“Nothing Gets Past Real-life Human Lie Detector”

I thought you might enjoy seeing this article that was featured in the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday.

The Human Footprint

National Geographic aired a show this week called The Human Footprint. The show is about how much we each consume, and how that consumption impacts our planet. It’s a bit overwhelming to say the least.

Elizabeth Vargas narrates the show, and babbles out an overwhelming number of statistics like the average number of oranges you will eat in a lifetime will be 12,888. And then she shows you just how staggering this amount is by dropping 12,888 oranges into a living room!

Did you know it takes 43 trees to make the newspaper one person reads in a lifetime?

Or that it takes crude oil to make diapers?

How about the fact that by the time you buy your new jeans, they have likely traveled 17,000 miles before you even put them on? How’s that for impacting the planet?

The show also said that the average person will get to know 1700 people in their lifetime.

That means in your entire lifetime, you will likely have only met two or three people who have the ability to spot deception like I do.

I’m a Truth Wizard

I am pleased to share with you the exciting news that I have now been scientifically tested and classified as a “truth wizard” by scientist and researcher Dr. Maureen O’Sullivan.

I contacted Dr. O’Sullivan back in July of this year, and she agreed to test me. I took the tests and passed. I can’t tell you how excited I was!

This past week, I had the pleasure, honor and privilege of meeting Dr. O’Sullivan in person. It was a dream come true for me!

Dr. O’Sullivan is a Professor of Psychology at the University of San Francisco, and has been studying people’s ability to understand each other for over 30 years. One way people understand each other is by being able to detect lies. Dr. O’Sullivan started her wizard study back in 1996 with Dr. Paul Ekman, who is a world-renowned facial expression expert.

Dr. O’Sullivan’s “research addresses questions about human emotion including: emotional intelligence, humor, romantic love, lying and truthfulness, courtesy, and cross-cultural differences in emotional experience and expression. She also studies individual differences in intelligence and expertise.(source: USF biography)

Read more about Dr. O’Sullivan’s wizard study here:

Wizards can spot the signs of a liar.”

Select few can identify liars.”

Dr. O’Sullivan has tested over 15,000 people for her study, and has found 46 wizards to date. With that, I’m wizard 46.

So, what does being a wizard actually mean? It means I see most kinds of lies accurately at least 80% of the time (I’m not flawless as I have said before.), whereas the normal person is only as good as a coin-toss in spotting deception.

Dr. O’Sullivan says most people look at the world through rose-colored glasses. They don’t have the “grit” inside them to see the truth, as it isn’t always pleasant.

Now, I am not going to talk about the “Wizards Project”, because Dr. O’Sullivan has asked me not to—and I have promised her I won’t—until the study is complete. So, no questions on “wizards” or the Wizards Project, please, but I can talk about being “me”, if you have interest.

But there you have it—I do have Eyes for Lies!!

More about me here.