Experts
have 10 tips that can let you know if someone isn't telling you the whole
truth.
By Heather
Hatfield
WebMD Feature
WebMD Feature
J.J.
Newberry was a trained federal agent, skilled in the art of deception
detection. So when a witness to a shooting sat in front of him and tried to
tell him that when she heard gunshots she didn't look, she just ran -- he knew
she was lying.
How did
Newberry reach this conclusion? The answer is by recognizing telltale signs
that a person isn't being honest, like inconsistencies in a story, behaviour
that's different from a person's norm, or too much detail in an explanation.
While
using these signs to catch a liar takes extensive training and practice, it's
no longer only for authorities like Newberry. Now, the average person can
become adept at identifying dishonesty, and it's not as hard as you might
think. Experts tell WebMD the top 10 ways to let the truth be known.
"When
you want to know if someone is lying, look for inconsistencies in what they are
saying," says Newberry, who was a federal agent for 30 years and a police
officer for five.
When the
woman he was questioning said she ran and hid after hearing gunshots -- without
looking -- Newberry saw the inconsistency immediately.
"There
was something that just didn't fit," says Newberry. "She heard
gunshots but she didn't look? I knew that was inconsistent with how a person
would respond to a situation like that."
So when
she wasn't paying attention, he banged on the table. She looked right at him.
"When
a person hears a noise, it's a natural reaction to look toward it,"
Newberry tells WebMD. "I knew she heard those gunshots, looked in the
direction from which they came, saw the shooter, and then ran."
Sure
enough, he was right.
"Her
story was just illogical," says Newberry. "And that's what you should
look for when you're talking to someone who isn't being truthful. Are there
inconsistencies that just don't fit?"
"About
4% of people are accomplished liars and they can do it well," says
Newberry. "But because there are no Pinocchio responses to a lie, you have
to catch them in it."
Sir
Walter Scott put it best: "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we
practice to deceive!" But how can you a catch a person in his own web of
lies?
"Watch
them carefully," says Newberry. "And then when they don't expect it,
ask them one question that they are not prepared to answer to trip them
up."
"One
of the most important indicators of dishonesty is changes in behaviour,"
says Maureen O'Sullivan, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of San Francisco.
"You want to pay attention to someone who is generally anxious, but now
looks calm. Or, someone who is generally calm but now looks anxious."
The
trick, explains O'Sullivan, is to gauge their behaviour against a baseline. Is
a person's behaviour falling away from how they would normally act? If it is,
that could mean that something is up.
"Most
people can't fake smile," says O'Sullivan. "The timing will be wrong,
it will be held too long, or it will be blended with other things. Maybe it
will be a combination of an angry face with a smile; you can tell because their
lips are smaller and less full than in a sincere smile."
These
fake emotions are a good indicator that something has gone afoul.
"People
say, 'Oh, it was a gut reaction or women's intuition,' but what I think they
are picking up on are the deviations of true emotions," O'Sullivan tells
WebMD.
While an
average person might not know what it is he's seeing when he thinks someone
isn't being honest and attribute his suspicion to instinct, a scientist would
be able to pinpoint it exactly -- which leads us to tip no. 6.
When Joe
Schmo has a gut feeling, Paul Ekman, a renowned expert in lie detection, sees
microexpressions.
"A
microexpression is a very brief expression, usually about a 25th of a second,
that is always a concealed emotion," says Ekman, PhD, professor emeritus
of psychology at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco.
So when a
person is acting happy, but in actuality is really upset about something, for
instance, his true emotion will be revealed in a subconscious flash of anger on
his face. Whether the concealed emotion is fear, anger, happiness, or jealousy,
that feeling will appear on the face in the blink of an eye. The trick is to see it.
"Almost
everyone -- 99% of those we've tested in about 10,000 people -- won't see
them," says Ekman. "But it can be taught."
In fact,
in less than an hour, the average person can learn to see microexpressions.
"The
general rule is anything that a person does with their voice or their gesture
that doesn't fit the words they are saying can indicate a lie," says
Ekman. "For example, this is going to sound amazing, but it is true.
Sometimes when people are lying and saying, 'Yes, she's the one that took the
money,' they will without knowing it make a slight head shake 'no.' That's a
gesture and it completely contradicts what they're saying in words."
These
contradictions, explains Ekman, can be between the voice and the words, the
gesture and the voice, the gesture and the words, or the face and the words.
"It's
some aspect of demeanour that is contradicting another aspect," Ekman
tells WebMD.
"When
someone isn't making eye contact and that's against how they normally
act, it can mean they're not being honest," says Jenn Berman, PhD, a
psychologist in private practice. "They look away, they're sweating, they look uneasy ... anything that
isn't normal and indicates anxiety."
"When
you say to someone, 'Oh, where were you?' and they say, 'I went to the store
and I needed to get eggs and milk and sugar and I almost hit a dog so I had to
go slow,' and on and on, they're giving you too much detail," says Berman.
Too much
detail could mean they've put a lot of thought into how they're going to get
out of a situation and they've crafted a complicated lie as a solution.
"It's
more important to recognize when someone is telling the truth than telling a
lie because people can look like they're lying but be telling truth," says
Newberry.
While it
sounds confusing, finding the truth buried under a lie can sometimes help find
the answer to an important question: Why is a person lying?
These 10
truth tips, experts agree, all help detect deception. What they don't do is
tell you why a person is lying and what the lie means.
"Microexpressions
don't tell you the reason," says Ekman. "They just tell you what the
concealed emotion is and that there is an emotion being concealed."
When you
think someone is lying, you have to either know the person well enough to
understand why he or she might lie, or be a people expert.
"You
can see a microexpression, but you have to have more social-emotional
intelligence on people to use it accurately," says O'Sullivan. "You
have to be a good judge of people to understand what it means."
"In
general we have a choice about which stance we take in life," says Ekman.
"If we take a suspicious stance life is not going to be too pleasant, but
we won't get misled very often. If we take a trusting stance, life is going to
be a lot more pleasant but sometimes we are going to be taken in. As a parent
or a friend, you're much better off being trusting rather than looking for lies
all the time."
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