Kang Lee: Can you really tell if a kid is lying?
Kang Lee has devoted his career to understanding the development of social cognition and behavior. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
raise your hand?
group of people I've ever met.
how children learn to tell lies.
a story from Mr. Richard Messina,
school principal.
will not come to school today
three common beliefs we have
at a very young age,
character flaws with them,
pathological liars for life.
to guess the numbers on the cards.
to win the game is so strong,
of gender, country, religion,
about their transgression.
tell the truth.
of development.
at the younger children.
young children lie?
two key ingredients.
is theory of mind,
different knowledge about the situation
between what I know
for good lying is self-control.
your facial expression
and self-control abilities
are also essential for all of us
and self-control abilities
developmental problems,
is telling his or her first lie,
has arrived at a new milestone
detect their lies?
to a researcher's question,
child number one is lying,
is lying, please raise your hand.
detectors of children's lies.
from all walks of life.
the children told the truth.
how these adults performed.
as truth tellers,
you're going to get it right.
of children's lies.
and law school students,
limited experience with children.
and child-protection lawyers,
detect their own children's lies?
are so difficult to detect.
with my own son, Nathan.
is typically neutral.
a lot of emotions,
are either fleeting or hidden.
to reveal these hidden emotions.
by the autonomic system
facial blood flow changes
people's facial emotions,
video camera to record people
various hidden emotions.
processing technology,
of facial blood flow changes.
with the various hidden emotions.
associated with lying,
a Pinocchio effect.
on the cheeks decreases,
on the nose increases.
we can help this mathematics teacher
about the topic he's teaching
what's going on in their lives
their heart rate, their stress level,
they are experiencing pain.
or hypertension.
politicians' emotions?
the politicians' heart rate,
whether or not they are lying to us.
in marketing research,
certain consumer products.
that we don't know today.
be the same again.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Kang Lee - Developmental researcherKang Lee has devoted his career to understanding the development of social cognition and behavior.
Why you should listen
With an international team based at the University of Toronto, Kang Lee investigates the neurological and social basis of emerging social behaviors in young children. His two-pronged research focuses first on how and when children develop the capacity to lie, to detect liesand to feel guilty about it afterwards.
The second focus of Lee's research is facial recognition, which has led to revelations of when children develop the ability to distinguish races and has helped explain why some people occasionally see Jesus' face on a piece of toast.
Kang Lee | Speaker | TED.com