Geoffrey W. Sutton PhD, Psychology and Culture

  I smile when I see movies portraying savvy detectives revered for their ability to separate truth from lies in a suspect’s story. And I cringe when people believe the lies of politicians and other leaders despite evidence from their own behaviour—including recordings of their statements.  Sadly, interviewers are easily deceived. And despite my experience in clinical forensic work, I too have been deceived. We have a vested interest in detecting the truth—especially when we stand to lose or gain from information. So, I am going to draw on some research summarized by Aldert Vrij to make a few points in this post. 1. Eye-contact: Liars do not look away more than truth-tellers. Liars are focused on overcoming the well-known avoidance belief. 2. Squirm effect : Liars do not fidget or move around more than truth-tellers. It takes mental effort to deceive someone. Liars move less. 3. Nonverbal cue mystique : Interviewers (including new counsellors) are often told to pa...

Journey to a Better Relationship Four Things to Pack Couples often seek counseling to improve their relationship. The general goal is something like satisfaction, which can be quite vague unless you flesh it out with some specifics. But that’s where things can get pretty negative if couples and therapists aren’t careful. Getting to relationship satisfaction can be an arduous and discouraging process of identifying areas where each partner is unhappy. The usual culprits are ways of spending our money, spending enough time together, enjoying sex, sharing responsibilities, and agreeing on parenting strategies. Enter Jen Ripley and Ev Worthington—two experienced couples’ therapists from the Eastern U.S. I’m reading their recent book, Couple Therapy for a book review I’ll be sending off in a few weeks. My focus in this post is on four goals they suggest for couples’ counseling . What I like about these ideas is how they fit with trends ...

Christian Counseling- by unlicensed persons Can people with mental illness find help from counselors without professional training at a church or a Christian ministry?  Certainly, there is a need for help. Rick and Kay Warren  recently wrote about the need for churches to do more for people with mental illness. They quote the National Alliance on Mental Illness statistic that 60 million Americans experience a mental health condition each year. But what can churches and Christian ministries do? I’ve been reading a book titled Evidenced-Based Practices for Christian Counseling and Psychotherapy. It’s an edited volume with chapters by many leaders in Christian counseling and psychotherapy. One chapter (3) by Siang-Yang Tan of Fuller Theological Seminary takes a look at “Lay Christian counseling for General Psychological Problems.” What is lay counseling? The definition is a problem because we need to define both counseling and the attributes of th...