conclusion

The factors above in combination will help you to determine whether somebody is lying or not.  These factors are not iron clad guarantees of deceit though. For the above factors to be most effective it is helpful if you have some knowledge of how the person has previously interacted with you. This gives a baseline from which you can more effectively judge whether groups of the above factors are significant indicators of untruthfulness. The factors above are useful indicators of potential deceit but you must always remember that sometimes a scratch is just a scratch! Further information on this subject is given in the book "What Every Body is Saying" by former FBI agent Joe Navarro.

Tips and Tricks for Influencing Others

An interesting little article from Lifehacker:

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2011/01/how-to-plant-ideas-in-someones-mind/

How to Develop a Perfect Memory

I've recently commenced a lengthy period of leave and have finally found the time to examine my substantial backlog of reading material. At the top of my list is Dominic O'brien's book "How to Develop a Perfect Memory". This book is an interesting examination of a world champion memorizer's memory techniques. The book begins with a few simple memory techniques (the journey method, and the number shape method) and then moves on to some highly unique memory systems that can not be found elsewhere. One of the author's more useful techniques is his system for memorizing long strings of numbers. This technique assigns a letter to each number (0=O, 1=A, 2=B etc) and then pairs these letters and associates them with both a memorable person and a unique action. These people and actions are linked together using standard memory techniques to memorize the number string. To use a brief example the number 12688072 could be encoded as follows:

12 = AB - Person = Allan Border
68 = SH - Action = Searching for clues (SH = Sherlock Holmes)
80 = HO - Person = Santa Claus (Ho Ho)
72 = GB - Action = Working in the oval office (GB = George Bush)

I would link these people and actions as follows - Allan Border (AB) is holding a large magnifying glass and searching for clues (SH) whilst walking around a cricket pitch. He stumbles upon Santa (HO) who runs off to the White House and starts working away in the oval office (GB).

By using this method numbers are given meaning and this in turn makes them more easily memorized. I'm still only in the early chapters of the book but it looks promising and at this point I would recommend it to anybody who wishes to improve their memory.