How to Spot a Liar

Can you spot a liar? Is averting the eyes a sign? Perhaps nervous behavior like a sweaty appearance? How about rapid blinking? Researchers will tell you the answer is no, no, and no. There are no telltale nonverbal signs of guilt. Not shifting posture or pausing. There is a small increase in pitch—but it’s too small for the human ear to detect. Jessica Seigel writes:

Researchers have found little evidence to support this belief despite decades of searching. “One of the problems we face as scholars of lying is that everybody thinks they know how lying works,” says Hartwig, who coauthored a study of nonverbal cues to lying in the Annual Review of Psychology.  

There’s also “no evidence that people were any better at detecting lies told by criminals or wrongly accused suspects in police investigations than those told by laboratory volunteers.” And it doesn’t matter whether the deceit is verbal or nonverbal.

While liars feel more anxious and nervous, those are internal feelings—not observable behavior. 

However, there are some ways to spot what may be evidence of lying:

1.     Contradictions. If a subject is allowed to talk enough, they may reveal discrepancies in their story or their story may contradict known information.

2.     Details. Someone who is telling the truth about an event is more likely to provide details. In one experiment, they provided 76% more detail than those who were being deceptive.

Stephen Goforth