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Think you can spot a lie from a mile off?

Test your skills with this quiz at the New York Times featuring test subjects from the University of Chicago, a series of videos that should be the prerequisite for a teaching certificate in every state.

“The common-sense notion that liars betray themselves through body language appears to be little more than a cultural fiction,” says Maria Hartwig, a psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Researchers have found that the best clues to deceit are verbal — liars tend to be less forthcoming and tell less compelling stories — but even these differences are usually too subtle to be discerned reliably.

Law enforcement officers, particularly employees of the TSA, have been supposedly trained to spot liars in a crowd, but it turns out, they don’t do much better than the rest of us.

Take the quiz here.

Full story at The New York Times.

Issues in law enforcement.