How do you detect an amateur and a professional liar?

A LIE (also called Prevarication, falsification) is a known untruth expressed as truth, with the intention to deceive, further more to maintain or mask a secret, reputation, feeling, to avoid punishment, or at the most, to antagonize the efforts or credibility of a rival entity or establishment for the propagation of ones own vested interests. A person who is going to lie must recognize the truth, intellectually conceive an alternate reality, and be able to convincingly sell that new reality to someone else. Therefore, lying demands both advanced cognitive development and social skills that honesty simply doesn't require. It's a developmental milestone. Although we think of truthfulness as an integral individuals most paramount virtue, it turns out that lying is a more advanced skill. Therefore we must appreciate the level of effort and proficiency required in being able to effectively detect this kind of behavioral trait or habitual infraction of character, especially in those individuals who, are inherently better at concealing the truth, or who have a predisposition to telling lies, either genetically, or as a force of habit psychologically conditioned through a certain or regular circumstantial routine. Today I will share some hopefully insightful information on how to be able to detect lies and furthermore, how and when to spot the proverbial liar when at his/her deceptive best. The point I would like to bring home today is that, detecting a lie is not easy, and its perfection certainly comes with an appreciable amount of experience and practice in dealing with a range of different people with different personalities and mindsets. However these specific guidelines will attenuate your focus and streamline your interrogative skills on the right track. There are a number of ways to spot a susceptible liar. Listing them in no particular order of preference, we must examine the following aspects in detailed introspection without digressing too much from our primary focus: 1Keeping a check on body Language: An amateur liar will have less fluid body movements. A person will unknowingly demonstrate submissive behavior like the shrugging of shoulders and presenting their palms out when making a statement. If a person keeps touching their face, mouth, nose or throat, they may be lying. An additional indication is the constant licking or pursing of the lips that symbolically denotes concealment of facts: as in the case with Bill Clintons testament in front of the House of Representatives before his subsequent impeachment in 1998. It can be interpreted as extreme anxiety, withholding information and withholding aggression. Tight lips indicate you may be planning to keep the truth in. If you actually suck your lips part way in, you may be withholding anger. When you are nervous, your mouth becomes dry, and you lick your lips and swallow as you struggle to find the right words to say. Watching out for facial micro expressions: According to Dr. Paul Ekman, a professor emeritus at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, a micro-expression is a very brief expression usually lasting about a minute fraction of a second, that is always a concealed emotion. The simplest way to detect a liar is to catch phrases that dont match the expressions, even if it is for a very brief duration of time. For example when a person is happy, but in actuality is really upset about something, their true emotion will be revealed in a subconscious flash of anger on their face. Whether the concealed emotion is fear, anger, happiness or jealously, the feeling will appear in the blink of an eye. The trick is to see it. Inconsistencies in the retelling of factual evidence: If yo want to know if someone is lying, look for inconsistencies in what their saying. For example, when Newberry, a federal agent for 30 years, trained in deception detection, questioned a woman who was a witness to a shooting, she stated that she ran and hid after hearing gunshots without looking. He realized the reaction was inconsistent with how a person would respond to a situation that that. So to prove his point, he banged on the interrogation table, when the woman wasnt paying attention. She looked right at him. No surprise there. States Newberry, When a person hears a noise, its a natural impulse to be responsive in the direction of the source causing it, hence she must have heard the gunshots, looked in the direction of its initiation, saw the shooter and ran. A definitely logical deduction. Look for inconsistencies that dont fit into the context of the evidence. Assessing the level of defensiveness in a persons approach to your interaction: If a person resists answering your questions, or gets all beefed up when being asked something, they are probably lying. They may even try to turn the table on you and accuse you of lying. When they do that, they are intentionally trying to project their lie onto you. The relative placement of peripheral objects subjective to the suspected individual: Liars may distance themselves from you by placing nearby objects between them and you. A liar safeguards this personal space around himself/herself as a deliberate attempt to improvise for their possible vulnerability. The correlation of eye movement and lying; also known as Neuro-Visual Linguistic programming: If a person is describing something that they have seen or heard, then their eyes should primarily move to the visual or auditory remembered part of the brain. However if a person is making something up, then their eyes will tend to move to the visual or auditory constructed, indicating that the person is constructing some part of the situation they are describing. This may indicate that the person is uncertain or untruthful about what they are thinking. People tend to move both eyes to the right to visualize or create a new response or down to the right to create the sounds of a new response. We recall information that occurred in the past if our eyes move up to the left or down to the left. The reverse would be true in the case of a left brained sided or left handed individual. Comparing behavior against a predetermined baseline of disposition: One of the most important indicators of dishonesty is changes in Behavior, states Maureen O Sullivan, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of San Francisco. You want to pay attention to someone who is generally anxious, but now looks calm. Conversely someone who is generally calm may now display jittery behavior. The trick, explains O Sullivan, is to gauge their behavior against a baseline. Is the persons behavior gravitating away from how they would normally act? And if it is, that could mean a deviation from the truth. Discovering insincere emotions: Most people, no matter how proficient they may be at portraying fake emotions, cannot fake a Real Smile. According to Professor O Sullivan, the timing will be wrong, it will be held too long, or it will be blended with other things. Maybe it will be a combination of an angry face with a smile; you can tell because their lips are smaller and less full than in a sincere smile.

2-

3-

4-

5-

6-

7-

8-

9-

Physiological and emotional Contradictions: The general rule is that anything that a person does with their voice or their gesture that doesnt fit the words they are saying can indicate a lie. For example, sometimes when people are lying and saying, Yes, shes the one that took the money, they will, unknowingly make a slight head shake no Thats a gesture, and it completely contradicts what theyre saying in words. These contradictions can be between the voice and the words, the gestures and the voice, the gesture and the words, or the face and the words. It is some aspect of demeanor that is contradicting another aspect.

10- The mode of lying: The phone is a device that provides a subtle convenience in lying. In a one week long study of 30 college students, an independent researcher observed that the phone was the most popular weapon of choice, enabling 37% of the lies told in this time, versus 27% face to face exchanges, 21% using web based messaging and just 14% via email. Perhaps the most important reason for these statistics is that phone calls usually do not leave a record behind. 11- Providing too much and often unnecessary details when addressing a question, with sparse meaningful information: Lets take the following illustration: When you ask someone, Where were you? and they respond accordingly, I went to the store to get eggs and milk and sugar, and I almost hit a dog so I had to go slow, and on and on, they are giving away too much detail. Too much detail could mean that theyve put a lot of thought into how theyre going to evade a particular situation, and theyve crafted a complicated lie as a solution. However for amateur liars, this is a giveaway, as they may not go through all the particulars of their stories. If you suspect youre being lied to, calmly probe for appropriate details, without making it obvious to the person in question. 12- A sense of unease and anxious behavior: Although not always a good indication of a prospective liar, when someone isnt making eye contact, it can mean that theyre not being honest, states Jenn Berman, a PHD in psychology in private practice. They may look away, theyre sweating, they too uneasy and tense, posing general anxiety of an unusually nature. Hoverer certain individuals who are telling the truth may be naturally inclined to behave in this fashion, because of heightened social sensitivity or social interaction anxiety. 13- Body positioning relative to the questioner: Truthful people are more likely to face their questioners head on. Liars, on the other hand, are likely to lack frontal alignment and will often sit, positioning their body closer to themselves, says Joseph Buckley, president of John E. Reid and Associates. 14- Verbal isolation of the liar from the crime: An ironic coincidence is the fact that there is an I in Lie, so in order to distance oneself psychologically from the lie, the accused may resort to the use of second person and third person pronouns like You we and They. 15- Frequent requests for reiteration of questions and evasive declarations: Liars, in the hope that their anxious behavior may be somewhat disguised by an intent of curiosity, are likely to ask that questions be repeated, with a slight deliberation on elaboration on the question being asked. Additionally beginning a response with declarations like, The truth is, or Honestly speaking is a clever subliminal process to offset the other person from questioning their integrity. Evasive answers to direct and clear questions should be a point of concern as well. 16- Inordinately delayed pauses in speech pattern: When a person is lying, the gaps between their words often increase, according to a 2002 study led by Robin Lickley, professor of speech and language at Queen Margaret University in Edinburg, Scotland. While honest folks have the truth locked and loaded, liars tend to take more time between points, no doubt searching for which approach will be more convincing. 17- The inherent or overwhelming need to be Right (A subconscious instinct that is in conflict with actual behavior): When you think someone is lying, you have to either know the person well enough to understand why he or she might lie, or be a people expert. The reason behind this is because when honest people tell stories, they may realize partway through that they left out some details and un-self-consciously backtrack to fill in the holes. They may also realize that a previous statement wasnt quite right, and go back and explain further. Liars, are worried that someone might catch them in the lie and are reluctant to admit to such ordinary imperfections, says psychologist Bella DePaul, Noted authority on Deception studies. 18- Lack of animation and withdrawn behavior: Deception is all about keeping things hidden. The more a person moves his body or expresses his voice, and the more he or she speaks, the more we can learn. Practiced liars know this and usually keep as still as possible. Being overly controlled can work against you. Gary Condit, the former democrat of the house of representative, who in 2001, was interviewed on television and tried for extramarital affairs while in office, was coached to stay still. So he kept his face inexpressive, his upper body stiff and his legs crossed. First he looked frozen, and then when he couldnt hold it any longer, he leaked out aggression clues such as finger pointing, grasping motions and sticking out his tongue. Everyone spotted a liar! 19- Un-Coordinated Gesticulations or absence thereof: When telling the truth, people often make hand gestures to the rhythm of their speech. Hands emphasize points and phrases; natural and compelling technique used when they actually believe the points that theyre making. The less certain will tend to keep their hands hidden or still. They may stick them in their pockets, clench them together or hold them behind their backs. Knowing these cues can help you decipher when someone else is being less than forthcoming. Sometimes, people say: Its all in your mind. Now you know, Its all in your body.

Author: Ashwin J.J. Joseph

12th October 2010

PSDP Remedial Program Coordinator St. Michaels Convent School