Prof Wiseman: “This is how you spot a liar”

Summary

Nudge Podcast Episode Summary

Episode Title: Prof Wiseman: “This is how you spot a liar”
Host: Phil Agnew
Guest: Professor Richard Wiseman
Date: April 27, 2026

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Overview

In this engaging episode of Nudge, Phil Agnew welcomes back Professor Richard Wiseman—psychologist, author, and former magician—for a deep dive into the hidden psychology of deception, luck, perception, and ethical behavior. The key question explored: Can we really spot a liar? Phil and Professor Wiseman debunk common myths about spotting lies, share eye-opening experiments on human behavior, and reveal surprising findings about honesty, luck, and prejudice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Debunking Deception: Can You Really Spot a Liar?

[01:35–12:10]

• The "Truth Test" with Sir Robin Day

  • Professor Wiseman shares details of a live BBC experiment where presenter Sir Robin Day is interviewed twice, telling the truth in one clip and lying in another about his favorite film.
  • The clips are shared with the British public, who are asked to spot the lie. Results show the public is, essentially, no better than chance.
  • Notable Experiment Details:
    • TV viewers: 52% correct (no better than chance)
    • Radio listeners: 73% correct
    • Newspaper readers: 64% correct
  • Key Insight: We are better lie detectors when we focus on what is said and how it’s said (words and intonation), rather than how someone looks.

• Why Are We So Bad At Detecting Lies?

  • People commonly (but incorrectly) believe liars avert their eyes, fidget, or shift in their seats.
  • In truth, liars’ body language is similar to truth tellers—if anything, liars are more static.
  • Real Cues to Lying (from Wiseman and research):
    • Liars speak less and give fewer details. Example: Sir Robin’s lie (“Gone with the Wind”) is shorter than his truth (“Some Like It Hot”) [09:00].
    • Liars use fewer self-references (say “I” less).
      • In the lie: "I" appears 2 times; in the truth: 7 times.
    • Liars rarely admit memory lapses for trivial details (they give “superhuman” detail).

  “People fail to detect lies because they're basing their opinion, their judgment, on behaviors that are not even associated with deception.”
  — Phil Agnew [09:27]

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2. The Science of Luck and Social Connections

[12:10–19:36]

• Six Degrees of Separation, The Small World Experiment

  • Wiseman recreates Milgram’s famous experiment in the UK, showing that social networks are even tighter than previously thought (average 4 steps instead of 6).
  • “Lucky” people have broader, stronger social networks, making them more successful at connecting and spreading opportunities.
  • “Unlucky” people tend to be more socially isolated by their own admission.

  “Lucky people are those nodes. They're very, well, socially connected and they often talk about opportunities coming their way.”
  — Professor Wiseman [14:39]

• The Newspaper Luck Test

  • In a TV experiment, participants were told to count photos in a newspaper. Hidden inside: a big ad says “Stop counting—there are 53 photos. Tell the experimenter you’ve seen this and win £100.”
  • Most “lucky” people spot the messages; “unlucky” people miss it.
  • Insight: Lucky people have a wider attentional spotlight, noticing unexpected opportunities. Unlucky people are so focused (and anxious), they miss big chances.
  • The effect is humorously demonstrated again when a TV presenter misses a large sign offering $1,000 right next to him.

  “Lucky people have got a wider attentional spotlight and so they're sort of more open to seeing stuff they don't expect to see. The unlucky people, very anxious, very narrow spotlight. They're focusing on the pictures they're counting and not seeing the bigger picture.”
  — Professor Wiseman [17:54]

  “There'll be a huge opportunity staring them right in the face and they simply don't see it.”
  — Interviewer/Assistant [19:03]

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3. Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Real-World Justice

[21:12–24:56]

• Criminal Stereotypes and Jury Bias

  • Wiseman developed a live TV study: Split the UK in two, show both identical evidence, but one half sees a "criminal-looking" defendant (unattractive features), and the other an "angelic-looking" defendant (attractive).
  • Finding: The unattractive defendant is found guilty 40% of the time; the attractive one, only 29%.
  • This real-world experiment confirms severe bias: good-looking people are favored in justice, as also backed by courtroom studies and even plastic surgery data from Cialdini’s Influence.

  “When it was the stereotypical criminal defendant, they were convicted more frequently, even though the evidence was absolutely identical.”
  — Professor Wiseman [23:00]

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4. Human Honesty: The ATM and Supermarket Experiments

[24:56–27:17]

• ATM that Gives Extra Money

  • Wiseman rigs an ATM to spit out unexpected £10 notes. Few people return the money; two-thirds keep it.
  • Some people return multiple times; the “record” is 20 times.

• Supermarket vs. Corner Shop Dishonesty

  • People are deliberately given too much change in a big supermarket. Most keep the money—even when prompted directly.
  • In a local corner shop, everyone returns extra change.
  • Insight: Dishonesty is shaped by social context—we’re more honest when dealing with people we feel close to (or can identify with), less so with faceless corporations.
  • When surveyed afterwards, those who kept the money still said they’d always give back extra change, highlighting the gulf between self-perception and real behavior.

  “It actually speaks to another point, which is that often we can't trust what people will tell us about how they'll behave. We have to see how they'll actually behave in a real world situation.”
  — Professor Wiseman [27:06]

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5. Behavioral Science in Real Life: The Power of Subtle Signals

[27:49–29:44]

• The "Quirkology" Book Cover Experiment

  • Wiseman releases his book with two covers: the only difference is that one woman’s pupils are digitally enlarged.
  • Results: Male buyers are more likely to purchase the large-pupil version, though none report noticing the difference.
  • Explanation: Enlarged pupils unconsciously signal attraction and openness, affecting male buyers’ preferences.
  • The effect dates back centuries; Venetian women used belladonna to dilate their pupils to appear more attractive.

  "We found that more males had picked up the enlarged pupil version but didn't know they'd done that."
  — Professor Wiseman [28:26]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On lie-detection cues:

  "Liars are just as likely to look you in the eye as a truth teller will be... If anything, they're a bit more static than truth tellers."
  — Phil Agnew [08:13]

• On attention and luck:

  “Lucky people spot [the unexpected opportunity] and ask for their hundred pounds. Unlucky people go straight past them.”
  — Professor Wiseman [17:54]

• On self-perception vs. reality:

  "Most people who took the money said, of course I would give it back. So it actually speaks to another point, which is that often we can't trust what people will tell us about how they'll behave. We have to see how they'll actually behave in a real world situation."
  — Professor Wiseman [27:06]

• On behavior and subtle cues:

  "The challenge is coming up with a simple, fun, doable thing in the real world. And unfortunately, that's quite rare in psychology."
  — Professor Wiseman [29:44]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:01 – 02:03: Professor Wiseman introduces his background and early failed experiment
• 02:54 – 06:55: The “Truth Test” experiment with Sir Robin Day
• 07:44 – 12:10: Why we’re bad at detecting lies; real cues of deception
• 12:33 – 16:36: Six Degrees of Separation and luck experiments
• 16:36 – 19:36: The “Luck” newspaper test and attentional spotlight
• 21:12 – 24:56: Bias in criminal justice—appearance and conviction rates study
• 25:05 – 27:17: Experiments on honesty: ATM and supermarket studies
• 27:49 – 29:44: The Quirkology book cover and pupil size experiment

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Episode Flow & Tone

The conversation is witty, self-deprecating, and grounded in real-world science and experiments. Both host and guest are keen to challenge everyday assumptions with data-driven insights and memorable anecdotes. The episode is educational but lively, with emphasis on how subtle psychological cues shape real-life behavior.

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Summary

This episode delivers a fascinating—and occasionally uncomfortable—look at human nature via high-quality psychological experiments. The takeaways are clear:

• Most people cannot reliably detect lies, especially when relying on body language and stereotypes.
• Our judgments, even in serious cases like court trials, are heavily biased by superficial factors such as attractiveness.
• Luck is not just fate—it’s about social connections and keeping an open mind.
• We often have a distorted perception of our own honesty and decision-making.
• Subtle signals and small behavioral interventions (like pupil dilation) can powerfully influence outcomes without us realizing it.

The episode ends on an up note: Behavioral experiments can be simple, fun, and powerfully revealing—if you look in the right places.

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Transcript

[Phil Agnew]

The man in the audio you're about to hear will tell you one truth and one lie.

[Interviewer]

So, Sir Robin, what's your favourite film?

[Phil Agnew]

Ah,

[Sir Robin Day]

Some Like It Hot.

[Interviewer]

So, Sir Robin, what's your favourite film?

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

Gone with the Wind.

[Phil Agnew]

So could you tell which was the lie? Maybe you could, maybe you couldn't. And if you couldn't, by the end of this episode, you'll have the tools needed to actually tell when someone is lying. And just as a warning, shifting around in a seat or breaking eye contact, well, those things actually don't indicate if someone is lying. Find out what does. After the break, when someone asks AI for a solution, a product, a service like yours, does your business come up? Does AI suggest you? Well, most companies have no idea and by the time they find out, they've already lost a deal or the sale to someone who did. HubSpot A E O helps you show up in those moments with the right answers buyers are looking for before the first click and before the first form is filled out. That's the moment HubSpot A E O is built for. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for for growing businesses. Hello, you are listening to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. Today on the show, I'm delighted to welcome back the best selling author, winner of the Royal Society's David attenborough Award in 2023. Half magician, half psychologist, it's Professor Richard Wiseman.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

I am a psychologist. I started my working life as a magician many, many years ago, went to University College London and then to University of Edinburgh and now where I've been for the last 32 years, which is University of Hertfordshire, professor of psy, and I try and do stuff which is meaningful, which I find fun and I find interesting and that has led me into all sorts of weird and wonderful places. That's my career.

[Phil Agnew]

Professor Wiseman has been conducting thought provoking, albeit rather strange studies for several decades now.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

The very first real world study was an undergraduate. I was at UCL and I went over to Euston Station, railway station and I would see couples that were either parting and therefore presumably unhappy, or they were meeting one another and embracing and therefore happy. And I would go up to them, start a stopwatch in my pocket and say, excuse me, can you tell me how long it's been since I just said excuse me? And the idea was the sad people time would be extended, happy people would be kind of collapsed down and I never got to find out if that was true or not because everyone thought I was so bizarre and strange, they just backed off for. From the psychologist, quite rightly so, and had nothing to do with me at all.

[Phil Agnew]

That study failed. But a few years later, Richard Wiseman came up with a better idea for

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

a study, got to Hertfordshire and I think within the first year or so. This email arrives from BBC. We're going to do a big study on tomorrow's world, which is a science program, live science programme at the time. And we're just looking for a big, big thing we can do with the whole nation. And I was studying psychology of lying and I suggested we got the politicians from the top. I think it was three parties at the time, put them on television, they lie, they tell the truth and we find out which party's got the best liars. Two weeks go by, I get an email, that's it. My goodness. We're choosing yours as the winning entry. This is the study we're going to do. Very exciting. We approach these politicians, they all say, no, we're not having anything to do with that. And the only thing that saved the day was Sir Robin Day. So he was a very well known political interviewer at the time, sort of legendary. And he said, I'll do it. So I went along, interviewed him twice about his favourite film. One time he said he loved Gone with the Wind, other time he said he loved Some Liked It Hot.

[Phil Agnew]

There is unfortunately no public clips of these recordings available. However, Richard has printed the exact transcript of the interviews in his book and with the help of AI I can recreate the audio for you here. Now, this AI version, it is not perfect. The intonation won't be right, the accents aren't right. But pay attention to the language he uses, the pauses, the words, the length of the answers. Because as we'll find out later on, all of these things can help determine if someone is lying. So here's the first interview.

[Interviewer]

So, Sir Robin, what's your favourite film?

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

Gone with the Wind.

[Interviewer]

And why do you like that?

[Sir Robin Day]

Oh, it's. It's a classic. Great characters, great film star. Clark Gable, a great actress, Vivien Leigh. Very moving.

[Interviewer]

Who's your favourite character in it?

[Sir Robin Day]

Oh, Gable.

[Interviewer]

And how many times have you seen it?

[Sir Robin Day]

I think about half a dozen.

[Interviewer]

And when was the first time that you saw it?

[Sir Robin Day]

I think that it was in 1939.

[Phil Agnew]

Okay, time for the second interview.

[Interviewer]

So, Sir Robin, what's your favourite film?

[Sir Robin Day]

Ah, Some Like It Hot.

[Interviewer]

And why do you like that?

[Sir Robin Day]

Oh, because it gets funnier every time that I see it. There are all sorts of bits in it, which I love and I like them more each time that I see it.

[Interviewer]

Who's your favourite character in it?

[Sir Robin Day]

Oh, Tony Curtis. I think he's so pretty and he's so witty and he mimics Cary Grant so well. And he's very funny the way he tries to resist being seduced by Marilyn Monroe.

[Interviewer]

And when was the first time that you saw it?

[Sir Robin Day]

I think when it came out and I forget when that was.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

And we put these things out at the top of a live Tomorrow's World program. And then the idea was that people phoned in and we found out whether or not the public could detect lies by the end of the program. Now if I did that now, I would quite frankly be terrified. You've got to collect data live during a TV show and turn it around in your head and You've only got 25 minutes for this. And it was just that thing of I was young and didn't know how these things work. So I thought, well, that seems like a stress free, fun way of filling an evening. We go along, we put out the clips. I think it's the first science program to have interactivity like this with the phone calls in with phone calls and we get 30,000 of them in that time. And I can remember the results coming in, being handed a piece of paper, looking at it, having to turn around and walk on set and explain it. And it turned out that lots of lying research to back this up. The public couldn't tell between the two clips, couldn't tell which was the lie. And that was rather nice. And that became the study.

[Phil Agnew]

So was Gone with the Wind the lie or was it Some Like It Hot? Have a think, actually make a guess. Alright, if you guessed that Gone with the Wind was the lie, then you're correct. Sir Robin Day hated this film. He said when he was asked if it was his favourite film, Good heavens, it's the most crashing boar. I fall asleep every time I see it. And yet only 52% of the viewers correctly thought that Sir Robin had been lying about Gone with the Wind. And a massive 48% incorrectly thought he was lying about Some Like It Hot. In other words, the public are rubbish at spotting a lie. A flipped coin is essentially just as good at spotting a liar. But I think you listening to Robin's interview, even though it was an AI generated version of it, I think you probably fared better than the Tomorrow's World viewers. Here's why.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

What was also nice was prior to that they got on board national radio and also the Daily Telegraph, newspaper. So we'd put the audio only out on the radio. We'd put the transcript only out in the newspaper, and again had people vote. And what we saw was their attempts to detect the lie were much more accurate. People on TV was roughly 50, 50. It was about 60% in the newspaper, about 70% on the radio. And that fit theory, which was that when you focus people's attention on the words we say and how we say them, we become much better lie detectors. We're not good when it's just the visual stuff. We tend to be driven by visual cues, and actually they're pretty controllable, particularly Sir Robin Dave, who's used to being on television.

[Phil Agnew]

Radio listeners detected the lies 73.4% of the time. Newspaper readers detected it 64.2% of the time, whereas television viewers only detected it 51.8% of the time. Charles Bond, a professor from Texas Christian University, has researched why we're worse at detecting liars when we see them talk. He's asked thousands of people from more than 60 countries to decide how they go about telling if someone is lying. And people's answers are remarkably consistent. From Algeria to Argentina, from Ghana to Germany, almost everybody thinks that liars tend to avert their eyes nervously, wave their hands around, and shift about on their seats. But this isn't true. Wiseman writes how researchers have spent hours upon hours carefully comparing the films of liars and truth tellers. And it turns out liars are just as likely to look you in the eye as a truth teller will be. They don't move their hands around nervously, and they don't shift about in their seats. If anything, they're a bit more static than truth tellers. People fail to detect lies because they're basing their opinion, their judgment, on behaviors that are not even associated with deception. Papers from 2000 and 2004 reveal what actually gives a liar away. Firstly, when it comes to lying, the more information you give away, the greater the chances that someone will catch you. So as a result, liars tend to say less and to provide fewer details than truth tellers. Looking at Sir Robin Day's transcripts, his lie about Gone with the wind contains only 40 words, whereas the truth about Some Like It Hot is nearly twice as long. Secondly, liars often try to distance themselves psychologically from their falsehoods, and so they tend to include fewer references to themselves and their feelings in their stories. Sir Robin's testimony provides a really striking illustration of this effect. When he lies, Sir Robin says the word I just Twice.

[Interviewer]

And how many times have you seen it?

[Sir Robin Day]

I think about half a dozen.

[Interviewer]

And when was the first time that you saw it?

[Sir Robin Day]

I think that it was in 1939.

[Phil Agnew]

Whereas when he tells the truth, he says I seven times.

[Sir Robin Day]

Oh, because it gets funnier every time that I see it. There are all sorts of bits in it which I love and I like them more each time that I see it. Tony Curtis, I think. I think when it came out and I forget when that was.

[Phil Agnew]

If you're telling a lie, you're less likely to say I. However, there's more. Wiseman writes that there is also the issue of forgetting. Imagine someone asks you a series of questions about what you did last week. It is probable that you will not remember everything you did last week, especially the trivial details. And being the honest person that you are, you would admit to your memory lapse. However, liars tend not to do this when it comes to relatively unimportant information. Liars seem to develop superpowered memories and often recall the smallest details. Think Prince Andrew knowing exactly when he went to Pizza Express Woking. In contrast, truth tellers know that they have forgotten certain details and they're happy to admit it. Sir Robin's interviews illustrate this point. There is only one instant when he admits to not remembering a detail and it's when he's telling the truth about not being able to recall the first time he saw his favourite film, Some Like It Hot.

[Sir Robin Day]

I think when it came out and I forget when that was.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

So that was the truth test, got published in Nature and was the very first quirky, weird thing that I did. And I say, nowadays, quite frankly, I'd be terrified.

[Phil Agnew]

Professor Wiseman debunked a few commonplace ideas here. We are not as good at spotting liars as we expect, and often the clues we think reveal a liar, well, they're not really clues at all. But he wasn't done there. Next, he wanted to test another major concept in the world of psychology, a concept you've almost certainly heard of.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

Time to check the pulse. And we begin with six degrees of separation. Scientists say it's not just a game about Kevin Bacon. New study finds many of us can indeed be linked through six other people.

[Phil Agnew]

Researchers look. The six degrees of separation theory suggests that any two people in the world are connected through a chain of no more than six social connections. It was popularized by Stanley milgram in the 1960s through his small world experiments. But is it true? Are you and I actually separated by just six connections?

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

Well, I think what is true is Milgram's idea that we're a lot more connected than we realize. And so when people think about Milgram, they just think about the electric shock experiment, which has now been questioned in all sorts of ways. But perhaps they don't realize what a kind of innovative researcher he was. He was just this master of going around and thinking, oh, hold on a second, there's something to be done here. His idea, and he sort of tested this to some extent, was that if you were given a parcel, and that parcel was for somebody you didn't know in another part of the country, and you might be told that person's occupation, all you're allowed to do is give that parcel to somebody who you think might know that person. And the question is, how many steps would it take before that parcel reaches the target person? And he's found out the answer was around about six. So we replicated it in the uk, he was doing that in America. So we had Katie Smith, I think, from Cheltenham Science festival. We had 100 people. We sent 100 people the parcel. We said, you don't know Katie in Cheltenham, but can you pass this on to somebody who you think will be a little bit closer to her? And the average number of steps from the parcels that made it to Katie was four, which is quite phenomenal. 100 people across the UK and within four steps, they can get this thing to a complete stranger. And it turns out there are sort of nodes, there are people that know a lot of other people, so once it hits them, they're very good at getting it to somewhere. Other people are socially isolated. Once it gets to them, that's the end of that, doesn't go anywhere. So we did that. It's quite fun and it's for. And along the way, we asked people how lucky they were, because I'd done quite a lot of work into luck. And what we can see from the data is that lucky people are those nodes. They're very, well, socially connected and they often talk about opportunities coming their way. And you think, well, you know, a lot of people also, when you know you have some sort of issue in your life, they're going to act as social support as well. So we were linking it up with the work I was doing into luck at the time. Amazing experiment.

[Phil Agnew]

What's amazing about this study is that out of the 100 volunteers, 38 volunteers didn't send their parcel to anyone, therefore guaranteeing that those parcels would never reach Katie. Wiseman writes that the vast majority of these people had previously rated themselves as unlucky. He wanted to discover what lay behind this curious behaviour. These volunteers had gone to considerable efforts to ensure they participated in the study, but then they effectively dropped out at the first stage. So Wiseman wrote to them. He asked them, why did you not participate? And their replies were telling. The majority of these so called unlucky people said they couldn't think of anyone on a first name term who could help deliver the parcel. As a result, from the outset, it appears that the lucky participants simply knew far more recipients for the parcels than the unlucky participants. So the lucky people were far more successful because they had more people to forward the parcel on to. Richard Wiseman concludes that these results provide substantial support for the notion that lucky people are living in a much smaller world than unlucky people. It suggests that their luck is in part due to their impressive social connections. But to test this idea, Professor Wiseman needed to run another experiment.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

Yeah, it came about because we're filming a TV show on luck. Tonight on Dateline. Has this scientist discovered why some people always seem to be so lucky? So it's lucky people would say, I see opportunities all the time. Unlucky people never see opportunities. And we had this idea, I think the day before we filmed it was one of those again, we had a big newspaper and you flick through and there was. You had to count the number of photographs and pictures. 1, 2, 3, 4. Boring. But halfway through two huge half page ads, one says, stop counting, there are 53 photographs in here. And another says, tell the experimenter you've seen this and win £100. And we're nervous. We've never done this before.

[Phil Agnew]

Here's what happened when the unlucky participant flicked through the newspaper.

[Participant]

Caroline is asked to flip through a newspaper and count the number of photographs she spots. Caroline finishes counting pictures, but she didn't see the stop counting gag.

[Interviewer/Assistant]

Thanks for coming along.

[Phil Agnew]

And here's the audio from the lucky contestant.

[Participant]

Unlike Caroline number one, Caroline number two quickly spots the gag, the block of words telling her to stop counting.

[Interviewer/Assistant]

You spotted something?

[Phil Agnew]

Do I continue?

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

And yes, lucky people spot those and ask for their hundred pounds. Unlucky people go straight past them. And part of the theory behind that is that lucky people have got a wider attentional spotlight and so they're sort of more open to seeing stuff they don't expect to see. The unlucky people, very anxious, very narrow spotlight. They're focusing on the pictures they're counting and not seeing the bigger picture. So we did that and at the end of it, the director took me Aside, it was Dennis and I. Dennis was the presenter and myself. But the director took me aside, took all this footage of Dennis laughing at people for missing opportunities. Can you give Dennis an opportunity?

[Participant]

Finally, in our last day at Dr. Wiseman's lucky lab, yours truly got a lesson in navigating with eyes wide open.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

And again, it's all done. Off the top of my head, I went. We printed out a big advert that said, hi, Dennis. Say you've seen this and win $1,000. I put it on the wall in the lab. I stood there and the shot was, he didn't know about it. The shot was, he came up and interviewed me about missing opportunities whilst there was a massive one for him right next to me.

[Interviewer/Assistant]

There'll be a huge opportunity staring them right in the face and they simply don't see it. And it is just fascinating to see what's happening there.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

And after you get the gag, you say, how could they not see it?

[Interviewer/Assistant]

We've actually put people's names on, you know, something would be sort of, hi, Dennis, spot this and win $1,000, and it could be massive on a big sheet of paper and they simply won't see it.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

Just don't get it.

[Participant]

You're just blind to it.

[Interviewer/Assistant]

You're just blind to these sorts of opportunities.

[Participant]

Oh, it's a lesson in luck I have to work on. I'm not only defeated, I'm humiliated.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

So that was a kind of, like, icing on the cake. But it itself is based on, of course, the basketball and gorilla clip Dan Simons, which itself is based on Ulrich Neiss's very similar clip with basketball. So there is a whole sort of literature of people missing big, obvious things right in front of them. And what we did was just sort of come up with a novel way of applying that for tv, really.

[Phil Agnew]

It's time for a quick break, but when we're back, Professor Wiseman shares the time when he digitally edited a thief's face on live TV to see if it altered the viewer's perception of guilt. And Professor Wiseman also shares what happened when he hacked an ATM to give its users extra money. All of that coming up. The podcast I'd like to recommend today, after you listen to Nudge, is Billion Dollar Moves, hosted by Sarah Chen Spellings, and is brought to you, of course, by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Listen, and you will hear Sarah ask the hard questions and uncover these triumphs, failures and lessons from the top business leaders. Also, you can make your own billion dollar Moves in venture, business and life. It's a wonderful podcast, so go and listen to Billion Dollar Moves wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome back. You are listening to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew and my guest, Professor Richard Wiseman. After the success of the lying experiment with Sir Robin Day, the BBC's Tomorrow's World wanted another experiment to run on the country.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

Yeah, totally that. I mean, Tomorrow's World kept coming back after the truth test, the one with Robin Day, and then they always wanted to have this stu study about criminal stereotypes and juries. And it's a hard study to do because you need to split people into two groups, so too boring about it. But Robin Day, everyone is hearing the truth and the lie and they have to decide which is which. That's easy, you just put it out to everyone. What we wanted to do with the study about criminal stereotyping was cut the country in half. And each half the country get the same evidence, but one half sees a stereotypical criminal looking defendant and the other half sees a stereotypical, more angelic looking defendant. Well, now you've got to cut the country in half. That's not easy. It turned out at the time, I don't know. Now, turns out at the time there were 13 BBC transmitters and that you could put out one program to some of them and another program to the others. It's not easy to do. You can patchwork the country.

[Phil Agnew]

But Richard did it. He and his team obtained special permission to send out different signals from the transmitters, allowing them to split Britain in two and to broadcast different programmes to each half of the country.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

So we made these two identical bits of ET as a judge summing up evidence and say one time we cut in a defendant who looked like the stereotype we sometimes have about criminals, the other time more angelic.

[Phil Agnew]

I should clarify here that the difference wasn't race or ethnicity, it was, it was attractiveness. One half of the public saw a defendant whose face was typically unattractive, he had a broken nose and close set eyes. The other half saw a defendant who was characteristically attractive, he was baby faced and had clear blue eyes.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

And we asked everyone to phone one or two numbers to say whether or not they would convict on the basis of this. And what you saw was that as you might expect, and as you say, a bit more serious, that when it was the stereotypical criminal defendant, they were convicted more frequently, even though the evidence was absolutely identical.

[Phil Agnew]

60,000 people called in, about 40% returned a guilty verdict for the man who just happened to fit the unattractive criminal look while only 29% found the blue eyed baby faced man guilty. Unfortunately, this bias isn't just noticeable for TV shows. John Stewart, a psychologist from Mercyhurst College in Arizona, spent hours sitting in courts rating the attractiveness of real defendants. And he discovered that good looking men were given significantly lighter sentences than their equally guilty but less attractive counterparts.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

And this is one of the big problems with juries is then they're ignoring evidence and making their mind up on the defendant's looks and they can do that very quickly and that then colors how they look at the actual evidence when it comes into play.

[Phil Agnew]

In his book, Richard cites a really unusual experiment from Cialdini's book Influence where convicted criminals were given plastic surgery in prison. In the late 1960s, a group of prisoners in the New York City jail were given plastic surgery to correct various facial disfigurements. Researchers discovered that these prisoners who had the plastic surgery were significantly less likely to return to prison. And than a control group of prisoners with uncorrected facial disfigurements, the degree of rehabilitation, such as education and training did not seem to matter. Instead, looks appeared to be everything.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

So it was a lot more serious piece and more, I think, worthwhile and interesting piece because it's very hard to do studies with the general public under those circumstances, but this allowed us to do that.

[Phil Agnew]

Continuing on this serious theme, I asked Richard about a study he ran that involved hacking ATMs to dish out more money than the user had asked for.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

We had an ATM which when people walked past it, it just gave them ten pound note, it kind of just shot out. And the question was how many people would take it into the bank? And the answer was very, very few. So most people held onto it.

[Phil Agnew]

Two thirds of the subjects kept the cash. Some returned several times to make the most of the opportunity. And the most dishonest participant returned 20 times.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

And then we did actually one of my favourite things which was took over a supermarket and people were given too much money as change. So if they paid with a 10, they're given change for a 20. And the first few people all kept the change. Then we thought maybe they hadn't noticed. So we had the cashier count the money in. Yeah, that makes 10 and 10 is 20. Most people kept it and then we had the cashier say, oh sorry, did you give me 10 or 20? And most people said I gave you 20. So huge amounts of dishonesty amongst the British public in a huge supermarket. When we did the same thing around the corner corner shop, first thing everyone did was give the money back. So it shows you dishonesty is a social construct, that they can be dishonest to a supermarket. That's a huge organization in their mind. I'm sure they think, oh, they're not going to miss that money. Corner shop, very, very different. And then I think while we're doing all of this, we had the idea of as people came out, there should be a market researcher on the street and they ask about favorite type of cheese or whatever it was and then say, if you're given too much money in the supermarket, would you give it back? And we'd just seen them take the money and most people who took the money said, of course I would give it back. So it actually speaks to another point, which is that often we can't trust what people will tell us about how they'll behave. We have to see how they'll actually behave in a real world situation. Currently, psychologists love I'm guilty of this myself, having people online, ticking boxes, say, oh, yes, I'm an honest person, or whatever it is. The truth is that we need to observe them in the real world to find out how they would actually behave because we can't always trust what they say.

[Phil Agnew]

Richard writes how the findings presented a fascinating but depressing view of human nature. Unethical behavior is alive and well in modern day Britain. Although the vast majority of people claim to be upstanding citizens, most of us are capable of dishonesty if the situation is right. That's a little too depressing to end the episode on. So to sum up today's show, I asked Richard to share one of his favourite studies from his 35 years studying human psychology. It's a test he ran when he launched his book Quirkology.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

When Quirkology came out, I'm quite proud of this study. We came up with two different covers. Each of them had a woman on the front, but in one of them we enlarged the pupil size and they were randomly stacked in books boxes that went out to bookshops. And so you got your book, you bought your book, and then right at the back it said, or can you take part in an experiment? You came online, you said what colour the box was at the back of the book and that told us whether you got the small pupils. One of the large ones told us whether you were male or female. And we found that more males had picked up the enlarged pupil version but didn't know they'd done that.

[Phil Agnew]

But why would a woman's enlarged pupils make men more likely to buy well, Richard writes how people's pupils tend to become larger when they see something or somebody that appeals to them. And because we tend to like people who like us, people with enlarged pupils are often seen as especially attractive. This signal is subtle, but the effect is powerful. It's been known for a long time. During the 17th century, Venetian women would place an extract of the plant belladonna, which contains a toxin that dilates the pupil into their eyes. They would place that in their eyes to appear more attractive. This unusual practice explains the origin of the plant's name, belladonna, which means beautiful lady in Italian. The toxin would also have the side effect of making the Venetian woman's vision somewhat blurry, which could be the reason we have the expression love is blind.

[Professor Richard Wiseman]

And it was again, an example of trying to figure out a method which actually measures behavior. And in that instance, we did. It had quite a big impact on buying behavior without people realizing why. So all these things, it's always to me, the challenge is coming up with a simple, fun, doable thing in the real world. And unfortunately, that's quite rare in psychology.

[Phil Agnew]

If you have enjoyed Richard's appearance on today's episode of Nudge, I promise you you will love his books. I've left links to both of his books in the show notes, but if you're a bloke, you might want to avoid looking at the COVID You wouldn't want to be persuaded by someone's pupils after all. Anyway, I'll be back next Monday for another episode of Nudge, but if you want more behavioral science principles before then, consider subscribing to my Friday newsletter. Each week I spend 18 hours scouring Behavioral science journals and books to find a tip worth sharing. I share things about marketing, psychology, pricing, about branding, and about psychology tips that we've covered today. To sign up, just go to nudgepodcast.com that is nudgepodcast.com and click newsletter in the menu. It's totally free and you can go and read all of the past articles whenever you like. That's all from me. I've been your host. Phil Agnew. Thank you so much for listening. Cheers.