Incredible facts
Lying and deceit are common human forms of behavior. Until relatively recently, very little research has been done on lying. Some scientists have claimed that approximately 96% of people have lied at least once in their lives; in other studies, up to 90% of respondents said they have never lied.
The truth is that we all lie from time to time — protecting someone's feelings, hiding their resume from their employer, or even covering up a crime. In this article, we'll try to reveal a few key points for you that will help you understand people better.
Lies and their signs
People are used to believing that they are pretty good at recognizing lies and popular wisdom offers us lots of ways to identify a liar. Liars don't look you in the eye. They're worried and they're shaking. When people lie, they run their eyes from side to side.
Also read: 10 clear signs you're being lied to
In fact, most of these signs are nothing more than unscientific tales.
While the internet is full of tips on how to spot liars, a 2006 study found that people are very bad at telling lies these days. Scientists Bond and DePaulo found that only 54% of people guessed false facts — a fairly low figure, considering that 50% is a chance rate.
It is obvious that it is difficult to measure and assess the difference in behavioral responses between lying and truth-telling people. The researchers tried to identify and calculate mechanisms for detecting lies. Although there is no exact way to do this in the world (like looking at Pinocchio's nose), scientists have been able to identify several ways to help you understand people better.
However, like so many things in our lives, revealing lies often comes down to one thing: trusting your instincts.
1. Pay attention to body language
The first point is body language. This is important because thoughts and speech are within our control, and unconscious reactions, such as smiling unconsciously or twitching the pupil, can sometimes play a role in catching a liar.
When it comes to detecting lies, people often focus on well-known, widely disclosed and announced body language “signs” or subtle physical and behavioral signs that uncover fraud. For the most part, standards state that running eyes, constant excitement, and avoiding eye contact are sure signs that a person is not telling the truth. While people believe body language signs can tell us to cheat, research shows that many of the most studied behaviors don't have much to do with lying.
Read also: 7 phrases people use when they brazenly lie
Researcher Howard Ehrlichman, a psychologist who has been studying eye movements since the 1970s, found that running eyes don't mean lying at all. In fact, he assumes that they mean what a person thinks, or more specifically, that he or she is accessing their long-term memory.
Other studies have found that while individual cues and behaviors are useful indicators of deception, some of the most commonly associated lies (e.g. eye movements) are the same one of the worst predictors. So while body language can be a useful tool for detecting lies, the key is to understand which signals to pay attention to and which ones not.
Psychologists have taken into account research on sign language and its connection to lies to help law enforcement officers distinguish truth from lies.
Researchers at UCLA have conducted research on this subject, in addition to analyzing 60 studies on deception to develop guidelines and training law enforcement officers. Their findings were published in the April issue of the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry.
Some of the potential “red flags” identified by researchers that may indicate that people are cheating include:
Vague opinion, few details
Repeat questions before answering them
Talk in fragmentary sentences
Inability to provide specific details when history is being challenged
Appearance-related behavior, such as flirting with your hair or pressing your fingers against your lips
Lead researcher R. Edward Geiselman believes that while detecting deception is never easy, quality training can improve a person's ability to detect lies:
“Without the necessary training, many people think they can detect deception, but their perceptions are not related to their actual abilities. Fast, ineffective training leads to people overestimating their abilities and doing worse than if they were working with their internal reactions.”
Research has also shown that people tend to subconsciously pay attention to many behavioral cues associated with cheating. A 2001 study by scientists Hartwig and Bond found that although people rely on reliable signals to detect lies, the problem may be that these signals are weak in as indicators of fraud in the first place.
Read also: How to determine if a person is lying?
Some of the most accurate hints people look out for include the following:
Conversation vagueness: If the speaker appears to be intentionally missing important details, this could be a sign they're lying.
Voice uncertainty: If a person seems insecure about themselves or their thoughts, they may be lying.
Indifference: Shrugging, lack of expression, and bored posture can be signs of lying as the person tries to avoid giving you emotions and possible clues.
Thinking: If a person seems to be thinking too hard to add as much detail to the story as possible, it might be because they're lying to you.
The bottom line here is that while body language can be helpful, it's important to pay attention to intuitive cues. Experts suggest that too much reliance on learned signals can weaken the ability to detect lies. Now let's learn more about a more effective way to find out if a person is telling the truth or blatantly lying.
2. Ask them to retell the story in reverse order
The second method is more active, but much more effective than just observation.
Discovering lies is often considered a passive process. People often assume they can simply observe a potential liar's body language and facial expression to discover obvious “signs” that will lead them to the right answer. Research has shown that this is a pretty bad way to detect lies, while a more proactive approach to uncovering a deceiver may yield better results.
Research shows that asking people to tell their stories in reverse rather than chronological order can improve the accuracy of lie detection. Researchers suggest that verbal and non-verbal cues that differentiate between lies and truth become more obvious as cognitive load increases.
It is much more difficult to lie than to tell the truth. If you add even more cognitive complexity, behavioral cues can become more obvious.
Not only does lying require more concentration, but liars tend to devote much more mental energy to monitoring their behavior and assessing others' reactions. They're concerned about their credibility and ensuring that others believe their stories.
All of this takes a lot of effort, so if you add in a difficult task (like recounting their story in reverse), the cracks and flaws in lies and behavior can become more intense noticeable.
It has been proven that retelling history in reverse leads to a better definition of lies.
In one study, 80 suspects either told the truth or lied about a staged event. Some people were asked to report their stories in reverse order, while others simply told their stories in chronological order. The researchers found that backwards interviews revealed more behavioral signs of deception.
In a second experiment, 55 police officers watched taped interviews from the first experiment and were asked to determine who lied and who wasn't. The investigation found that law enforcement officers were better at detecting lies in interviews in reverse order than in chronological interviews.
This kind of proactive approach to detecting lies can be useful for law enforcement, but what about our daily lives? In the third and last point, we'll talk about why you should trust your first impression and intuitive reactions to true/lie.
3. Trust your instincts
The third point tells us that trusting our instincts can sometimes be more useful than following the advice from a textbook on recognizing lies in people.
According to a 2014 study, your intuitive reactions and assessments may be more accurate than any conscious effort you can make to detect lies. In the study, researchers asked 72 participants to watch video interviews with criminal suspects.
Some of these suspects stole a $100 bill from a bookshelf while others did not, however, all suspects were asked to tell the interviewer that they did not take the money. As in previous studies, participants were not particularly good at detecting lies, accurately identifying liars only 43% of the time and truth tellers 48% of the time.
But researchers also used implicit behavioral tests to assess participants' more automatic and unconscious responses to suspects. They found that subjects were more likely to unconsciously associate words like “dishonest” and “deceitful” with suspects who actually lie. They were also more likely to associate words like “valid” and “honest” with truth tellers.
The results suggest that people may have an unconscious, intuitive idea of whether someone is lying.
So if our instinctive responses are pretty accurate, why haven't people learned how to catch liars at their first word?
Researcher Lynn ten Brinke suggests that our conscious reactions may interfere with our automatic associations. Instead of relying on our instincts, we focus on behavioral patterns we often associate with lying, such as anxiety and lack of eye contact. By overestimating our ability to identify lies, we reduce our chances of distinguishing truth from lies.
Final thoughts on detecting lies
There are many articles on the Internet about how to determine if a person is lying. Many of these are a list of old myths about how to spot a liar, even though existing research has shown that most of these stereotypical behaviors aren't really they detect fraud.
What's the best way to spot a liar? The reality is that there is no universal, unmistakable sign that someone is lying. All the signs, behaviors, and indicators that researchers associate with lying are simply clues that can help you find out.
So the next time you're trying to measure the veracity of your friend or acquaintance's story, stop looking at stereotypical signs and learn to recognize more subtle signs behaviors that may be related to fraud.
Read also: What do the eyes say about lies and hidden emotions?
If necessary, take a more proactive approach, increasing pressure or asking the speaker to tell the story in reverse. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, trust your instincts. People should listen to their intuition more often, because it often relies on the subconscious mind, which processes information faster than our conscious brain.
Learn to trust yourself.