How can I tell if someone is lying? Investigators, police or forensic psychologists, they all use some deception detection techniques during their investigations and these techniques help them assess whether somebody is lying or not.
How Do You Tell If Someone Is Lying?
There are some basic ways in which you can realize whether someone is truthful or not. The first thing you should you do is to pay attention to the body language. Psychologists state that it can say so many things about us!
If someone is likely to lie, his physical expression will be limited and stiff and his/her arm movements will be few. He/she will also avoid eye contact and their hands will be touching the face or mouth. Also, these people will be likely to touch or scratch their nose or behind the ears. This is just one tip on how you can tell if someone is lying.
Furthermore, you should pay attention to the way they interact. Normally, a guilty person tends to become defensive while an innocent one will often be offensive. A liar feels uncomfortable facing his accuser and tends to turn his head or body away. Sometimes, liars may place objects unconsciously between you and themselves.
Moreover, another technique is to watch emotional gestures. You should know that the timing and duration of the emotional gestures is different for people that tend to lie than for those that tell the truth, because the first category tends to think at the way they should act. And not just do it. Also, you can see a difference between the verbal statement and the gestures. For example, a frown while saying “I love this present”.
However, you should not forget about verbal interaction. A deceiving person might end up using your words when trying to answer a question.
For example: Did you see my cousin Betty? / No, I did not see your cousin Betty.
They will also provide you with a lot of details in order to convince you they are telling the truth; plus they are not usually comfortable with silence in the conversation. Liars may speak in a monotonous tone and leave out pronouns. Usually, when telling the truth, we tend to emphasize the pronouns while making a statement.
You should also check the person’s breathing, as a liar tends to breathe faster. His/her mouth may appear dry because they are usually stressed which causes the heart to beat faster and the lungs to request more air.
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