Have you ever been burned by somebody because they told you an outright lie? It can happen in your personal or business life youre on cloud nine when your girlfriend says she loves you, only to find out later shes been cheating on you for months; a client says their business is solvent, but they end up bankrupt, and you lose a ton of money on an account.
Wouldnt it be great to avoid these situations by being able to tell right then and there if someone is lying to you? Well, based on research by behavioral scientists and the work and experience of FBI agents and police officers, a system has been developed to help people become human lie detectors.
Below we provide a short introduction to the art of sniffing out a whopper. Ready to get started? Read on.
Caveat: Detecting lies is extremely difficult. Its more of an art than a science. People can fool polygraph tests, so they can definitely fool you. There is no single behavior that indicates deception 100% of the time. Rather, detecting lies requires observing multiple behaviors and analyzing them using the surrounding context. Also, just because a person shows some of the signs we list below, it doesnt necessarily mean theyre lying, just that they might be lying.
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Catalog a Subjects Pacifiers
The key to detecting deception is to recognize when people are uncomfortable. Generally, people who are being honest feel comfortable, while people who are lying feel stressed.
When were nervous or uncomfortable, we all unconsciously manifest our distress with the use of pacifiers. Like the name suggests, we use these gestures and body movements to help soothe and comfort ourselves in uncomfortable situations. Below is a short list of pacifiers many people display:
- Face touching
- Rubbing the back of the neck
- Lip pursing
- Hair stroking
- Playing with jewelry
- Covering the neck dimple (usually seen with women)
- Eye blocking closing eyes tightly or even covering eyes with hands
- Rubbing palms on legs
- Hand wringing
Every person has a different set of pacifying behaviors. Your goal at the beginning of a conversation is to know what pacifiers your potential liar uses. Once you know a persons pacifiers, you can use that info to gauge their comfort and discomfort around certain topics.
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Establish a Behavioral Baseline
Maybe somebody rubs the back of their neck all the time, not just when theyre lying. So in order to gauge someones level of comfort or discomfort, you need to establish a baseline for their behaviors. That way youll know when they deviate from it. Figuring out a persons pacifiers is easy if youre around them all time, but what if youve just met someone? How can you figure out the pacifiers of a potential employee in the short time youre interviewing them? Well, most people display a bit of nervousness when they first meet new people, so you might see pacifying signs at the beginning of your encounter. Make note of them, so you can use them to read the person later in the conversation.
Again, just because a person shows signs of discomfort around a topic, doesnt mean theyre necessarily lying. It just means you need to investigate that subject a bit more to find out the reason for the discomfort.
Get the Person Relaxed
After youve figured out the persons pacifying gestures, get your subject relaxed and comfortable with you. Make small talk. A person will express their comfort with their body language. Theyll lean in closer to you, theyll open up their suit coat, they wont have folded arms, and their feet might be bouncing underneath the table. After you have the person relaxed, you can start asking the important questions. As you discuss certain topics, look for the pacifiers you identified earlier to reemerge. If they do, it could mean the person is lying to you.
June 9, 2010