Over to the psychology department again today to be a guinea pig in another of their experiments.

This time they had people either lying about an upcoming holiday or telling the truth. I was picked for the former which was a bit scary - people tell me they can read me like a book so I doubted I could succeed at convincing the questioner.

Anyway, I was detailed off to invent a trip to Chile where I've never been and was told I could do as much or as little research as I wanted before the day of the experiment. In fact - aside from looking up flight time, a reasonable ticket cost and finding a suitable 'town' - I didn't really research anything.

What I did was think through an amalgam of a lot of previous travel, a couple of trips to Brazil and then relocated the Columbian researcher I met in the Czech Republic last year as a Chilean friend I was flying out to visit.

By enthusing about all of that kind of semi-real stuff I got through the questions that were being asked without quite as much stress as I might of imagined. Although I started so nervously I thought the game would be up immediately.

When the researcher returned to the room to debrief me she also asked the questioner whether I'd been telling the truth or lying and I was somewhat surprised to find that I had indeed convinced her. "You're either lying or have done a huge amount of research."

The trouble is, that although I 'succeeded', I'm not really sure that that's a good thing. Nor do I feel proud of myself.

At least they revealed that *they* had been lying when they had said in the preparatory material that those who do well at the task are more successful in their jobs. Apparently that's to motivate you to succeed - but I should have remembered that they always mess with your head!