Hannah Montana Mom really sorry?

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I am sure most of you have heard about the mom who helped her daughter write an essay in hopes of winning free tickets to the Hannah Montana concert in New York on January 9th. She wrote an essay, and won.

Priscilla Ceballos helped her six year old daughter write “My daddy died this year in Iraq. I am going to give mommy the Angel pendant that daddy put on mommy when she was having me. I had it in my jewelry box since that day. I love my mommy.”

It was a complete lie. Her dad didn’t die in Iraq. Furthermore, these are clearly not the thoughts of six year old. It doesn’t take an Einstein to see that.

Ceballos tells everyone that she didn’t know it was breaking the rule to create a fictitious story.

Oh really?

Read moreCeballos seems to forget the moral obligation of parents to teach children honesty, and how to win a competition with integrity and fairness. Instead, she tries to twist the truth again. She wants you to continue to buy her deceptive games. She wants you to believe she just didn’t know any better.

Excuse me, but I’m not buying it. And Ceballos boldly takes it a step further. Watch here.

Matt Lauer says, “How did you explain to your daughter that she won, and then lost this contests?”

Ceballos responds, “…I..I…I really haven’t. I mean… I really told her…I’ve actually told her the truth. You know, I told her we wrote an essay and… you know, their…they…they said it was a lie and you know… we… I…I refused to accept the tickets.”

Matt Lauer says, “Refused to accept the tickets or they were taken away from you?”

Ceballos says, “Well…I…I did refused to accept them, but I told her that, you know…there… there will be another time.”

Refused to accept them? Told her child the truth?

Ceballos is continuing to add insult to injury. She is insulting us with her “stories” a second time around.

A Look Back at 2007

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As we march onward into the new year, I took some time today to reflect on the year that has past. Perhaps you, too, might enjoy looking back at the biggest stories of this past year.

Happy New Year!

Howard K. Stern, Larry Birkhead and Anna Nicole Smith

Mary Winkler

The McCanns, and Madeleine

Bobby Cutts, Jr. and Jessie Davis

Matthew Gretz/Kira Simonian

Senator Larry Craig

Drew Peterson

Amanda Knox

* Each link points to the first post that I wrote. To read all the posts that I wrote on the topic, click on the appropriate labels at the bottom of each post.

Liars Don’t Blink More

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I found a great article from the Times Online titled Liars Don’t Blink: They Keep Still and Concentrate Hard.

From all my watching of people, I couldn’t agree more. Intense stares often clue me in to look closer.

Honesty

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When I see honesty, and I try to show other people, I am not always able to get what I see across to other people. I don’t know how to, actually. How do you, for example, point out sincerity when you see it? How do you identify a genuine expression?

It’s a bit of a quagmire for me.

When someone lies, I can usually point out the clues that I see that support my hypothesis, and usually people will see some of them. I can identify inconsistencies in fact, and behavior. I can point out smirks as well as smiles that don’t make sense, or that have odd timing. I can identify inordinate pauses in speech, strange word usage, or clues to fear when no fear should be present. But with truth, there is nothing to point out. There are no red flags, no oddities, nothing unusual. The behavior in question is normal, as expected. The emotions are genuine and sincere.

Read moreMany times when I watch people who are trying to identify honesty, I detect an emotional bias that skews their ability to register emotions, and facts correctly. Because of their belief system, they want to see something, yet no matter how hard they try to scale their fundamental beliefs, they are unable to do so. People will even speculate that the person speaking didn’t mean exactly what they said, and the person I am watching won’t think twice about rearranging the spoken words to make the message mean what they think it should mean.

Other times, people are not able to interpret emotions: they misinterpret the subtle expressions of sadness, and mistakenly assume that the sad person is callous and cold and showing no emotions. Many times, people miss the expression of contempt completely, as if it never had flashed before them.

One thing is for sure: I think our emotions are one of the biggest obstacles we have to seeing the truth. That is one reason I avoid writing about, or talking about politics and religion—two highly emotional subjects that no matter what is the truth, we will convince ourselves our beliefs are correct, and that others are misjudging the true meaning of what really is…

Deception Blog Commentary

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One blog I check out from time-to-time is Deception Blog. This blog’s purpose is to “collate information about psychological research on deception, and the applications of this research.” Yes, it is for the most part academic, but it is quite interesting nonetheless. If you haven’t visited there, I highly recommend it.

It was a pleasure to see Deception Blog post a commentary on my post about TSA Behavior Detection Officers. It is always nice to get support of other people who study deception detection.

On that note, at the bottom of the post, you will see a link to a YouTube video where Dr. Paul Ekman talks about “Why We Lie”. For those of you deception detection junkies, you will enjoy this video!