Become a Human Lie Detector

The following tips will assist you in determining whether someone is being untruthful. A word of caution is required though, to make an accurate determination that somebody is lying you will need to assess multiple factors rather than rely on a single diagnostic factor. By looking for clusters of the following factors you will enhance your ability to determine the truthfulness of those you meet.

1) Body Language

Is the person making eye contact while speaking? Liars will sometimes avoid making eye contact when lying.

Does the person touch their face or head whilst talking? Some liars will unconsciously touch their face whilst lying. Often the liar will disguise this movement as a scratch.

Are the movements of the person rather stiff? Liars will often minimize their display of body language in a bid to hide the fact that they are lying.

2) Incongruence

Is there a delay between the persons language and the emotion displayed? An example of this can be seen when you give somebody a present that they dislike and they say "I love it" but the smile comes after the statement rather than with it.

Facial expressions that don't match the verbal statement, such as somebody grimacing when they say "I love you", are another clue that the person is lying.

3) Interactions

Liars will often try to distance themselves from the person they are lying to. They may do this by turning their body away from the person they are talking to. They may also try to place a barrier such as an object or an item of furniture between themselves and the person they are talking with.

4 ) Verbal statements of liars

Many liars avoid directly telling a lie. Instead they lie by omission or they will lie via implication. This allows them to lie without directly doing so.

Some liars will add many superfluous details to their fabrications in a bid to make them more believable.

Liars will also sometimes speak in either a monotone voice or a very quiet voice. Some liars voices will also crackle with emotion when lying.

Conclusion

The factors above in combination will help you to determine whether somebody is lying or not. These factors are not iron clad guarantees of deceit though. For the above factors to be most effective it is helpful if you have some knowledge of how the person has previously interacted with you. This gives a baseline from which you can more effectively judge whether groups of the above factors are significant indicators of untruthfulness. The factors above are useful indicators of potential deceit but you must always remember that sometimes a scratch is just a scratch! Further information on this subject is given in the book "What Every Body is Saying" by former FBI agent Joe Navarro.