London Times September 12 1998 BRITISH ASSOCIATION

          STEREOTYPED views of how people behave when they lie may be holding back criminal investigations, new research presented to the British Psychological Society has found. The belief that liars fidget, stutter and avoid eye contact is widespread among the police even though academic research has discredited such signals as indicators of lying, Aldert Vrij, Reader in Applied Social Psychology at Portsmouth University, told the society's criminology conference in Durham yesterday. In fact, practised liars often behave in the opposite way and appear unnaturally calm, making fewer gestures and giving a rehearsed and rigid impression to onlookers, Dr Vrij said. Police misconceptions about lying led many officers to overestimate their ability to detect lies and hampered investigations. A study comparing officers and students found that neither group was better at spotting lies. Contrary to popular belief, people who are lying slow down to think about their answers, using fewer gestures and maintaining eye contact as they concentrate on putting together a plausible falsehood.