Wouldn’t it be really great if we had a skill that we could use to tell if someone was telling us a lie?
Imagine how useful that kind of skill would be with our friends, family, police and enemies, the list goes on and on – there are endless possibilities for its use. Luckily for us there are some tell tale signs when people are trying to conceal something. Ill go through the basics and give you some easy steps and tricks so you can put it into action in your life.
The coolest part about all of this is that after reading this article, you’ll understand how to not give yourself away when lying. Wouldn’t that be useful 
The things I’m telling you are standard in the security industry, the FBI and all security agencies will have this as basic training for their employee’s, there has been plenty of scientific research into the measurement of physical changes when lying, I will give you a brief summary.
What happens when we tell a lie?
When we tell a lie, we experience a number of physical changes – almost every human being will experience these things, some people who lie more than others will experience them at a lesser intensity, while others may not be so comfortable while lying. You may notice that when people are lying they will:
-Give you a fake smile.
-Touch their nose.
-Lean forward a lot.
-Sweating, around the palms or on the top lip.
-Playing with objects, fiddling with hands.
-Averting their gaze.
-Touching their face a lot.
-Avoiding eye contact.
-Guilty people tend to get defensive, innocent people will more often go on the offensive.
-They may unconsciously place objects between themselves and you (eg: a book, a cup)
-A guilty person may add more details than is necessary in an attempt to convince you of their innocence.
-They use humor or sarcasm to deflect.
-Liars are often uncomfortable facing their accuser, they will shift their body language away.
-Try and change the subject, if they follow along willingly and become more relaxed there is a good chance they are lying. A person who is innocent will be confused and will want to go back to the previous topic.
As a note, its important to realize that just because someone does these things, they aren’t automatically lying. Experts in the field of security and interrogation agree that its important to use a number of body language and verbal cues to make a prediction of whether someone is telling the truth or not.
Who is good at detecting lies?
We’ve all heard about polygraph machines, or “lie detectors”, the truth is that they are easily beat. How does a polygraph machine work? Well its fairly simple. They hook you up to some detectors that measure certain physical features, like how much you are sweating and how fast your heart in beating etc. The theory goes that, someone who is lying will experience more “stress” response from their body, as they are under pressure and nervous. So when they ask you control questions you are calm, and when they ask you a question that you are going to lie about, you become nervous and the machine registers this.
To beat a lie detectors, you could place a tac under your foot, and press down hard to elicit pain when they ask you a control question, such as “Is your name John?” – then when they ask you a question where you may want to conceal something “Do you like dressing up in women’s clothing?” and you become stressed and nervous because you’ve secretly been cross-dressing for the past 3 years it registers the same as when you pushed down on the tac.
Here is a psychology study performed in 1991, and 1999 that compares the accuracy of detecting lying.
| Ekman, O’Sullivan & Frank (1999) | % accuracy |
| Federal officers (CIA) | 73 |
| Deception-interested clinical psychologists | 67.5 |
| Regular clinical psychologists | 61.1 |
| Federal judges | 62 |
| Academic psychologists | 57.7 |
| Mixed law-encforcements officers | 50.8 |
| Ekman & O’Sullivan (1991) | |
| Psychiatrists | 57.6 |
| Federal polygraphers | 55.8 |
| College students | 52.8 |
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As you can see, CIA officers get it right almost 3/4 of the time, but don’t misinterpret the table – there are two outcomes to a lie, true or false. That means that 50% of the time we will be right (by luck). So foregoing any advanced mathematics and statistical analysis, federal officers get it right 3/4 of the time. Interestingly the polygraph only gets it right 55.8% of the time. This isn’t unexpected as the polygraph isn’t an accepted scientific method of lie detection – it isn’t used it courts either.
In the end, when you are lying to someone – make sure that you don’t touch your face, you keep looking at them and you don’t get defensive. An experienced liar will naturally be good at doing these things, so it will be a lot harder for you to detect. As they say, practice makes perfect – if you keep lying eventually you will get very good at it. You also now know how to beat a polygraph machine, not that they are used often – but still
