World Bulletin / News Desk

A team of psychologists have found that human beings have an innate instrict when it comes to spotting lies.

It has been suggested in Psychological Science that the unconcious mind may very well be equipped with an accurate lie detector.

A team led by Dr Leanne ten Brinke of the University of California gave 72 students videos to watch of "suspects" in a mock crime scene in which a $100 bill is stolen from a bookshelf.

All actors in the video then denied that they had stolen the money, while observers were told to identify the fibber. The correct culprit was identified 43% of the time.

Then participants were shown two pictures of suspects and told to associate words like truthful/honest or untruthful/dishonest to their faces. In this test, participants performed even better.

Dr Leanne ten Brinke said "It's possible that we make decisions on a daily basis as to who we are going to continue to interact with, so we decide to become friends with some people and not others, to continue dating some people and not others, or to work closely with some and not others.

"Perhaps some of this decision is driven by our intuitive sense that some of these people we choose not to interact with are lying to us."