Pinocchio may be just a children's fairy tale, but Spanish scientists at the University of Granada recently investigated this so-called" Pinocchio effect" and found that our noses don't grow when we tell a lie, but actually shrink a bit.
Dr. Gómez Milán and his team developed a lie detector test that used thermography (体温计) to tell if people were lying, and found that whenever participants in their research were being untruthful, the temperature of the tip of their nose dropped up to 1.2℃, while the temperature of their forehead increased up to 1.5℃. Scientist also found that drop in temperature at nose level actually caused it to slightly shrink, although the difference is undetected by the human eye.
"One has to think in order to lie, which rises the temperature of the forehead," Dr. Gómez Milán explained the findings." At the same time we feel anxious, which lowers the temperature of the nose."
For this study, researchers asked a number of 60 students to perform various tasks while their temperature is scanned by technology. One of these tasks required making a 3 to 4 minutes call to their parents or a friend and telling a significant lie. Participants had to make up the lie themselves during the call. Interestingly, this lie detector picked up the" Pinocchio effect" temperature difference in 80 percent of the test subjects, which is a better rate of success than that of any modern lie detector.
" With this method we have achieved to increase accuracy", said Dr. Gómez Milán, who added that law enforcement interviewers could one day combine other lie detection technology with thermal imaging to achieve better results.
