When Do You Know Someone Is Lying to You

How to Recognize the Signs That Someone Is Lying

By Mia Belle Frothingham, published Nov 23, 2021

Humans cannot help information technology. Deception and lying are common behaviors in people, and we will possess the ability to prevarication. One would be lying to say one has never lied before.

In fact, studies have suggested that, on average, Americans tell one or two lies every day. The true reality is that most people will likely prevarication from time to time. Some of these lies are small ones; these are labeled white lies and are usually intended to protect someone's feelings ("That clothes looks great on you!").

Or in other cases, lies can be much more than severe such as lying on a resume, or even more sinister every bit covering up a law-breaking. What is worst is that people are surprisingly bad at detecting lies.

Lying Can Be Hard to Notice

I study found that people could only accurately depict lying in a laboratory setting 54% of the time. It is non impressive when 1 factors in a 50% detection rate past pure risk lone.

Indeed, the behavioral differences between lying and honest individuals are challenging to measure and discriminate.

Researchers take tried to uncover new ways in which we can detect lies. While there is no elementary solution or an easy, tell-tale sign that someone is being quack, researchers and experts have found some helpful indicators of lying.

There are no signs of lying per se, but rather signs of thinking too much when a reply should not require thought, or of emotions that don't fit what is existence spoken, he says.

There is one thing nosotros must brand clear, though. Like many things, spotting a lie most of the time frequently comes down to trusting your instincts. By knowing what signs might accurately detect a lie and learning how to take into account your gut reactions, you will become amend at spotting deception.

In fact, Dr. Leanne 10 Brinke, a forensic psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that our instincts for judging liars are quite strong.

Signs of Lying

The crucial component in identifying a lie is establishing a baseline for how someone acts when beingness truthful. An example would include watching how the person responds to basic questions with straightforward answers like "What is your name" and "Where are you from?"

Pay attending to their eyes, watch where they go. Notice how their voice sounds and await at their body language. Once you have established a baseline, and desire to spot a lie, look for shifts in beliefs.

Spotting the sneaks can be tough. Polygraph tests, so-chosen "lie detectors", are typically based on detecting autonomic reactions and are considered unreliable. That'southward why psychologists accept been cataloging clues to charade such as facial expressions, torso linguistic communication and linguistics, to assist claw the dishonest.

It is essential to understand that these signs are non foolproof, sometimes if someone is nervous, their voice may crack, but that does not mean they are lying.

Or if someone is uncomfortable in their chair, they will probably fidget. But keep this in mind.

Facial Cues

Eyes

You might have heard this tactic before. Someone who is lying might either stare or expect away at a crucial moment. People sometimes wait abroad when lying; this cue could indicate that they are moving their optics effectually as to effort to think virtually what to say side by side.

Only staring is also just as important as a cue of lying. The aforementioned study mentioned before, done by the University of Michigan in 2015, also constitute that people who lied were more likely to stare at the other individual than those who were honest.

In fact, seventy% of the clips showed the people lying and staring direct at the people they lied to. Over again, the baseline is a critical component when deciding what the other person'due south lying cues are - in one case yous take the baseline, choosing whether or not the person is lying volition become easier.

This also helps to avoid reading also much into someone's mannerisms.

Mouth

One cue of lying by omission includes rolling back the lips to the point where they have disappeared. This could point that the person is property back facts or emotions.

Enquiry has also found that people who lie are more probable to purse lips when being asked sensitive questions. Pursing the lips could also bespeak that someone does not feel like engaging in the conversation at mitt.

It is an instinctive reflex, meaning ane does not desire to speak. Ane might besides notice a liar automatically putting their easily on their mouth and lips.

When you're not telling the truth, you instinctively want to comprehend upward the source of the lie — your oral fissure — so no i can see you're fibbing. Only that's too obvious, so people disguise it by scratching their nose as information technology does the same job, only gives your hand an excuse for being over your oral fissure.

Complexion

Accept you ever noticed a time where someone became really stake when starting to speak? The saying "white equally a ghost" could be a sign of untruthfulness, where the blood starts rushing out of the confront. Ane might too notice a liar automatically putting their hands on their mouth and lips.

This could mean they are non revealing everything, and they prefer not to tell the truth - a literal fashion of endmost off advice.

Sweaty/Dryness

Every bit we have mentioned before, the autonomic nervous organization becomes triggered when a person is lying. This can cause liars to sweat in the T-area of the face - forehead, upper lip, effectually the mouth, and chin.

Or experience dryness in the mouth and eyes where the person finds themselves excessively squinting or blinking, bitter or licking their lips, and swallowing hard.

Voice

When people are nervous, the muscles located in and around the song cords tighten upwardly, which is an instinctive stress response. This can lead to the voice sounding high-pitched. You might likewise notice creaks and cracks in the liar's voice.

Therefore, clearing of the throat is a sign to cope with the discomfort of the tightened muscles, which tin can signal dishonesty. Also, yous might find a sudden change in volume.

People who are telling lies tend to heighten their voices. Sometimes liars will get louder when the other gets defensive.

Content

Pay attention to what they are saying. Phrases like 'honestly,' or 'I desire to be honest with you' or 'here's the truth' tin all be signs that the liar is trying likewise hard to convince the other person that they are telling the truth.

Even using buffer words such as 'similar' and 'um' tin indicate lying. The same research from the University of Michigan constitute that speaking with more vocal fill could mean deception; people tend to employ these words more when they are trying to purchase time to figure out what to say next.

Also, when someone goes on and on, providing too much information and information that was non requested with an excess of particular, there is a high probability that they are non telling the truth.

Liars tend to talk a lot, hoping to allow others believe them with their seeming openness and sociability. Lastly, people are non perfect, and most of us are non natural-born liars.

So, sometimes, nosotros let the truth out without thinking. Try to discover the person interrupting themselves as they talk, quickly covering up the fact with a lie.

For example, "I lost my phone - look, I meant to say my phone was stolen" or "I was eating dinner with - oh actually, I was working late."

Torso Cues

Facial expressions aren't the only clue. Considering deception is a social act involving linguistic communication, researchers are likewise studying liars' verbal communication and body cues to find distinctive patterns.

Hands

Liars tend to use exaggerated gestures with their hands after they speak, instead of during or before a conversation.

The liar's listen is working hard and doing too many things to make upward a narrative, analyzing your reaction as to whether or not you believe them, and then calculation to the story accordingly.

A study conducted at the University of Michigan in 2015 examined 120 media clips of loftier-stakes court cases to dig deeper into how people carry when they are lying versus when they are telling the truth.

Researchers found that the people who lie were more probable to gesture using both of their hands than those who were telling the truth. The results indicated that people gestured with both hands in 40% of the lying videos, compared to 25% in the honest clips.

Also, when people are lying, they tend to face their palms away from you. Information technology is an unconscious signal indicating that they are property dorsum information, emotions, or even telling a lie.

Watch if their easily movement to inside their pockets, or they slide them under the table - anywhere out of your sight.

Fidgeting

Shuffling the feet, rocking the body back and along, and moving the head to the side can also be signs of deception.

When people are nervous and are telling lies, in that location are fluctuations in the autonomic nervous organization (the ANS regulates actual functions).

These fluctuations in the nervous organization can prompt people to feel tingles or itches on their bodies, resulting in more fidgeting and scratching. People tend to brandish "training" behaviors like playing with their hair or touching their neck while being dishonest.

Verbal Cues

Liars accept longer to outset answering questions than truth-tellers--but when they accept time to plan, liars actually kickoff their answers more quickly than truth-tellers.

Liars answers sound more discrepant and ambivalent, the structure of their stories is less logical, and their stories sound less plausible. Liars are more likely to repeat words and phrases.

At the University of Texas at Austin, psychology professor James Pennebaker, PhD, and his assembly have developed computer software, known as Linguistic Enquiry and Word Count (LIWC), that analyzes written content and tin, with some accuracy, predict whether someone is lying.

Pennebaker says deception appears to bear iii primary written markers:

First-person pronouns: Liars avoid statements of ownership, altitude themselves from their stories and avoid taking responsibleness for their behavior, he says.
More than negative emotion words, such as detest, worthless and sad: Liars, notes Pennebaker, are generally more anxious and sometimes feel guilty.
Fewer exclusionary words, such as except, but or nor--words that indicate that writers distinguish what they did from what they did not do. Liars seem to accept a problem with this complexity, and it shows in their writing.

Tips for Identifying Lying

If y'all suspect that someone might not be telling the truth, there are a few strategies you can utilise that might help distinguish fact from fiction.

Ask Them to Tell Their Story in Contrary

As lie detection tin can be viewed as a passive process, people assume that observing the potential liar'south body language and facial cues tin help 1 spot obvious tell-tale signs.

But by taking a more than active approach in uncovering lies, one can yield amend and more reliable results. Research has suggested that asking a possible liar to written report their story in the reverse guild, rather than chronologically, can increase lie detection accuracy.

Non-exact and verbal cues that differentiate between lying and honest can become more than credible as the cognitive load of the liar increases. Lying is more mentally taxing than honesty.

Therefore, the liar'southward behavioral cues may become more than apparent if y'all add together even more than cognitive complication. Non merely is telling a prevarication more cognitively demanding, simply liars also tend to exert more than mental energy monitoring and evaluating the responses and behaviors of the people they are lying to (to sell their prevarication finer).

Liars are concerned with credibility and making sure that other people undoubtedly believe their stories. Hence, all of this takes a considerable corporeality of effort, and adding a difficult task - like telling a story astern - would reveal cracks in their story, and one is more likely to know whether they are lying or not.

In one controlled study, fourscore mock suspects either described the truth or lied about a made-up consequence. Some individuals were told to report their stories in chronological order, and others were asked to tell their stories in reverse gild.

Researchers establish that the reverse gild interviews revealed more behavioral cues that indicate deception.

Trust the Instinctive Reaction

All in all, 1's immediate gut reaction might exist more authentic than a conscious lie detection. But if our gut reactions might be more accurate, why are humans generally bad at identifying dishonesty?

Most times, conscious responses might interfere with our automatic associations. Instead of relying on their instincts, people tend to focus on stereotypical behaviors associated with lying - fidgeting, and lack of eye contact.

Overemphasizing behaviors to predict deception unreliably makes it challenging to spot a lie.

Conclusion

While there is no universal, sure sign that indicates someone is lying, there are three key things ane must employ to assistance spot a lie:

Create a baseline
Add together to cognitive load
Trust your instinct

Recall that all of the signs, behaviors, and indicators that research has linked to deception are simply clues that might reveal whether or not a person is being forthright.

If you have tried to spot a prevarication before, next time, effort to judge the integrity of a person's story, maybe terminate looking at the stereotypical lying signs and learn how to spot more subtle behaviors - this could give yous bodily proof.

And, of course, when necessary, accept a more agile approach past adding pressure and making the prevarication more mentally taxing by asking the person to say the story in opposite order.

Finally, and crucially, trust your gut. Sometimes yous might have a tremendous intuitive urge that tells y'all a sense of honesty vs. dishonesty. Learn to listen this intuition, and you might merely become an excellent lie detector.

Well-nigh the Author

Mia Belle Frothingham is a Harvard undergraduate in her senior yr majoring in Biology & Psychology. She is a passionate writer, science communicator, and aspiring astrobiologist and astronaut with a nifty interest in clinical, cognitive, and behavioral psychology. Mia is the author is Our AstroLegacy (bachelor on Amazon & Kindle) – the purpose of her book is for cocky-awareness in discovering ane's identify in the universe. She poses existential interrogations similar who are you? What is homo? What is real? What practice we actually know? And gives answers through Astrobiology, Psychology, and Evolution.

How to reference this commodity:

How to reference this article:

Frothingham, Grand.B. (2021, Nov 23). How to Recognize the Signs That Someone Is Lying. Just Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/how-to-tell-if-someone-is-lying.html

APA Mode References

Duran, North. D., Dale, R., Kello, C. T., Street, C. N., & Richardson, D. C. (2013). Exploring the movement dynamics of deception. Frontiers in psychology, iv, 140.

Ehrlichman, H., & Micic, D. (2012). Why practice people move their optics when they think?. Electric current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(two), 96-100.

Serota, K. B., Levine, T. R., & Boster, F. J. (2010). The prevalence of lying in America: 3 studies of self-reported lies. Human Communication Enquiry, 36(1), 2-25.

Further Information

Ten Brinke, L., Stimson, D., & Carney, D. R. (2014). Some evidence for unconscious prevarication detection. Psychological science, 25(5), 1098-1105. Vrij, A., Isle of man, S. A., Fisher, R. P., Leal, S., Milne, R., & Balderdash, R. (2008). Increasing cognitive load to facilitate lie detection: The benefit of recalling an event in reverse order. Law and homo behavior, 32(3), 253-265. Loy, J. E., Rohde, H., & Corley, Yard. Cues to Lying May exist Deceptive: Speaker and Listener Behaviour in an Interactive Game of Charade. Loy, J. E., Rohde, H., & Corley, M. Cues to Lying May be Deceptive: Speaker and Listener Behaviour in an Interactive Game of Deception. Duran, N. D., Dale, R., Kello, C. T., Street, C. Due north., & Richardson, D. C. (2013). Exploring the movement dynamics of deception. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 140. Duran, Due north. D., Dale, R., Kello, C. T., Street, C. N., & Richardson, D. C. (2013). Exploring the motility dynamics of charade. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 140. Curci, A., Lanciano, T., Battista, F., Guaragno, South., & Ribatti, R. Yard. Accuracy, Confidence, and Experiential Criteria for Prevarication Detection Through a Videotaped Interview.

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