How to spot a liar

It’s a hundred years since the polygraph was invented, the machine that is supposed to be able to tell if someone is telling lies or not.

It would seem that it’s not very good at telling. In fact, with a little training, you could do the job more accurately yourself.

What’s interesting about lying is that it is a vital part of the society we live in. When someone asks you “How are you?” it’s not the done thing to say how bad things are, even if they are. The correct, polite response is to say that you are fine. Sometimes that’s a lie.

So we all do it.

Who is best at lying?

It’s the charming smooth-talkers. This is contrary to what you might think. Perhaps it’s why people get taken in.

How can you tell if someone is lying?

It’s hard. But one good way to determine the truth is through careful questioning. Not the kind of Sweeney-type shouting and threatening:
“It was you that killed him, wasn’t it?”

One of the most effective techniques is to get people to tell you what happened in reverse order. That’s because it’s so much harder to get all the details right when you are having to make them up backwards.

Lying is quite a difficult process and demands quite a level of skill.

Being nervous

This is not a good indication of lying – truth-tellers also get nervous.

Training

Training can help you to become better at spotting lies.  There are clues, according to the research of Stephen Porter’s Forensic Psychology Lab at Dalhousie University.

There are some muscles in your face that you can’t control and those are the ones that give you away.

It seems that small flashes of your true emotions break through, though sometimes not for very long, so being able to watch a video recording of the answers can help a lot. If you haven’t got one handy, use questions about what happened.

Does this offend you?

Are there any songs that you find offensive? I heard part of a fascinating radio programme about this (“Taboo be Doo” on BBC Radio 4) today.

What was so interesting was that there are some very old songs that, had they been written today, would be banned and not played on the radio.

However, it would seem that because they are old, it’s OK.

Some of these turned out to be some of my favourite records from my murky past.

Not listening

What was also interesting was that there were a few songs that, if you weren’t listening, might be offensive, but if you took the trouble to hear the words properly, told a very different story.

Are you listening?

This is such a common problem. You hear, or partly hear, what someone has said and just assume the rest of it. Or you hear it and interpret it in a way that is not what the speaker had in mind.

This was particularly true of a song called “I’m Not All There” by Harry Carlton in which the person who is apparently “not all there” gets the last laugh, in spite (and possibly because) of what others may think of him.

It’s very easily done, and it’s the way your brain works to save time. It sees part of a pattern and just fills in the rest. This is how your memory works, which is why it’s not always reliable.

In the main it’s very useful, but it can be dangerous in some situations. It can lead to all kinds of unnecessary arguments and problems.

Dangerous situations

So the key is: how do you tell the difference between these situations? How do you know which are the ones where you can get away with making assumptions and which are the ones where you need to pay more attention and ask some questions?

How to tell the difference

Here’s a simple rule of thumb. If you find something offensive, pay more attention and ask some questions before you take offence.