HowTo: Become a Lie Detector
Introduction to Detect your friends lies:
The following techniques should give you an idea if someone is lying, this method is often used by police and security experts. This knowledge is also useful for managers, employers, and for anyone to use in every day situations where telling the truth is essential and can prevent you from being a victim of fraud/scams and other deceptions.
warning: sometimes ignorance is bliss; after you know this, you may be hurt when it is obvious that someone is lying to you.
The Signs
- Physical expression
- can be limited and stiff, with a few arm or hand movements. Body movement becomes close to the body and the liar takes up less space.
- A person lying to you will avoid making eye contact.
- Hands touching their face throat and mouth. Touching or scratching the nose or behind the ear. IT is not likely to touch his or her chest/heart with an open hand.
- Emotional Gestures & contradiction
- Timing and duration of emotional gestures and emotions are abnormal The display of emotion is delayed then can stop suddenly ( as there is a “tick” required for the process of deceit (it is not normally a naturally expressive process (sub-conscious)).
- Timing is off between gestures and words.
- A great example would be somebody receiving a gift and saying ” I LOVE IT!” and it taking moments for their physical language to “catchup”, rather than it being at the same time the statement is made. (It’s the time it takes to make plans in the mind, consider them, process them and output the process).
- Gestures/expressions don’t match the verbal statements made, such as frowning when saying “I love you”.
- Expressions are limited to mouth movements when someone is faking emotions (like happy,surprised, sad , etc). When somebody smiles naturally their whole face is involved; jaw/cheek movement, etc, actors are usually very good liars!
- Iterations and Reactions
- A guilty person often gets defensive.
- An innocent person will often get on the offensive.
- A liar is uncomfortable with facing his accuser/questioner and may turn his head or body in the opposite direction.
- A liar might unconsciously place objects between themselves and you.
- Verbal Context and Content
- A liar will use your words to make answer a question. When asked, “did you steal my leather wallet?” The liar answers “No, I did not steal your leather wallet!”
- A statement with a contraction is more likely only to be truthful: “I didn’t do it” instead of “I did not do it” , poor data !
- Liars sometimes avoid “lying” by not making direct statements. They imply answers instead of denying something directly.
- The guilty person may speak more natural, adding unnecessary details to convince you… They are not comfortable with silence or a pause in a conversation.
- A liar mayt leave out pronouns and speak in a monotonous tone. When a truthful statement is made the pronoun is emphasized as much or more than the rest of the words in a statement.
- Words may be garbled and spoken softy, and syntax and grammar may be off. In other words his or her sentences may be muddled rather than emphasized (it’s difficult to speak naturally when you know your a damn liar and are trying to keep up with more work (than usual you’d hope)!).
- Other Signs of a Lie
- If you believe someone is lying, then change the subject quickly, a liar follows along willingly and becomes more relaxed. The guilty wants the subject changed of course. an innocent person may be confused by the sudden change in topics, and will want to make back to the previous topic.
- Using humour or sarcasm to avoid a subject.
Obviously, just because somebody exhibits these signs, does not make them a liar. The above behaviours are just guidelines from a website, go here for the original article.
October 3rd, 2006 at 4:21 am
What evidence do you have for ANYTHING that you claim in your article?!!! Without evidence, it’s just a bunch of rubbish.
October 3rd, 2006 at 5:16 am
Hi there, Thanks for your input. A valid question, However if you had read the article you would have seen I have fully annotated my source: “Obviously, just because somebody exhibits these signs, does not make them a liar. The above behaviours are just guidelines from a website, go [http://www.blifaloo.com/info/lies.php] for the original article.”
In fact the topic of deception (lying) has been studied within many scientific disciplines, as well as philosophy (Nyberg, 1993), psychiatry (Ford, 1996), psychology (Ekman, 1985) and Human communication (McCornack,1992) aswell as linguists such as Galasinki.
For instance, the topc deception detection has been studiedi within the field of pscyhology and law - and is characterised by three different approaches, as written by Leif A. Strömwall
of Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden: (1)the analysis of verbal content, (2) the analysis of non-verbal cues, (including micro expressions) differing from normal behaviour patterns. (3) and the psychophysiological detection of deception. This can be done by tracing systematic behavrioural differences between liars and truth-tellers, in terms of both non verbal behaviour and verbal object cues to deception.
The simple truth is police officers are generally no better than the average college student at spotting whether a person is lying or not, they are more confident in their ability to spot a liar of course. That could actually impede the ability to detect a lie of course.
In scientific studies concerning detection of deception, observers are typicall given videotapes or audiotapes and asked to judge whether each of a number of people is lying or telling the truth. To date, eight studies have been published with police offeivers are lie detectors. The percentages of lie detection in most these usually ranges from 45 to 60 percent, when 50 percent accuracy is expected by chance alone in these conditions.
However research does actually suggest that some behaviour is detectable by anyone (e.g. higher-pitched voice and decrease in hand movements) are more likely to occur during deception than others. The relationship is quite complex.
Paul ekmans “Telling Lies” might be worth a read, its about deception and lie catching, and includes a whopping 15 years of scientific study to back up the claims about nonverbal communication and the clues to deception.
Ekman’s work was so resounding the government took an interest.
*SEVERAL* of his examples involve the events leading up to World War II. A number of fateful deceptions were attempted during this time, and many were successful. According to Ekman even Hitlers success can be attributed to Hitler being able to mask his feelings, and intentions, as well as a lack of access to the linguistic clues.
quote unquote “A liar may betray himself through linguistic mistakes, but the main sources of betrayal are the emotions”.
Emotions do actually indeed translate and manifest as physical things. Such as receiving a gift you don’t want, there are clear physical manifecstations and delays, and “otherwise abnormal” behavioural patterns, quite rightly so. Deceptions typically involve trying to conceal or flasify feelings that are inappropriate or not socially sanctioned or trying to voer up the fear, guilt and or distress that may be provoked when one attempts to “get away with a lie”. When a person lies and has an emotional investment in the situation, a perfect performance is hard to carry off. Nonverbal clues to deception leak out. What is perhaps surprising is that few people make use of the leakage clues available to them and thus fail to detect the liar. The problem stems from both the adroitness of the deceiver and the na’ivete of the victim.
For instance, think about the smile, usually an indication of happiness or pleasure. It turns out there are 18 different types of authentic or “felt” smiels in Mr Ekman’s system -the contemptuous smile, the shy smile, the fearful smile and so on. This is not to mention the host of false smiles, some which are detected by mathematical asymetry, anomalise in timing and lack of involvement in the muscles around the eyes (all of which were mentioned in my article, which main source was not just me, and neither was the source from which I had originally obtained that dear data buddy.
This methodology even by Ekman’s standards is not yet perfect or close to it. People are predictable systems just like computers - the human factor is just a bit of a pain winding down, behaviour isn’t just conscious, neither is the communication in our brains, that is clearly obvious. Please not included question marks in the diagram, however that was the most “well known” and “scientifically researched” topica, and a correlation does exist, I suppose it’s not just talent or obervational skills, some of know when we smell bullshit though:
lets admit it, intelligence, psychological and physiological attributes all come into play here. Sure it’s complicated, but I wouldn’t say I or scientists didn’t have correlating proof - because that does exist!
Again, Thanks for your input, I hope this helps alleviate your pain!
October 3rd, 2006 at 7:22 pm
My ex was a consumate liar and often pointed the finger at me when he was confronted with anything. For example,
“Have you cheated on me?”
“You wouldn’t ask me that unless you felt guilty or were cheating yourself!”
By trying to make others feel that they are the problem or have the issue, liars often try to place blame on others.
October 3rd, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Karoline,
Fantastic point there, I have some similar experience, liars may often be defensive so much that, they no longer are defending themselves, but turning it on you offensively (however it is a defensive mechanism), this could have created some confusion in my original post that mentions how guilty people are offer defensive, and innocent people are usually offensive. It’s an interesting application;
If someone is lying to you and you quickly change topic, it was summised that a guilty person is more likely to go along with the topical change to move away from the lie, but it by no means speaks for all liars. Some people are naturals, unpredictably random etc.
Most illogical comments such as “You wouldn’t ask me that unless you felt guilty or were cheatin g yourself!” are a result of emotional ticks, where for a moment the accused feels guilty or under immense pressure when confronted directly. Although there is no evidence that confronting a liar directly works, there is evidence that a liar will eventually “mess up” and say something so profoundly stupid or ignorant that it is difficult to believe anything they say afterwards,
This has happened to us all before I expect. I hope more people are able to give some more comments, It’s a truly interesting topic, and there is no “real method” yet, just many theories!
Best Wishes,
Azio