Liar, Liar – An Extensive Guide to Lie Detection

This article provides guidlines on how to watch the body language, speach, content, and reactions of a person that is suspected to be lying. The key is to pay attention to all signs and their combinations.

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Body Language

• Hands: touching face, nose, or ears, scratching or holding back – results of increased blood pressure; covering mouth as if lies should not escape.
  Eyes: the liars, especially those close to you, will avoid eye contact. Only those really indifferent to you will be able to look straight into the eye. When thinking of an answer, the liars will look up and left (this also means being creative), while the real memories are recovered by looking up and right. Raising eyebrows, dilated pupils, and frequent blinking are other signs.
• Facial expression: a fake smile involves only mouth muscles, while an emotional smile involves all facial muscles; hence, “the smiling eyes”.
• Body: turned to a side or away; heavy sweating; increased pulse.

Speech

Tone: monotonous, slower or faster than normal, higher pitch.

Content:

• Full of unnecessary details and inconsistent.
• Indirect statements. The person may avoid to tell lies by not answering the question (”Did you cheat?”): “I love you, why should I cheat?” – in such way, the person is still telling the truth, even if he has cheated.
• Repetition of your words. For example, to a question “did you cheat?”, the liar will more likely answer “no, I did not cheat”, while an honest person might say something like “no, I’ve never cheated in my life”.
• Reduced stress on pronouns (he, it).
• Use of humor and sarcasm.
• Repetitive.

Grammar: incorrect.

Reactions

• Emotions: delayed and inconsistent emotional reactions may imply lying. The display of emotions starts and ends abruptly. For example, this sequence indicates dishonesty: a sentence “I really enjoy it”, then a sudden smile, which ends as suddenly as it started.
• Topic: If you suddenly change a topic, the liar will become more relaxed; he/she may also try to talk about something else.
• Other things: the person can place a cup or a newspaper in-between you and him; continuous touching of an object indicates lying or stress.
• Defensiveness: an honest person will more likely be offensive or neutral, while a liear will get defensive.

More tricks

• Ask the suspect to tell the story in a reverse order (asking for clarification), and look for inconsistencies.
• Ask to tell the story in front of others that might now the truth. Suspect, if they seem to become uncomfortable. For example, your kid should tell the story when his friend – the partner in crime – is present.
• Change topic, and then ask again unexpectedly, whe the person is not prepared.
• Look for deviations from a baseline. For example, if a person is shaking a leg and then suddenly stops that, suspect that he started telling untruth.
• Trust your intuition – it is an inconscious analysis of the signs as a whole.

Keep in mind, that  those signs can also show nervousness, shyness, or simply coinsidence. Do not suspect anyone unless you have good reasons for that.

Resources

• www.blifaloo.com/info/lies.php – an excellent tutorial to liar detection
  How to spot a lie (eHow.com) – a few signs to watch when a person is lying
  How to catch a lie (eHow.com) – a few sights to watch when a person is lying
  Detect lies (wikiHow.com)